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OUR HUMBLE HELPERS [[3]]

OUR HUMBLE HELPERS

FAMILIAR TALKS ON THE DOMESTIC ANIMALS

BY
JEAN-HENRI FABRE
Author of “The Story Book of Science,” “Social Life in the Insect World,” etc.
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH
BY
FLORENCE CONSTABLE BICKNELL

NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1918

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Copyright, 1918, by
The Century Co.

Published, September, 1918 [[5]]

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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE

In its purpose and style this book closely resembles the same author’s “Story-Book of Science,” and it belongs to the same series. To many readers, however, it is likely to prove even more interesting than its predecessor, inasmuch as the domestic animals are more familiar and hence more interesting to many persons than the ant, the spider, the plant-louse, the caterpillar, and other examples of insect life discussed in the earlier work. Particularly at this time, when not a few of us, both old and young, are turning our attention, however inexpertly, to farming in a small way, in order to make the most of nature’s food resources within our reach, we like to become a little better acquainted with the denizens of the farmyard and the four-footed helpers in the field. The pig and the hen, the goose and the turkey, the ox and the ass, the horse and the cow, the sheep and its canine keeper—these and many other old friends of ours in the animal kingdom are made to enliven the following pages by the genius and skill of him who knew and loved them all as few naturalists have known and loved their dumb fellow-creatures.

Faithfulness to the spirit of the French original [[6]]has throughout been striven for rather than a blind subservience to the letter. May the attempt to render at least a little of the charm of that original be found not wholly unsuccessful! [[7]]

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CONTENTS

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OUR HUMBLE HELPERS

CHAPTER I

THE COCK AND THE HEN

Under the big elm tree in the garden Uncle Paul has called together for the third time his usual listeners, Emile, Jules, and Louis. After the story of the Ravagers, which destroy our harvests, and that of the Auxiliaries, which protect them, he now proposes to tell the story of our Humble Helpers, the domestic animals. He thus begins:

“The cock and the hen, those invaluable members of our poultry-yards, came to us from Asia so long ago that the remembrance of their coming is lost. At the present day they have spread to all parts of the world.

“Is it necessary to describe the cock to you? Who has not admired this fine bird, with its bright look, its proud bearing, its slow and sedate walk? On its head a piece of scarlet flesh forms a scalloped crest; under the base of the beak hang two wattles resembling pieces of coral; on each temple, by the side of the ear, is a spot of dull white naked skin; a rich tippet of golden red falls from the neck over the shoulders and breast; two feathers of a greenish metallic [[12]]luster form a graceful arch of plumage in the upper part of the tail. The heel is armed with a horny spur, hard and pointed; a formidable weapon with which, in fighting, the cock stabs his rival to death. His song is a resonant peal that makes itself heard at all hours, night as well as day. Hardly does the sky begin to brighten with the twilight of dawn when, erect on his perch, he awakens the nocturnal echoes with his piercing cock-a-doodle-doo, the reveille of the farm.”

“That,” said Emile, “is the song I like so much to hear in the morning when I am about half-way between sleeping and waking.”

“It is the cock’s crowing,” put in Louis, “that wakes me up in the morning when I have to go to market in the next town.”

“The cock is the king of the poultry-yard,” resumed Uncle Paul. “Full of care for his hens, he leads them, protects them, scolds and punishes them. He watches over those that wander off, goes in quest of the vagrants, and brings them back with little cries of impatience, which, no doubt, are admonitions. If necessary, a peck with the beak persuades the more refractory. But if he finds food, such as grain, insects, or worms, he straightway lifts up his voice and calls the hens to the banquet. He himself, however, magnificent and generous, stands in the midst of the throng and scratches the earth to turn up the worms and distribute here and there to the invited guests the dainties thus unearthed. If some greedy hen takes more than her share, he recalls her [[13]]to a sense of her duty to the community and reprimands her with a peck on the head. After all the others have eaten their fill he contents himself with their leavings.

“Plainer in costume, the hen, the joy of the farmer’s wife, trots about the poultry-yard, scratching and pecking and cackling. After laying an egg she proclaims her joy with an enthusiasm in which her companions take such a share that the whole establishment bursts into a general lively chorus in celebration of the happy event. She has a habit of squatting down in a dusty and sunny corner where she flutters her wings with much content and makes a fine shower fall between her feathers to relieve the itching that torments her. Then with outstretched leg and wing she sleeps away the hottest hours of the day; or, without disturbing her voluptuous repose, spying a fly on the wall, she snaps it up with one quick dart of her beak. Like the cock, she swallows fine gravel, which takes the place of teeth and serves to grind the grain in her gizzard. She drinks by lifting her head skyward to make each mouthful go down. She sleeps on one leg, the other drawn up under her plumage and her head hidden under her wing.”

“These curious particulars of the hen’s habits,” said Jules, “are quite familiar to us all; we see them every day with our own eyes. One only is new to me: hens, you say, swallow little grains of sand which take the place of teeth for grinding the food in the gizzard. I don’t know what the gizzard is, and I [[14]]don’t see how little stones that have been swallowed can be used as teeth.”

“A short digression on the digestive organs of birds,” replied Uncle Paul, “will give you the information you ask for.

“Birds do not chew their food; they swallow it just as they seize it, or nearly so. The beak, lacking teeth, is for that very reason unsuited for the work of grinding. It merely seizes; it strikes, picks up, digs, pierces, breaks, tears, according to the kind of food adapted to the bird’s needs. A solid horn covers the bony framework of the two mandibles and makes their edges sharp and very well fitted for dismembering if necessary, but not for triturating.

“Rapacious birds that feed on live prey have the upper mandible short, strong, hooked, and terminating in a sharp point, sometimes with serrate edges. With this weapon the hunting bird kills its prey, and tears it to pieces while holding it with its vigorous talons armed with sharp, curved nails.

“Fish-eating birds that tear the fish to pieces in order to swallow it have the hooked beak of the rapacious birds; those that swallow the fish whole have a straight beak with long, wide mandibles. Some throw it into the air to catch it in their beak a second time, head first, and swallow it without any difficulty in spite of the fin-bones, which lie flat from front to back while the fish is passing through the narrow gullet. A great fishing bird, the pelican, has in its lower mandible a large membranous pouch, a sort of fish-pond, where it stores the fish as long as the catch [[15]]lasts. Thus stocked up, it seeks a quiet retreat on some ledge of rock by the water-side and takes out, one by one, the fish packed away in its pouch, to feed on them at leisure.”

Pelican

“The pelican seems to me a wise fisher,” remarked Emile. “Without losing a minute in swallowing, it begins by filling the bag under its beak. The time will come later for looking over the catch and enjoying the fish at leisure. I should like to see it on its rocks with its bag full.”

“And that other one,” said Jules, “that throws the fish it has caught into the air so as to catch it again head first and not strangle when swallowing it—is not that one just as clever?”

“Each kind has its special talent,” replied Uncle Paul, “which it uses with the tool peculiar to the bird, the beak. If the story of the auxiliaries, related some time ago, is still fresh in your minds, you will remember that insect-eating birds have the beak slender and sometimes very long, to dig into the fissures of dead wood and bark; but those that catch insects on the fly, as the swallow and the fern-owl, have the beak very short and exceedingly wide, so that the game pursued is caught in the open gullet and becomes coated with a slimy saliva which holds [[16]]it fast. Finally, I will remind you of the granivorous birds—the sparrow, linnet, greenfinch, chaffinch, and many others. All these birds, whose chief food consists of grain, have the beak short, thick, pointed; adapted, in fact, to the picking up of seeds from the ground, freeing them from their husks, and breaking their shells to obtain the kernel. By virtue of its strong mandibles, the beak of the hen belongs to this last category, although at the same time its rather long, sharp, and slightly hooked extremity indicates carnivorous tastes. Such a beak calls not only for seeds, but also for small prey, such as insects and worms.” [[17]]

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CHAPTER II

THE GIZZARD

“Nearly all the higher or mammiferous animals,” Uncle Paul continued, “such as the dog, cat, wolf, horse, have only one digestive pouch—a stomach—where the alimentary substances are dissolved and made fluid, so as to enter the veins and be turned into blood, by which all parts of the body are nourished. But the ox, goat, and sheep—the cud-chewers, in short—have four digestive cavities, which I will tell you about later. I will tell you how, in the pasture, these animals hastily swallow almost unchewed grass and put it by in a large reservoir called a paunch, from which it comes up again afterward in a season of repose, to be rechewed at leisure in small mouthfuls.

“Well, birds are fashioned in a similar way, as far as eating is concerned. Not being able to chew, as they have no teeth, they swallow their food without any preparation, nearly as the beak has seized it, and amass a quantity of it in a spacious stomach, just as the ox does in his paunch. From this reservoir the food passes, little by little, into two other digestive cavities, one of which immerses it in a liquid calculated to dissolve it, and the other grinds and triturates it better than the best pair of jaws could [[18]]do. There takes place a kind of chewing, it is true, only the food, instead of returning to the beak, where teeth are lacking for its thorough mastication, continues its journey, and on the way comes to the triturating machine. Birds, then, are generally provided with three digestive cavities.

