Rensselaer Union, Volume 1, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 July 1869 — How Eggs Hatch. [ARTICLE]

How Eggs Hatch.

Pnru have an Mea that; the ben rite on the tgg for a certain time, and that when the time come* tor hatching the chick buraU forth. There never waa • greater mistake. The chkifc, until liberated flrom the shell ü by outride aid,” i* aa incapable of motion as if formed a solid with the egg, which it nearly doe*. You might as well enclose a man in an iron boiler, and tell him to get out without tools, as expect a chick to get out of the shell without help. The chick grows and swells In the inside of the shell, untU at last the excrescence on the point of the beak of the bird presses against the inside of the shell, and bursts up a small scale; of coarse when it does this, it at the time breaks “ in that spot ” the inside skin of the egg. This admits the air; in a short time it breathes and gets strength to cry loudly. The ben then sets to work to liberate it; she brings it forward under the feathers of the crop, and supporting it between the breastbone and the nest begins the work of setting her progeny free. She hitches the point of her beak into the hole formed by the raising of the scale by the chicks beak, and breaks away the egg skin or shell all round the greatest diameter of the egg. The joint efforts of the hen without and the cnick within then liberate the prisoner, and he struggles into existence, and gets dry under the feathers, and with the natural heat of the hen. All female birds, which set on their eggs to hateh them have the hook in the beak strongly developed. Even the broad - billed duck and the goose have these hooks specially developed, and with them they liberate their yonng. In Australia, where everything seems to be by contraries, it is the cock of the brush turkey that hatches the eggs and not the hen. It would be interesting to know whether the hook of the beak is better adapted for this service in the male of that bird than in the female; the hook on the beak of the ordinary oock of the common fowl is quite different from that of the hen —it is adapted for wounding in fight, but not far the hatching of eggs.— Exchange.