Answer..—Similar requests are made by C. A. Brace, Esq., of Persia, Iowa; L. R. S., Cameron, Neb.; Q., of Elk Grove, Wis., and several others, some of whom desire to know what success has attended experiments in artificial incubation with modern apparatus. Conflicting reports as to this latter question, together with the fraudulent methods taken by some persons engaged in vending pamphlets that cost the publishers not to exceed 8 cents a copy, containing directions for making apparatus of this sort, at the extortionate price of $2, and selling ready-made incubators at exorbitant prices, has made caution advisable in treating this subject. Reports received within the past six weeks from twenty different persons, who have experimented with incubators, indicate that in about twelve cases out of twenty the average success is encouraging, and in the cases of the others the average results are quite discouraging. It is very certain that in a climate incident to such sudden and extreme changes as ours success demands skill and constant attention. None but absolutely fresh eggs must be selected, a temperature hardly varying from 103 deg., and a proper degree of moisture must be maintained, with sleepless vigilance. Let the eggs be chilled even for a few minutes and the consequences are disastrous. For a comparatively inexpensive incubator make a box 4 feet long, 3 feet wide, 6 inches deep, outside measurement, with a tight board lid and a zinc bottom; using boards 1¼ inches thick, nailed or screwed together. This is the heater. Of the same kind of boards make an egg-drawer 4 feet long, 2 feet 11½ inches wide, 5 inches high, outside measure, and 4 inches deep on the inside, with slats nailed in crosswise, instead of a board for the bottom. The slats better be of inch-thick lumber, not more than 1 inch wide, and set one inch apart. Over these slats on the inside tack a piece of coarse sack the full length and width of the box. Draw it tight and tack it securely to the slats and the ends of the box. Next make a frame 3 feet 7 inches long and 32 inches wide, using inch-square strips for the end pieces and inch-wide strips of half-inch thickness for the sides. Strain stout muslin over this frame and tack it firmly. Lay this, muslin side down, on the coarse cloth in the egg drawer. This is to support the eggs. Next bore twenty half-inch holes in each side of the egg drawer, 1¾ inches apart, and as close to the frame with the muslin bottom as can be done and yet allow this frame to slide easily underneath twenty slats a half-inch square each, which must be run through the box from hole to hole, to keep the eggs in position. Arrange the eggs between these slats, resting on the muslin of the muslin frame. It will be seen that by moving this frame about two inches backward or forward the eggs can be turned half over. Make a box of precisely the same length and breadth as the heater, but eight inches deep instead of six. Nail on a tight bottom of inch flooring stuff; bore twelve half-inch holes in this bottom, into which insert as many tin tubes of the same diameter, seven inches long, for ventilators. Fill all the space between the pipes with sawdust to within about an inch of their tops. Next set the egg drawer on top of this ventilator box, and set the heater, the first box described, on the top of the egg drawer. Take common inch-boards, one foot wide, and nail one on each side and across one end of this pile of boxes, driving the nails along the lower edge of each board into the ventilator box, and along the upper edge into the heater box; raising the latter off of the egg-drawer barely enough to let the latter slide easily back and forth between the heater and ventilator.
As the incubator stands now, the egg-drawer is protected from the cold, underneath, by the ventilator box with about six inches of sawdust: but it must be similarly protected on the sides and top. Set this nest of boxes, as now arranged, on a couple of trestles made of pieces of scantling, four feet eight or ten inches long, with short legs eight inches long, and build another box 27 inches high (outside) around them, long enough and wide enough to form a sawdust chamber 8 inches wide along both sides and the back end of the incubator, and rising 8 inches higher than the top of the heater. Next get two tin pipes, 12 or 13 inches long and about 2½ inches in diameter, seamed together, as solder melts; also get two such pipes about 6 inches long, and two elbows. Bore a 2½-inch hole through the sawdust-box and the heater-box entering the latter about 9 inches from the front and 2 inches below the lid, and slide one of the longer pipes through these holes. Attach one of the elbows and one of the 6-inch pipes outside. Put the other pipe into the heater from the opposite side, about 9 inches from the back end of the heater. Two kerosene lamps, set on brackets, on the outside of the sawdust box, with their chimneys thrust up into the short pipes, will supply all the heat that is required for hatching the eggs. If the lamps smoke, drop them low enough to admit a little air to enter between the chimneys and the inside of the pipes. Opposite where each of these tin flues enters the heater, bore three three-quarter-inch holes through the top of the heater, nine or ten inches apart, in a line about three inches from the side. Slide six tin tubes of the same diameter, fifteen or sixteen inches long, through these holes to within a half-inch of the zinc bottom of the heater. Now fill the sawdust chamber around the incubator and on top, putting earth instead of sawdust just around the hot-air flues, to avoid fire. As the zinc directly under where the hot-air flues enter the heater is apt to get overheated, it is best before covering the heater with sawdust to lay a piece of zinc or tin, about a foot square, on the zinc bottom as an equalizer of the temperature. Keep a thermometer in the egg drawer to test the temperature. This drawer will hold about 250 eggs.
This is the incubator; directions for using it will be given hereafter.
M. A. Bevard, Derby, Iowa—General Hull took part in the revolutionary battles of White Plains, Trenton, Stillwater, Princeton, Saratoga, and Monmouth. 2. Aaron Burr died on Staten Island.
INTEREST ON NOTES.
Washburn, Wis.
1. Will a promissory note draw interest if it is not so specified in the note? 2. Will a note made payable one year after date, with interest at 7 per cent, draw interest after the note becomes due?
A. E. R.