“The first is the crop, situated just at the base of the neck. It is a bag with thin and flexible walls, its size proportioned to the resistant nature of the food eaten. It is very large in birds that feed on grain, especially the hen, and is medium-sized, or even wholly wanting, in those that live on prey, which is much easier to digest than dry and hard seeds. In the crop, the food swallowed in haste remains hours and even days, as in a reservoir; there it softens somewhat, and is then submitted to the action of the other digestive pouches. The crop corresponds in a certain sense to the bag in which the pelican stores up his fishing; it represents also the first stomach of the ox and the other cud-chewers or ruminants.

“Next to the crop is a second enlargement, called the succenturiate ventricle, of small capacity but remarkable for a liquid of a bitter taste that oozes in fine drops through its walls and moistens the food as it passes. This liquid is a digestive juice; it has the property of dissolving the alimentary substances as soon as trituration has done the greater part of the work. The food does not remain in this second stomach; it merely passes through to become impregnated with the digestive juice.

“The third and last stomach is known as the gizzard. [[19]]It is rounded and is slightly flattened on both sides, like a watch-case, and is composed—especially in birds that live on grain—of a very thick, fleshy wall, lined on the inside with a kind of hard and tenacious leather which protects the organ from attrition. Finally, it is to be noted that at the same time the bird is swallowing grain it takes care also to swallow a little gravel, some very small stones which, away down in the gizzard, will perform the office of teeth.”

“I know what the gizzard is,” volunteered Emile. “When they are cleaning a chicken to cook, they take out of the body something round that they split in two with a knife; then they throw away a thick skin all wrinkled and stuffed with grains of sand, and the rest is put back into the chicken.”

“Yes, that is the gizzard,” said Uncle Paul. “Let us complete these ideas got from cooking. The bird, not having in its beak the molars necessary for grinding, as in a mill, the seeds that are hard to crush, supplies its gizzard with artificial teeth, which are renewed at each repast; that is to say, it swallows little pebbles. The grain, softened in the crop and moistened with the digestive juice during its passage through the succenturiate ventricle, reaches the gizzard mixed with the little stones that are to aid the triturating action. The work then performed is easy to understand. If you pressed in your palm a handful of wheat mixed with gravel, and if your fingers, by continual movement, made the two kinds of particles rub vigorously against each other, is it [[20]]not true that the wheat would soon be reduced to powder? Such is the action of the gizzard. Its strong, fleshy walls contract powerfully and knead their contents of sand and seeds without suffering damage themselves from the friction, because of the tough skin that lines their inside and protects them from the roughness of the gravel. In such a mill the hardest kernels are soon reduced to a sort of soup.

“To make you understand the prodigious power of the gizzard, I cannot do better than relate to you certain experiments performed by a learned Italian, the abbot Spallanzani. A century ago the celebrated abbot, while pursuing his researches on the natural history of animals, caused a number of hens to swallow some little glass balls. ‘These balls,’ he said, ‘were sufficiently tough not to break when thrown forcibly on to the ground. After remaining three hours in the hen’s gizzard they were for the most part reduced to very tiny pieces with nothing sharp about them, all their edges having been blunted as if they had passed through a mill. I noticed also that the longer these little glass balls remained in the stomach, the finer the powder to which they were reduced. After a few hours they were broken into a multitude of vitreous particles no larger than grains of sand.’ ”

“A stomach that can grind glass balls to powder,” commented Jules, “is certainly a first-rate mill.”

“You shall hear something still more remarkable,” returned his uncle. “Wait. ‘As these balls,’ continued the abbot, ‘were polished and smooth, they [[21]]could not create any kind of disturbance in the gizzard.’ So he was curious to see what would happen if sharp and cutting bodies were introduced. ‘We know,’ he says, ‘how easily little pieces of glass, broken up by pounding, tear the flesh. Well, having shattered a pane of glass, I selected some pieces about the size of a pea and wrapped them in a playing card so that they would not lacerate the gullet in their passage. Thus prepared, I made a cock swallow them, well knowing that the covering of card would break on its entrance into the stomach and leave the glass free to act with all its points and sharp edges.’ ”

“With all those little pieces of glass in its stomach,” said Jules, “the bird must surely have died.”

“Not a bit of it. The bird would have come out all right if the experimenter had not sacrificed it to see the result. The cock was killed at the end of twenty hours. ‘All the pieces of glass were in the gizzard,’ the abbot tells us, ‘but all their sharp edges and points had disappeared so completely that, having put these fragments on my palm, I could rub them hard with the other hand without inflicting the slightest wound.

“ ‘The reader,’ he goes on, ‘must be curious to learn the effect produced on the gizzard by these sharp-pointed bodies that rolled around there unceasingly until they lost their keen edges and sharp points. Opening the cock’s gizzard, I examined minutely the inside skin after having well washed and cleaned it. I even separated it from the gizzard, [[22]]which is done without difficulty, and thus it was easy to scrutinize it as closely as I wished. Well, after all my pains I found it perfectly intact, without a tear or cut, without even the slightest scratch. The skin appeared to me absolutely the same as that of the cocks that had not swallowed glass.’ ”

“So the bird that is made to swallow pieces of broken glass,” said Jules, “grinds them up without injury and without even a scratch, while we could not so much as handle this dangerous stuff with the tips of our fingers without wounding ourselves. This power of the gizzard is really inconceivable.”

“What follows is still more surprising,” resumed Uncle Paul. “Spallanzani continues: ‘The experiments with glass not having done the birds any harm, I performed two others that were much more dangerous. In a leaden ball I placed twelve large steel needles so that they stuck out of the ball more than half a centimeter, and I made a turkey swallow this ball, bristling with points and wrapped in a card; and it kept the ball in its stomach a day and a half. During this time the bird showed not the slightest discomfort, and in fact there could have been none, for on killing the bird I found that its stomach had not received the slightest wound from this barbarous device. All the needles were broken off and separated from the leaden ball, two of them being still in the gizzard, their points greatly blunted, while the other ten had disappeared, ejected with the excrement.

“ ‘Finally, I fixed in a leaden ball twelve little steel lancets, very sharp and cutting, and I made [[23]]another turkey swallow the terrible pill. It remained sixteen hours in the gizzard, after which I opened the bird and found only the ball minus the lancets; these had all been broken, three of them, their points and edges entirely blunted, being found in the intestines, the nine others having been ejected. As for the gizzard, it showed no trace of a wound.’

“You see, my little friends, a bird’s gizzard is the most wonderful organ of trituration in the world. What are the best-equipped jaws in comparison with this strong pouch which, without suffering so much as a scratch, reduces glass to powder and breaks and blunts steel needles and lancets? You can understand now with what ease the hardest seeds can be ground when the gizzard of the granivorous bird presses and rolls them pell-mell with small stones.”

“Where glass and steel are broken up,” said Emile, “grain ought to turn to flour as well as in a mill.” [[24]]

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CHAPTER III

THE CHIEF KINDS OF POULTRY

Red Jungle Fowl

“Different kinds of poultry, the originals of our domestic species, are living to this day in a wild state in the forests of Asia, notably in India, and in the Philippine Islands and Java. The most noteworthy is the Bankiva or red jungle fowl. In shape, plumage, and habits the male bird bears a striking resemblance to the common rooster of our poultry-yards; but in size it is smaller even than the partridge. It has a scalloped red comb, a tail of arched plumage, and a neck ornamented with a falling tippet of bright, golden-red feathers. This graceful little cock, irritable and full of fight, has the habits of ours. He struts proudly at the head of his flock of hens, over whose safety he watches with extreme care. If hunters range the forest, or if some dog prowls in the neighborhood, the vigilant bird, quick to perceive, suspects an enemy. He immediately flies to a high branch and thence gives forth a cry of alarm to warn the hens, which [[25]]hastily conceal themselves under the leaves or crouch in the hollows of trees and wait motionless until the danger is past. To get within gun-shot of these birds is well-nigh impossible, and to capture them one must have recourse to the same snares one uses for catching larks.”

“A fowl smaller than a partridge, and that they catch in the woods with snares for larks,” remarked Jules, “ought to be a very pretty bird, but not of much use if raised in poultry-yards. Does our poultry come from such a small kind as that?”

“It certainly comes either from the Bankiva fowl or from other kinds just as small that live in a wild state in the forests of Asia; but when and how the hen and the cock became domesticated is wholly unknown. From the dawn of history man has been in possession of the barnyard fowl, at least in Asia, whence later the species came to us already domesticated. During long centuries, improved by our care, which assures it abundant food and comfortable shelter, the original small species has produced numerous varieties differing much in size and plumage. They are classed in three groups: the small, the medium, and the large.

“To the first group belongs the bantam or little English fowl, about the size of a partridge. It is a beautiful bird with short legs that let the tips of the wings drag on the ground, quick movements, gentle and tame habits. Its eggs, proportioned to the small size of the hen, weigh scarcely thirty grams apiece, while those of other hens weigh from sixty to ninety [[26]]grams each. These pretty little pullets are raised rather as ornaments to the poultry-yard than for the sake of their diminutive eggs.”

“These little fowl,” observed Louis, “look from their size like the primitive kind.”

“Yes, it was about like that they looked when man took it into his head to tame the wild fowl. In the poultry-yards of those times lived, not the large species of our day, but birds as small in body and as quick on the wing as the partridge. I leave you to imagine what care and vigilance were necessary in order not to frighten these timid little fowl and cause them to go back to the woods that they still remembered.”

“It must have been as much trouble,” said Louis, “as it would be for us to tame a covey of partridges. Such an undertaking would not be easy. We are a long way from those first attempts at domestication with our hens of to-day, so tame, so importunate even, that they come boldly and pick up crumbs under the very table.”

“The common poultry, that which stocks the greater number of farms, belongs to the medium-sized breeds. Its plumage is of all colors, from white to red and black. Its head is small and ornamented with a red comb, sometimes single, sometimes double, coquettishly thrown to one side. The cock, for its proud bearing and magnificent plumage, has no equal among the other species. The common fowl is the easiest to keep, for its activity permits it to seek and find for itself, by scratching in the [[27]]ground, a great part of its food in the form of seeds and worms. It may be found fault with for its wandering proclivities, favored by a strong wing which it avails itself of to fly over hedges and fences, to go and devastate the neighboring gardens.

“Among the other medium-sized species which, associated with the common fowl, are found in poultry-yards as ornaments rather than as sources of profit, I will name the following:

“First, the Paduan fowl, recognizable by its rich plumage and particularly by the thick tuft of feathers that adorns its head. This beautiful headdress of fine plumage, so proudly spread out in fine weather, is, when once wet by rain, nothing but an ungraceful rag, heavy and tangled, which tires the bird and makes the rustic life of the poultry-yard impossible as far as it is concerned.

“The Houdan fowl wears a thickly tufted top-knot which is thrown back over the nape of the neck. Sometimes this headdress covers the eyes so completely that the bird cannot see in front nor sidewise, but only on the ground, which makes it uneasy at the slightest noise. The plumage is speckled black and white, with glints of purple and green. The cheeks and the base of the beak are draped with little upturned feathers. Each foot has five toes instead of four, the usual number—not counting the cock’s spur, which is simply a horn, a fighting weapon, and not a toe. Three of the toes point forward and two backward.

“The fowl of la Flèche, so renowned for the delicacy [[28]]of its flesh and its aptness for fattening, has no crest and is long-legged, with black plumage of green and purple luster. The legs are blue and the comb rises in two little red horns.

“Similar but better developed horns, accompanied by a thick headdress of feathers, adorn the Crève-cœur species. The hen is a beautiful black; the cock wears, against body plumage of the same dark color, a rich gold or silver tippet.

“Finally, to the large species belongs the Cochin-China, an ungraceful bird, with very strong body and shapeless and disordered plumage, generally reddish white. Its eggs are brownish in color.” [[29]]

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CHAPTER IV

THE EGG

“When moistening your slices of bread with egg, has it ever occurred to you to examine a little the structure of what furnishes your repast? I think not. To-day I am going to tell you something about this: I will show you in detail this wonder called an egg.

“First, let us examine the shell. In hens’ eggs it is all white, as also in those of ducks and geese. Turkeys’ eggs are speckled with a multitude of little pale red spots. But it is particularly the eggs of undomesticated birds that are remarkable for their coloring. There are sky-blue ones, such as those of certain blackbirds; rose color for certain warblers; and somber green with a tinge of bronze is found, for example, in the eggs of the nightingale. The coloring is sometimes uniform, sometimes enhanced by darker spots, or by a haphazard sprinkling of pigment, or by odd markings resembling some sort of illegible handwriting. Many rapacious birds, chiefly those of the sea, lay eggs with large fawn-colored spots that make them look like the pelt of a leopard. I will not dwell longer on this subject, interesting though it may be, as in telling you the [[30]]story of the auxiliary birds I have already described the eggs of the principal kinds.”

“I have taken care,” interposed Jules, “to remember the curious variety of coloring that eggs have. I recall very distinctly the nightingale’s, green like an olive; the goldfinch’s, spotted with reddish brown, especially at the larger end; the crow’s, bluish green with brown spots; and so many others that I hesitate to say which are my favorites, so nearly equal are they in beauty.”

“Let us learn now about the nature of the shell,” his uncle continued. “The substance of the shell is, in the hen’s egg, as white as marble; its own color not being disguised by any foreign pigment. This pure white and its other characteristics, hardness and clean fracture, do they not tell you of what substance the shell is composed?”

“Either appearances deceive me greatly,” answered Louis, “or the shell is simply made of stone.”

“Yes, my friend, it is indeed of stone, but stone selected with exquisite care and refined as it were, in the bird’s body.

“In its nature the eggshell does not differ from common building-stone; or rather, on account of its extreme purity, it does not differ from the chalk that you use on the blackboard, or from the magnificent white marble that the sculptor seeks for the masterpieces of his chisel. Building-stone, marble, and chalk are at bottom the same substance, which is called lime, limestone, or carbonate of lime. The differences, [[31]]great as they may be, have to do with the state of purity and degree of consistency. That which building-stone contains in a state of impurity from other ingredients is contained also in white marble and chalk, but free from any admixture. Thus in its nature the eggshell is identical with chalk and marble, harder than the first, less hard than the second, being between the two in an intermediate state of pure lime. To clothe the egg, therefore, with a solid envelope, the hen and all birds without exception use the same material as the sculptor works with in his studio and the scholar uses on the blackboard.

“Now, no animal creates matter; none makes its body, with all that comes from it, out of nothing. The bird does not find within itself the material for the eggshell; it gets it from outside with its food. Amid the grain that is thrown to her the hen finds little bits of stone left there through imperfect cleaning; she swallows them without hesitation, knowing full well, however, that they are little stones and not kernels of wheat. That is not enough; you will see her all day long scratching and pecking here and there in the poultry-yard. Now and then she digs up some worm, her great delicacy, and from time to time some fragment of limestone, which she turns to account with as much satisfaction as if she had found a plump insect.”

“I have often seen hens swallowing little stones like that,” remarked Emile. “I thought it was all their own carelessness or gluttonous haste, but now [[32]]I begin to suspect the truth. Would not those little stones be useful in making the eggshell?”

“You are right, my little friend. The particles of lime swallowed with the food are converted into a fine pap, dissolved by the digestive action of the stomach. By a rigorous sorting the pure lime is separated from the rest, and it is made into a sort of chalk soup which at the right moment oozes around the egg and hardens into a shell. By swallowing little particles of lime, the hen, as you see, lays by materials for her eggshell. If these materials were wanting, if the food given her did not include lime, if, imprisoned in a cage, she could not procure carbonate of lime for herself by pecking in the ground, she would lay eggs without any shell and simply covered with a flabby skin.”

“Those soft eggs that hens sometimes lay come then from lack of lime?” asked Louis.

“They either come from the bird’s not having had the necessary carbonate of lime in her food or in the earth she pecked, or else her bad state of health did not permit the transformation of the little stones into that chalky pap which molds itself around the egg and becomes the shell. In countries where carbonate of lime is scarce in the soil, or even totally lacking, it is the custom to break up the eggshells and mix the coarse powder in the fowl’s food. It is a very judicious way of giving the hen in the most convenient form, the stony matter necessary for the perfect formation of the egg.”

“Sometimes,” observed Louis, “we find on the [[33]]dunghill eggs of a queer shape and as soft as hens’ eggs without the shell. Instead of a chicken, a snake comes out of them. They say they are laid by young cocks.”

“You are repeating now one of the false notions prevalent in the country—a foolish notion springing from a basis of actual fact. It is perfectly true that eggs soft, rather long, almost cylindrical, and of the same size at both ends, may be turned up by the fork as it stirs the warm manure of a dunghill. It is also perfectly true that from these eggs snakes are hatched, to the great surprise of the innocent person who thinks he sees there the product of some witchcraft. What is false is the supposed origin of the egg. Never, never has the cock, be he young or old, the faculty reserved exclusively for the hen, the faculty of laying. Those eggs found in dunghills, and remarkable for their strange shape, do not come from fowl; they are simply the eggs of a serpent, of an inoffensive snake which, when opportunity offers, buries its laying in the warm mass of a dunghill to aid the hatching. It is quite natural, then, that from serpents’ eggs serpents should hatch.”

“The ridiculous marvel of the supposed cock’s eggs,” returned Louis, “thus becomes a very simple thing; but one must first know that serpents lay eggs.”

“Henceforth you will know that not only serpents but all reptiles lay eggs just as birds do. Snakes’ eggs are flabby, and for covering have only a sort of skin resembling wet parchment. Moreover, they are [[34]]long in shape, which is far from being the usual form. But the eggs of some reptiles, notably of lizards, have the shell firm and of the fine oval shape peculiar to birds’ eggs. If you ever encounter in holes in the wall, or in dry sand well exposed to the sun, little eggs, all white, with shell as fine as a little canary bird’s, do not cry out at the strangeness of your discovery; you will simply have come across the eggs of a gray lizard, the usual inhabitant of old walls.” [[35]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER V

THE EGG

(Continued)

“Let us return to the hen. We know the calcareous nature of the shell; now let us look at the structure. Open your eyes wide and look attentively; you will see on the shell, chiefly at the large end, a multitude of tiny dents such as might be made by the point of a fine needle. Each of these dents corresponds to an invisible hole that pierces the shell through and through and establishes communication between the interior and the exterior. These holes, much too small to let out the liquid contents of the egg, nevertheless suffice both for the emission of humid vapors, which are dissipated outside the shell, and for the admission of air, which penetrates within and replaces the evaporated humidity.

“The presence of these innumerable openings is absolutely necessary for the awakening and keeping up of life in the future chicken. Every living thing breathes, and all life springs into being and continues through the action of air. The seed that germinates under ground must have air. Planted too deep, it perishes sooner or later without being able to rise, because the thick bed of earth prevents [[36]]the air from reaching it. The egg must have air so that its substance, gently warmed by the brooding mother hen, may spring into life and become a little chicken; it must have it continually, shut up as it is in its shell. Thanks to the openings with which the shell is riddled, the air penetrates sufficiently to meet the needs of respiration; it quickens the substance of the egg and the little being slowly forming within.”

“One might say,” Emile here put in, “that these holes are so many little windows through which air reaches the bird in its narrow cell of the egg.”

“These windows, as Emile calls them,” his uncle went on, “deserve our attention from another point of view. Eggs are a precious alimentary provision; the difficulty is to keep them for any length of time. If they get too old they spoil and give out then an infectious, bad smell. Well, then, what causes the eggs to spoil and changes them to repulsive-smelling filth is again air—the same air so indispensable to the formation of the chicken. That which gives life to the egg under the heat of the brooding hen brings destruction just as quickly when the warmth is wanting. If, then, it is proposed to preserve in a state of freshness as long as possible eggs destined for food, it is necessary to prevent the access of air into their interior, which is done by closing the openings in the shell. Several means may be employed. Sometimes eggs are plunged for a moment into melted grease, from which they are drawn out covered with a coating that obstructs all the orifices; sometimes they are varnished. The simplest [[37]]method is to keep them in water in which a little lime has been dissolved. This dissolved lime deposits itself on the shell and closes the openings. These precautions taken, the air can no longer find a passage to penetrate into the interior and the eggs are preserved in good condition much longer than they would be without this preparation. Nevertheless they always spoil in the long run.”

“If I have properly understood what you have just told us about the need of air for the awakening of life,” remarked Jules, “eggs thus coated with varnish or lime will not hatch when under the brooding hen?”

“Evidently not. Rendered impervious to air by the varnish, lime, grease, or what not, the eggs might remain indefinitely under the brooding hen without ever coming to life; for want of the quickening action of the air, life would no more awaken in them than in simple stones. You understand, then, that the method of preservation by means of a coating that closes the orifices of the shell must only be employed for eggs destined for food, and that care must be taken not to make use of it in those destined for hatching.

“But this is enough about the outside of the egg. Now let us break the shell. What do we find within? We find a delicate membrane, a supple skin which lines the whole of the shell and forms a kind of bag, without any opening, filled with the white and yolk. When by some accident the limy coating is lacking, this membrane constitutes the sole covering of the [[38]]egg—a covering as soft as thin parchment soaked in water.”

“Then soft eggs without any shell have this membrane all exposed?” queried Jules.

“Exactly. A new-laid egg has its shell completely filled; but it soon loses some of its humidity, which evaporates through the orifices in the shell. A void is then created in the interior, near the large end, where the evaporation is most rapid. At this end, therefore, the membrane detaches itself from the shell that it lined and draws further in with the contents of the egg shrunk by the evaporation. Thus is produced at the large end a cavity which the air from outside enters and which for this reason is called the air-chamber. This chamber, wanting at first, grows little by little according to the space left by the moisture’s evaporation; consequently, the older the egg, the larger the space. If the egg is placed under the hen, the heat of the mother aids evaporation and causes the quick formation of the air-chamber. There gathers, as in a reservoir, the supply of air needed for the vitality of the egg and the respiration of the coming bird. So the empty space at the large end is a respiratory storehouse.

“When you eat an egg boiled in the shell, break it carefully at the large end. If the egg is very fresh the white will be seen immediately under the shell without any empty space; but if it is old you will find an unoccupied hollow of varying size. That is the air-chamber. According to its size you can judge of the egg’s freshness. But it would be more desirable [[39]]to be able to recognize, before using and breaking it, whether an egg is fresh or stale. I have seen the following means used, which would seem very strange if what I have just told you about the air-chamber did not furnish the explanation. The tip of the tongue is applied to the large end. If the egg is fresh a slight impression of coolness can be felt; if stale, the tongue remains warm. This little mystery is based on the different manner of behavior of liquids and gases when brought into contact with heat. Water and liquids in general take away rather quickly the heat of the bodies with which they come in contact; air and other gases, on the contrary, take it away very slowly. That is why water seems cold when we plunge our hand into it, while the air, lower in temperature, seems warm by comparison. In reality, if both be of the same temperature, air and water give us different sensations: water is cool to us because it draws our heat away; air warm because it does not take away that same heat. So if the egg is fresh, and consequently the shell completely filled, the tip of the tongue applied to the large end feels the same sensation as comes from contact with liquids; that is to say, a feeling of coolness. But if the egg is stale, an air-chamber has formed and the resulting sensation is that produced by contact with a gas; that is to say, a sensation of warmth, since the tongue loses none of its natural heat.”

“That is certainly a curious test,” said Jules, “and I shall make it a point to carry it out at the next opportunity.” [[40]]

“Let us go on with the egg. Now comes the glair or white, so called because heat hardens it to a pure white matter. For the same reason, science calls it albumen, from a Latin word, albus, meaning white. The glair is arranged in a number of layers, which at both ends of the egg twist round one another and form two large knotty cords called chalazæ. To see these cords you must break a raw egg carefully in a plate. Then you can distinguish, on each side of the yolk, a mass where the glair is thicker and rather knotty. There, somewhat injured by the breaking of the egg, are found the two cords in question. To give you a clear idea, take an orange, put it in your handkerchief, and twist the latter in opposite directions at both ends. The orange in its handkerchief covering will represent the spherical yolk surrounded by the glair; the two twisted ends of the handkerchief will be the two strings of white, the two chalazæ. By means of these two tethers the yolk, the most important and most delicate part of the egg, is suspended as in a hammock, in the center of the glair, without being exposed to disturbances that would be dangerous for the germ of life situated at a point on its surface. This glairy hammock, with its two suspending cords, has another rôle—a very delicate one. The first outlines of the coming chick will appear at a certain point of the yolk. As the little being forms and grows, it needs more space while still remaining tightly enveloped and held in position so as to avoid the slightest disturbance in the half fluid flesh just beginning to assume its [[41]]proper shape. How are these conditions realized in the egg? To understand the matter thoroughly let us go back to the orange wrapped in a handkerchief twisted at both ends. Is it not true that if both ends untwist a little, the orange, supposing it to need by degrees more room, will always find the necessary space without for a moment ceasing to be enveloped and motionless? In the same manner the suspending cords of the white slacken and gradually untwist as the little bird grows, at the expense of the yolk, in its soft hammock of glair; the needed space is made, and at the same time the feeble little bird remains just as finely swaddled and suspended in the center of the egg, protected from contact with the hard shell.”

“At the beginning,” interposed Jules, “you called an egg a marvel. I see that there are, in fact, in the egg things very worthy of our admiration: the shell, with its numerous air-holes; the cavity at the large end; the air-chamber where provision is made for breathing; the soft little bed of glair with its suspending cords that untwist to make more room, and perhaps that is not all?”

“No, my friend, that is very far from being all. I limit myself here to the simplest things and those that are not beyond your grasp. How would it be if you could follow me in the unfolding of higher ideas? You would see how everything in the egg is arranged with infinite delicacy, with a foresight that we may call maternal, and then you would find my word marvel the right one. But, not to go beyond [[42]]your small powers of comprehension, I abridge, much to my regret.

“The yolk or yelk (which means the yellow part) is round and bright yellow; hence its name. At a point on its surface, generally at the top, no matter what the position of the egg, is seen a circular spot, dull white, where the matter is a little more condensed than elsewhere. It is called the cicatricle, or little scar. That is the sacred spot where lies the spark of life which, animated by incubation, will quicken the substance of the egg and mold it into a living being; it is the point of departure, the origin, the germ of the bird. The yolk itself is the nutritive reservoir whence are drawn the materials for this work of creation. Quickened by the heat of the brooding hen and by the action of the air, it becomes covered with a network of fine veins. These swell with the substance of the yolk, which turns to blood; and this blood, carried hither and thither, becomes the flesh of the being in process of formation. The yolk, then, is the bird’s first food, but food that no beak seizes and no stomach digests, none being in existence yet. It changes to blood and afterward to flesh without the preparatory work of ordinary digestion; it enters the veins directly, and thus nourishes the whole body.

“Animals with udders—the mammifers—also have nutriment for the very young in the form of milk, which is indispensable for the weak stomach of the nursling. Well, the yolk is to the bird in its shell what milk is to the lamb and kitten; it is its milk-food, [[43]]as it can have no recourse to maternal udders. The popular saying has perfectly caught the strict resemblance: they call a drink prepared with the yolk of an egg, ‘hen’s milk.’ ”

“That is what Mother Ambroisine makes me take when I cough in the winter,” said Emile.

“The delicious beverage that Mother Ambroisine gives you when you have a cold is very properly called ‘hen’s milk,’ since it is made with the equivalent of milk; that is to say, the yolk of an egg.” [[44]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER VI

INCUBATION

“Incubation means lying upon. The brooding bird does in fact crouch or lie upon her eggs, warming them with the heat of her body for a number of days with indefatigable patience. When a hen wishes to set,[1] she makes it known by her repeated cluckings, little cries of maternal anxiety, by her ruffled feathers, her restless movements, and particularly by the perseverance with which she stays on the nest, even when it has no eggs, where she has been in the habit of laying.

“Some hens with wandering dispositions go back to the instincts of their wild race. They leave the hen-house and seek a hedge or thicket, where they select a hiding-place to suit them, and there make a little hollow in the earth which they line as well as they can with a mattress of dry grass, leaves, and feathers. That is a nest in the rough, without art, a shapeless construction in comparison with the clever masterpiece of the chaffinch and goldfinch. It is, furthermore, worthy of remark that all the domestic birds, as if man’s intervention had destroyed their skill by freeing them from want, fail to display in [[45]]the construction of their nests the admirable resourcefulness shown by most wild birds. Here might be repeated the saying, as true for man as for beast, necessity is the mother of invention. Sure of finding, when the time comes for laying, the basket stuffed with hay by the hand of the housewife, the domestic fowl does not trouble herself to build a nest, an undertaking in which the tiniest bird of the fields shows itself a consummate architect. At the most, when her adventurous disposition makes her prefer the perilous shelter of the hedge to the safe retreat of the poultry-yard, the hen, gleaning with her beak a few straws and leaves, and plucking, if need be, some of her own feathers, succeeds in making, for her period of brooding, a disordered heap rather than a nest. There, every day, unknown to all, she goes and lays her egg. Then for three whole weeks she is not to be seen, or only at intervals. That is the time of incubation. At last, some fine day, she reappears, very proud, at the head of a family of young chickens, peeping and pecking around her.”

“I should like,” said Emile, “to have some hens that set like that in the fields and then come home again some day with their family of little chickens.”

“I must admit it is a sight worthy of interest, that of a hen that has stolen her nest returning to the farmhouse at the head of her newly hatched young chickens. Her eyes shine with satisfaction; her clucking has something joyful about it. ‘Look,’ she seems to say to those who welcome her, ‘see how [[46]]fine, alert, and vigorous these young chickens are; they are all mine; I raised them there all alone in a corner of the hedge, and now I bring them to you. Am I not a fine hen?’ Yes, my dear biddy, you are a fine hen, but also an imprudent one. In the fields prowl the weasel and the marten which, if you are absent a moment, will suck the blood of your little ones; in the fields the fox is watching to wring your neck; in the fields there are cold, rain, bad weather, grave peril for your shivering family. You would do better to remain at home.

“The greater number follow this prudent advice and do not leave the poultry-yard. In the semi-obscurity of a sheltered quiet corner is placed the egg-basket, lined with a bed of hay or of crumpled straw. In it are put from twelve to fifteen eggs, the largest and freshest being chosen, and preferably those not more than a week old. If they were two or three weeks old they would not be sure to hatch, as in many of them the germ would have become too old and would have lost the power to develop. These arrangements made, the eggs are left to the setting hen without being touched again.

“Whoever has not seen a setting hen has missed one of the most touching sights in this world: the devotion of the mother-bird to her eggs, her self-forgetfulness even to the point of sacrificing her own life. Her eyes shine with fever, her skin burns. Eating and drinking are forgotten, and in order not to leave her eggs a moment a hen might even let herself die of hunger on the nest if some one did not [[47]]come every day and gently take her off and make her eat. Others, less persevering, leave the basket of their own accord, snatch up a little food, and immediately go back to the nest.”

“Do hens keep up that tiresome setting very long?” asked Emile.

“It takes twenty or twenty-one days for the young chickens to come out of the shell. During the whole of that time, night and day, the mother remains squatting on the eggs, except for the rare moments that she spares, as if grudgingly, for the necessities of nourishment. Her only distraction in this complete retirement is to turn the eggs over every twenty-four hours and change their place, moving those outside into the center, and vice versa, so that all may have an equal share of heat. That is a delicate operation, and it must be left to the hen’s care to move the eggs with her beak. Let us be careful not to interfere with our clumsy hands, for the bird knows better than we how to manage it.”

“If the hen is so careful to move the eggs every day and give them all the same amount of heat,” said Jules, “it must be heat alone that makes them hatch?”

“Yes, my friend, simply the heat of the mother makes the eggs hatch. That is why the hen can be dispensed with and the eggs hatched by artificial heat, provided it be well regulated, gentle, and continued for a long time without interruption. The Egyptians, an ancient people of great skill, practised this method thousands of years ago. They put the [[48]]eggs by hundreds of dozens into a sort of oven gently heated for three weeks, the period of natural incubation. At the end of that time the peepings of the countless brood did not fail to announce the success of the operation.”

“What a big family that oven-hatched brood must have been!” exclaimed Emile. “It would have taken a hundred hens to set on all the eggs, but in this way they were all hatched at once.”

“A setting hen ceases to lay, and it was doubtless in order not to interrupt the beneficent daily production of eggs that the Egyptians invented artificial incubation in an oven. For the same reason sometimes with us recourse is had to this means, especially where the raising of poultry is made a business; only the incubation is no longer carried out in an oven but in ingeniously contrived incubators. In a drawer, on a bed of hay, the eggs are placed in a single layer. Above, and separated from the brooder by a sheet-iron partition, is a bed of water, which a lamp, kept always alight, warms and maintains at the temperature that the hen’s body would give; that is to say, forty degrees centigrade. In twenty-one days under this warm ceiling the eggs hatch just as they would under the hen.”

“Oh, Uncle,” cried Emile, “I should really like to have an incubator like that in a corner of my room and watch the progress of the hatching every day by opening the drawer.”

Incubator

“What you would like to do, others, more skilful, have already done, not only opening the drawer but [[49]]breaking an egg each day so as to see how things are going. I told you that the germ of the bird is a round spot of dull white, the cicatricle, which by its mobility is always on top at the surface of the yolk, no matter what the position of the egg. After five or six hours of incubation you can already distinguish in the center of the cicatricle a minute glairy swelling which will be the head, and a line which will be the backbone. Pretty soon there begins to beat, at regular intervals, the organ most necessary to life, the heart, which chases through a network of fine veins the blood formed, little by little, out of the substance of the yolk, and distributes it everywhere to furnish materials to the other organs just coming into being. It is toward the second day that these first heart-beats, destined to continue henceforth until death, become apparent. Thus irrigated with running flesh—for blood is nothing else—this organism thenceforward makes rapid progress. The eyes show themselves and form a large black spot on each side of the head; the quills of the large feathers form in their sheaths; the scales of the feet are outlined in a bluish tint; the bones, at first gelatinous, acquire firmness by becoming incrusted with a small quantity of stony matter. [[50]]From the tenth day all the parts of the young chicken are well formed. The little being, softly suspended in its hammock by means of the two suspending cords that untwist little by little to give more room as it grows, is bent over on itself, the head folded against the breast and hidden under its wing. Note, my friends, that it is precisely this attitude of deep sleep inside the egg that the hen assumes when she wants to sleep. Crouched on her perch, she again folds her head on her breast and tucks it under her wing, just as she did when she was a little chicken in its shell.

“In the meantime the little bird keeps growing on the yellow and white matter; matter which soaks and penetrates it and, vivified by the air, becomes its blood and its flesh. One day it breaks the thin membrane under the shell, and there it is more at ease with the increase of space given it by the air-chamber. Now an attentive ear can distinguish feeble peepings inside the shell; it is the seventeenth or eighteenth day. A couple of days more, and the young chicken, summoning all its strength, will apply itself to the arduous work of deliverance. A pointed callosity, made expressly for the purpose, has formed on the upper part of the tip-end of the beak. Here is the tool, the pick, for opening its prison; a tool for that particular purpose and of very short duration, which will disappear as soon as the shell is pierced. With this provisional pick, the little chicken begins to hammer the shell; perseveringly it pushes, strikes, scratches, until the stone [[51]]wall yields. For the most vigorous it takes several hours. Oh, joy! the shell is broken; there is the young chicken’s little head, and all yellow velvety down, and still wet with the moisture of the egg. The mother comes to its aid and completes its deliverance; others, weaker or less skilful, take twenty-four hours of painful effort to free themselves. Some even exhaust themselves in the undertaking and perish miserably in the egg without succeeding in breaking the shell.”

“Those are the very ones the mother ought to help,” said Jules.

“She would be careful not to, for fear of a worse accident than a difficult birth. How could she direct her blows accurately enough not to wound the tender little chicken just inside the shell? The slightest false move would cause a wound, and at so tender an age any wound is death. We ourselves, with all the dexterity and care possible, could not, without danger, help the bird in distress; it can be tried as a last resort, but the chance of success is very small. The young chicken is the only one capable of carrying through this delicate deliverance if strength does not fail it. The hen knows this wonderfully well, and so does not interfere except to finish freeing the prisoner when half out of its shell. Let us hope that things will turn out as we wish, and that on the twenty-first day the whole family may be warmed under the mother’s wings without mortal accident at the moment of hatching.

“From the instant of leaving the shell the young [[52]]chickens already know how to peck food and how to run around the mother who, clucking, leads the way. They have besides a little fur of downy hair that clothes them warmly. This development is not found in all birds; far from it. Pigeons, for example, come naked from the egg and do not know how to eat; the father and mother have to feed them by disgorging a mouthful of food into their beaks. The young of the warbler, chaffinch, goldfinch, tomtit, lark, in fact of nearly all the field birds, are naked, very weak, at first blind, and completely incapable of feeding themselves, even with the food just under their beaks. The parents, with infinite tenderness, have for a number of days to bring it to them and put it into their beaks.”

“That is a difference that has always struck me,” commented Jules. “Little sparrows open their mouths wide to receive the food offered them, but for a long time they do not know how to take it even if it is put at the very end of their beak. On the contrary, little chickens easily pick up from the ground for themselves the seeds and worms that the mother digs up for them.”

“I will tell you, if you do not already know,” continued Uncle Paul, “that the young of the duck, turkey, goose, and, among wild birds, the partridge and quail, have the same precocity as those of the hen. They are clothed with down on coming out of the egg, and know how to eat. One of the causes of this difference in the way young birds act immediately after [[53]]hatching comes from the size of the egg. The chick is formed wholly from the substances contained in the egg; the larger the egg in proportion to the size of the animal, the stronger and more developed the young. Therefore the kind with the largest eggs are clothed at the time of hatching; they can run and know how to eat, unaided. Where the eggs are relatively small the young are hatched weak, naked, blind, and for a long time, motionless in their nest, demand the mother’s beakful of food.

“The largest egg known is that of an enormous bird that formerly lived in the island of Madagascar, and of which the species appears to-day to have been completely destroyed. This bird is called the epyornis. It was three or four meters tall and thus rivaled in stature a very long-legged horse or, better still, the animal called a giraffe. Such birds ought to lay monstrous eggs; such in fact they are; their length is three decimeters and a half and their capacity nearly nine liters.”

“Nine liters!” exclaimed Emile. “Oh, what an egg! Our large vinegar jug only holds ten liters. Certainly the young that come from that ought to know how to run and to eat.”

“To equal in bulk the egg of the epyornis it would take one hundred and forty-eight hen’s eggs.”

“I think they could make a famous omelet with only one of those eggs.”

“A fine large one could be made, too, with an ostrich-egg, which in size represents nearly two dozen [[54]]hen’s eggs. It need not be added that young ostriches know how to run and to eat as soon as they come out of the shell.

“Those are the largest eggs; now let us consider the smallest ones. They are those of the humming-bird, a charming creature whose splendid plumage would outshine the most brilliant costly metals, precious stones, and jewels. There are some as small as our large wasps and that certain spiders catch in their webs just as the spiders of our country catch gnats. Their nest is a cup of cotton no bigger than half an apricot. Judge then the size of the eggs. It would take three hundred and forty to make one hen’s egg, and fifty thousand to make one laid by the epyornis.”

“I imagine the little humming-birds in their nest must be all naked at first and blind, taking their food from their mother’s beak.”

“From the smallness of the egg it could not be otherwise.” [[55]]

[1] Uncle Paul and his nephews are here allowed to defy the purist, as they probably would in real life.—Translator. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER VII

THE YOUNG CHICKENS

“The hatching of the eggs does not take place all at once; sometimes it is twenty-four hours before all the eggs are broken. A danger thus arises. Divided between her desire to continue setting and her wish to give her attention to the newly born, the mother may make some sudden movement and unintentionally trample on the tender creatures, or even leave the nest too soon, which would cause the loss of the backward eggs. What, then, is to be done? The first-born are taken as carefully as possible and placed in a basket stuffed with wool or cotton and put in a warm place near the fire. When the whole family is hatched it is restored to the mother.

“The first days are hard ones for the young chickens; they are so delicate, poor little things, so chilly under their light yellow down. Where will they be kept at first? Shall it be with the grown-up poultry, a turbulent crowd, quarrelsome, rough, and without any consideration for the weak? What would become of them, the little innocents, not yet well balanced on their legs, in the midst of the greedy hens which, in scratching for worms, might give them some brutal kick? How dangerous for them to be with the quarrelsome cocks that disdain to look out [[56]]for the frightened little giddy-heads straying about under their very spurs! No, no, that is not the place for them.

“What they require is a place set apart, isolated from the rough grown-up poultry, heated to a mild temperature, and carpeted with fine straw. If this place is wanting, recourse is had to a coop, a sort of large cage, under which the mother is placed with some food. Sometimes the bars of this refuge are far enough apart to permit the young chickens to come in and go out at will, so as to enjoy their play; sometimes they are too close together for this, and then the coop is lifted a little at one side when it is desired to give liberty to the captives. But the mother always stays in the cage, whence she watches over the young chickens, calling them to her at the least appearance of danger. If the weather is fine, the coop is placed out of doors in an exposed spot, with a sheltering canopy of canvas, foliage, or straw, when the sun is too hot.”

“There the young chickens are safe,” said Emile, “out of danger of any accident amongst the boisterous population of the poultry-yard. If some danger arises, the hen gives her warning call, and those that are outside immediately scamper through the narrow passage and take refuge with their mother. Now about their food.”

“Food is not forgotten: under the coop is a plate containing water, and another with pap. For very young chickens it is not yet time for strong food, hard grain which requires a vigorous stomach to digest; [[57]]they must have something at once nutritious and easy to digest. Their pap is composed of finely crumbled bread, a few salad leaves well chopped up, hard-boiled eggs, and a pinch of fine millet to accustom them by degrees to a diet of grain. The whole is carefully mixed.

“On coming out of the shell, the young chickens, like other birds from a relatively large egg, are quick at taking food for themselves; nevertheless it is necessary, from their utter inexperience, for the mother to show them how to strike the beak into the pap. Let us witness this lesson of the first mouthful. The farmer’s wife has just put the food under the coop. ‘What is this?’ perhaps the innocent little chickens ask, their stomachs beginning to cry hunger now that they have been nearly twenty-four hours out of the shell. ‘What is this?’ All flurried with joy, the mother calls them to the plate in accents resembling articulate speech. They approach, tottering on their little legs. The hen then gives a few pecks in the mess, but only pretends to eat, so as not to diminish the dainty food reserved for the little ones. One of the chickens, perhaps a little quicker of apprehension than the rest, seems to have understood; it seizes a crumb of bread in its beak but immediately lets it fall again. The mother begins again, urges, encourages with her voice and look, and this time swallows in plain sight of them all. The young chicken returns to its crumb and after two or three attempts succeeds in swallowing it, half closing its eyes with satisfaction. ‘Ha! how good it is!’ it [[58]]seems to say; ‘let us try again.’ And another crumb goes down; then a little piece of yolk of egg follows. Henceforth it can manage for itself. The example spreads; one here, another there, tries its beak; the hen repeating her patient lesson for the less clever of the brood. Soon they have all understood and are vying with one another in their assaults on the pap. Then comes a lesson in drinking. How to plunge the beak fearlessly into the water, how to raise the head heavenward so as to let the mouthful of liquid go down the throat, is what the hen will show her pupils by repeated examples. In imitating her, some giddy one will perhaps put its foot into the water or even fall into the plate, a fearful possibility for the inexperienced drinker. But the hen will dry the unfortunate one under her wings and show it another time how to manage better. To be brief, in a single short session the whole brood has been taught the two chief needs of this world, eating and drinking.”

“They are scholars quick to learn,” said Jules. “It is true the prompting of the stomach, hunger, must have helped them.”

“Hardly a week has passed before the young chickens are out of the coop and running around, though not to any great distance, for if one appears to want to go off the mother admonishes it and recalls it to more prudent ways. If she suspects the slightest danger she recalls them all to her retreat by a persuasive clucking. Immediately the little chickens scamper back, squeeze between the bars or crawl [[59]]under the lifted end of the coop, and regain the refuge where no intruders can penetrate. When the time comes for these first sallies outside the coop, the hen can be set free and allowed to lead her family where she pleases.

“One of the most interesting sights of the farm is that of the hen at the head of her young chickens. With a slow step, measured by the feebleness of her brood, she goes hither and thither on the chance of finding something of value to her, always with vigilant eye and attentive ear. She clucks with a voice made hoarse by her maternal exertions; she scratches to dig up little seeds which the young ones come and take from under her beak. Here is a good place chanced upon in the sunshine for a rest from walking and for getting warm. The hen crouches down, ruffles up her plumage and slightly raises her wings, arching them in a sort of vault. All run and squat under the warm cover. Two or three put their heads out of the window, their pretty heads, all alert, framed in their mother’s somber plumage. One, in its boldness, settles down on her back, and from this elevated position pecks the hen’s neck; the others, the great majority, hide in her down and sleep or peep softly. The siesta finished, they resume their promenade, the mother scratching and clucking, the little ones trotting around her.

“But what is this? It is the shadow of a bird of prey, which for a moment has darkened the sunshine of the courtyard. The menacing apparition did not last more than the twinkling of an eye; nevertheless [[60]]the hen saw it. Danger threatens, the rapacious bird is not far away. At the note of alarm the young chickens hasten to take refuge under the mother, who makes a rampart for them of her wings. And now the ravisher may come. This mother, so feeble, so timid, that a mere nothing would put her to flight on all other occasions, becomes imposingly audacious where her brood is concerned. Let the goshawk appear, and the hen, full of tenderness and intrepidity, will throw herself in front of the terrible talons. By the beating of her wings, her redoubled cries, her furious pecks with her beak, she will hold her own against the bird of prey, until at last it beats a retreat, repulsed by this indomitable resistance.

“The attachment of the hen to her young is shown in another very remarkable circumstance. As she is an excellent brooder, they sometimes give her ducks’ eggs to hatch. The hen brings up her adopted family as she would her own; she exercises the same care over the little ducks as she would over chickens of her own. All goes well as long as the ducklings, covered with a velvety yellow down, conform to the ways of their nurse and run under her wing at the first summons. But a time comes when their aquatic instinct awakens. They smell the pond, the neighboring pond, where the frog croaks and the tadpole frisks. They go waddling along, one after another, the old hen following them in ignorance of their project. They reach the pond and dash into the water. Then it is that the hen, believing the very lives of her little ones in peril, gives vent to the most desperate [[61]]outcry. In her mortal terror the poor mother races in distraction along the bank, her voice hoarse with emotion, her plumage bristling with fear. She calls, menaces, supplicates. An angry red mounts to her comb, the fire of despair illumines her eye. She even goes—miracle of mother love—she even goes so far as to risk one foot in the water, that perfidious element, the sight of which makes her almost faint with fear. But to all her supplications the little ducklings turn a deaf ear, happy in their pursuit of the silver-bellied tadpole among the cresses.”

“Oh, the little rascals,” exclaimed Emile, “not to listen to their nurse’s warnings! However, as they are ducks they can’t get along without water.”

“They go there very often alone at first, in spite of the hen’s remonstrances; then, reassured by the first attempts, she willingly leads them to the bath and from the bank watches their joyful gambols.” [[62]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER VIII

THE POULARD[1]

“In a month the young chickens are strong enough to do without the tender care of their early days. The pap, the dainty dish of hard-boiled eggs mixed with lettuce and bread crumbs, is no longer served to them, but their rations consist simply of grain and green stuff. This kind of weaning is not effected without some regret on their part at the remembrance of the pap; but the mother makes amends for it by teaching them to scratch the earth and seek insects and worms, a royal feast for them. She shows them how a fly should be snapped up when warming itself in the sun against the wall; how the worm is to be caught and drawn from the ground before it goes into its hole. She shows them in what manner to proceed in order to derive the largest profit from a tuft of grass where the ants have stored their eggs; with what nice attention they must search the under side of large leaves where various insects are in hiding. How to carry out little predatory excursions in the neighboring cultivated fields when opportunity offers, how to scratch up the newly made garden-plots and rummage in every nook and corner, [[63]]pillaging here and pilfering there—this, too, is all comprised in the educational curriculum prepared by the careful mother. After a couple of weeks of such practice the pupils are past masters; they lose the name of chickens and take that of pullets and roosters. Then the family disbands, the hen returning to her laying of eggs, and the chickens, thenceforth expert in the difficult science of earning their living, being left to themselves.

“Very diverse fates await them. Some, fortune’s favorites, will grow peacefully to increase the poultry-yard; others, more numerous, as soon as they are large enough will be given over to the kitchen knife; some, chosen from those easiest to fatten, will undergo a diet that will make them peculiarly suitable for the table. Let me tell you to-day through what grievous trials the poor bird passes to become, by artificial aid, the plump, fat, succulent fowl that we call a poulard.”

“Then a poulard is not a separate species of hen?” asked Jules.

“No, my friend. The poulard is only an ordinary hen artificially subjected to a kind of life that fattens it. All species do not lend themselves with equal success to this artificial fattening; the best known in this respect is that of la Flèche, which furnishes the celebrated poulard of Mans.

“I have already told you a few words about this species, which is distinguished from the others by its dashing appearance and long legs. The plumage is entirely black, touched with glints of violet and [[64]]green. The cock carries proudly, for comb, two horns of brilliant red flesh; its wattles are pendent and very long. The hen has two similar but shorter horns; her wattles are small and rounded; finally, her legs have not the disproportionate length of the cock’s tall stilts. Such are the patients preëminently destined for the cruel industry of fattening. Let us come now to the practice of it.

“The greatest care in this world is that of the family. You know with what continual and laborious solicitude the hen watches over her little ones, with what self-sacrifice the mother spends herself in order to keep her nest of eggs warm. If pains were not taken to remove her from the nest and make her eat, she would let herself starve to death, sacrificing her own life for the sake of her eggs. Is it possible for a bird to take on flesh with such ardent maternal love burning in her veins? Certainly not. The first condition for becoming large and fat is to consider one’s self alone, a thing permitted only to the beast whose end is to become an excellent roast.

“Well, in order that the hen may consider solely herself, think of nothing but eating and digesting well, so as to take on fat and flesh abundantly, it is put out of her power to lay, which in turn takes from her all idea of brooding and of raising young chickens. Out of a mother, ready to devote herself unstintingly, is made a brute that, if only its crop be full, has no care of any kind; in fact, a veritable fat-factory. The operation is a cruel one. With the blade of a penknife a slight incision is made in the [[65]]stomach, and the organ in which the eggs are formed is removed. With a little care the slight wound soon heals, and the mutilated bird is ready for the life of a poulard. Let loose in the poultry-yard, it has henceforth nothing to do but eat, digest, and sleep; sleep, digest, and eat. Leading such a life, the bird soon begins to grow fat. Things go all the better and quicker, however, if the bird cannot move freely, cannot come and go at will; for it is to be remarked that no more than love of offspring does love of liberty fatten those that feel its generous ardor. You will ponder that later, my children, when you are older. So they confine the poulards in coops.”

“What sort of coops?” asked Emile.

“They are low cages divided into cells, with one poulard to a cell. Crouching in its narrow compartment, the fowl cannot move or even turn round. Solid partitions bar the view except in front near the feed-trough, and prevent its seeing its neighbors, its companions in confinement, so that nothing may distract it from its ceaseless work of digestion. The cage is placed in a room heated to a mild temperature, far from all noise and in a semi-obscurity which induces sleep, so favorable to the functions of the stomach. At punctually regulated hours, far enough apart for appetite to be aroused, but near enough together to prevent its becoming actual hunger, which would impair the well-being of the stomach and hinder the fattening of the bird, three meals a day are served in the feed-trough. Raw beets, cooked potatoes, crushed grain, curdled milk, barley, [[66]]wheat, maize, buckwheat, compose the menu in turn, so as to excite by variety and choice of food an appetite that satiety daily makes more languishing. Thus fed to repletion, the poor creature, with nothing to distract it from the filling of its crop, eats to pass the time, falls asleep from sheer stupor, awakes, and begins to eat again, only to fall asleep once more. Toward the end of this treatment the poulard, gorged beyond measure, refuses to eat any more. To arouse the last feeble promptings of appetite recourse is had to more delicate food, calculated to keep alive a few days longer the desire for nourishment. For solid food a dough of fine flour is served, and for liquid refreshment, milk, pure milk, if you please. If the bird, already stuffed to bursting, positively refuses to eat any more, it is made to eat by force.”

“By force?” said Emile, “when it is bursting and can eat no more?”

“Yes, my friend, by force. Willy, nilly, it must still swallow for some days longer, after which comes the end of its miseries. It is killed and appears on the table as a tender and juicy roast abounding in fat.

“This forced feeding is the essential feature in the method followed to obtain the renowned poulards of Mans.

“According to the masters of this art, the process is as follows: Without preliminary subjection to the mutilation I spoke of, the fowls are placed in narrow cages in a warm, dark room, the doors and windows [[67]]of which have been made tight to prevent the free circulation of air. For food, a mixture of barley-flour, oats, and buckwheat is moistened with milk, and the dough is divided into little pieces or oblong balls shaped like an olive and of about the length of the little finger. At meal times, which must be very regular, the feeder takes three hens at a time, ties them together by the legs, puts them on his knees, and, by the light of a lamp, begins by making them swallow a spoonful of water or whey; then, taking them by turns, he introduces a bolus into the beak of each of the hens, and to facilitate the descent of the large pieces he presses lightly with his fingers, passing from the base of the beak down to the crop. While the bird that has been fed is recovering from its painful deglutition, the two others are treated in the same manner. To this first ball are added a second, a third, and so on up to a dozen or fifteen, all put into the beak and swallowed willingly or otherwise. Their crops sufficiently full, the three hens are replaced in their cages, where they have nothing to do but sleep and peacefully digest their copious meal. The others go through the same treatment, three by three, in a fixed order.”

“And if the crop is stuffed too full with these twelve or fifteen lumps of dough,” asked Jules, “may not the bird die, choked with food?”

“There is no great danger; all will go well. Remember the bird’s astonishing powers of digestion and the experiments I related to you on this subject.” [[68]]

“It is true that a gizzard capable of getting rid of leaden balls stuck with needles or lancets ought easily to dispose of a few lumps of dough.”

“Besides, heed is taken not to go beyond the fowl’s digestive powers. A halt is called as soon as the crop appears to be full. It takes from six weeks to two months of this treatment to bring the poulard to perfection.”

“I am too fond of the poulard served up as a choice roast to speak ill of what I have just heard; nevertheless I will admit, Uncle, that this barbarous fattening process is repulsive to me. I pity those poor things crouching there in the dark, in cells where they cannot move, and forcibly crammed with food until almost stuffed to death.”

“This sympathy proceeds from a good disposition, and I approve of it; but, after all, what is to be done? Since we need the poulard, we must needs countenance the process by which the hen is turned into the poulard. Our life is sustained by animal life. Therefore all that our pity can do is to lessen as much as possible the unavoidable suffering and, above all, see to it that the victims of our needs do not become also the victims of a useless and stupid brutality.” [[69]]

[1] The poulard (French poularde) bears the same relation to the pullet as the capon does to the young rooster.—Translator. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER IX

THE TURKEY

Turkey

“Of our barnyard fowls, the turkey is the most remarkable except the peacock, which is raised only for the incomparable richness of its plumage. The turkey-gobbler has his head and neck covered with bare bluish skin, embellished behind with white nipples and in front with red ones, which swell and hang down in large pendants, resembling sealing wax in color. Over his beak falls a piece of flesh, short and wrinkled when the bird is in repose, hanging far down and of brilliant coloring when he wishes to display his charms. In the middle of his breast is fastened an unkempt sort of mane. To show off, he bridles up, inflates his red pendants, elongates the piece of flesh over his beak, throws his head back, spreads out his tail feathers in the shape [[70]]of a wheel, and lets the tips of his half-opened wings trail on the ground. In this grotesquely proud posture he turns slowly to let himself be admired from all sides. From time to time a low sound, puff-puff, accompanied by a sort of convulsive stretching of the wings, is the sign of his supreme satisfaction. If some noise, especially whistling, disturbs him, he hauls down his colors and, stretching his neck, hastily gives a gloo-gloo-gloo that seems to burst from the very depths of his stomach.”

“By whistling to the turkeys feeding in the fields,” said Emile, “I can make them repeat their cry as often as I want to. The turkey hens do not say gloo-gloo; they peep plaintively.”

“This fowl is a recent acquisition of our poultry-yards,” resumed Uncle Paul. “It came to us from North America in the sixteenth century. As America was called West Indies in contrast with the Asian or East Indies, the bird originating in the forests of the New World was called the Indian cock (coq d’Inde) and the Indian hen (poule d’Inde); from which have come the French terms dindon and dinde. For a long time the bird spread but little; it was raised merely as a curious rarity. The first that appeared on the table was, they say, at the wedding feast of Charles IX.

“The turkey lived, and still lives to-day, in a wild state, in the forests of the United States of North America. Its habits are described by a celebrated naturalist, Audubon,[1] who, with his gun on his shoulder, [[71]]his notebook, pencil, and brushes in his game-bag, traversed the most secluded solitudes in order to observe, paint, and describe birds.

“ ‘The nest,’ he tells us, ‘which consists of a few withered leaves, is placed on the ground, in a hollow scooped out by the side of a log, or in the fallen top of a dry leafy tree, under a thicket of sumach or briars, or a few feet within the edge of a cane-brake, but always in a dry place.… When depositing her eggs, the female always approaches the nest with extreme caution, scarcely ever taking the same course twice, and when about to leave them covers them carefully with leaves, so that it is very difficult for a person who may have seen the bird to discover the nest.…

“ ‘The mother will not leave her eggs when near hatching, under any circumstances, while life remains. She will even allow an enclosure to be made around her, and thus suffer imprisonment, rather than abandon them. I once witnessed the hatching of a brood of turkeys, which I watched for the purpose of securing them together with the parent. I concealed myself on the ground within a very few feet, and saw her raise herself half the length of her legs, look anxiously upon the eggs, cluck with a sound peculiar to the mother on such occasions, carefully remove each half-empty shell, and with her bill caress and dry the young birds, that already stood tottering and attempting to make their way out of the nest. [[72]]Yes, I have seen this, and have left mother and young to better care than mine could have proved—to the care of their Creator and mine. I have seen them all emerge from the shell, and, in a few moments after, tumble, roll, and push each other forward, with astonishing and inscrutable instinct.’ ”

Turkey

“That’s the kind of hunter I like,” declared Jules; “one who knows how to restrain himself at the touching sight of a nest of young birds. What did you say his name was?”

“Audubon.”

“I shan’t forget that name again.”

“And that will be right, for few observers have discoursed on birds with so much sympathetic understanding as he.

“I continue to draw from his account. ‘About the beginning of October,’ says he, ‘when scarcely any of the seeds and fruits have yet fallen from the trees, these birds assemble in flocks, and gradually move towards the rich bottom lands of the Ohio and Mississippi.… When they come upon a river, they betake themselves to the highest eminences, and there often remain a whole day, or sometimes two, as if for the purpose of consultation. During this time, [[73]]the males are heard gobbling, calling, and making much ado, and are seen strutting about, as if to raise their courage to a pitch befitting the emergency. Even the females and young assume something of the same pompous demeanor, spread out their tails, and run round each other, purring loudly, and performing extravagant leaps. At length, when the weather appears settled, and all around is quiet, the whole party mounts to the tops of the highest trees, whence, at a signal, consisting of a single cluck, given by a leader, the flock takes flight for the opposite shore. The old and fat birds easily get over, even should the river be a mile in breadth; but the younger and less robust frequently fall into the water—not to be drowned, however, as might be imagined. They bring their wings close to their body, spread out their tail as a support, stretch forward their neck, and striking out their legs with great vigor, proceed rapidly toward the shore; on approaching which, should they find it too steep for landing, they cease their exertions for a few moments, float down the stream until they come to an accessible part, and by a violent effort extricate themselves from the water. It is remarkable that, immediately after thus crossing a large stream, they ramble about for some time, as if bewildered. In this state, they fall an easy prey to the hunter.

“ ‘Of the numerous enemies of the wild turkey, the most formidable, excepting man, are the lynx, the snowy owl, and the Virginia owl.… As turkeys usually roost in flocks, on naked branches of trees, they [[74]]are easily discovered by their enemies, the owls, which, on silent wing, approach and hover around them for the purpose of reconnoitering. This, however, is rarely done without being discovered, and a single cluck from one of the turkeys announces to the whole party the approach of the murderer. They instantly start upon their legs, and watch the motions of the owl, which, selecting one as its victim, comes down upon it like an arrow, and would inevitably secure the turkey, did not the latter at that moment lower its head, stoop, and spread its tail in an inverted manner over its back, by which action the aggressor is met by a smooth inclined plane, along which it glances without hurting the turkey; immediately after which the latter drops to the ground, and thus escapes, merely with the loss of a few feathers.’ ”

“To make a breastplate of the tail spread out like a wheel is a very ingenious means of defense,” remarked Emile. “The turkey is not so foolish as people think.”

“It is so far from being foolish that we have not in the poultry-yard a more impassioned lover of liberty. In their native country turkeys wander through the great woods from morning to night in untiring search of insects and fat larvæ, fruit and seeds of all kinds, acorns and nuts especially, of which they are very fond. Thus the stay-at-home habits of the poultry-yard do not suit them at all. They must have the open air of the fields and the exercise of long walks. Moors, woods, hills abounding in grasshoppers, [[75]]are their favorite haunts. Their timid nature makes them very docile. A child armed with a long switch is enough to lead the flock to the fields, however numerous it may be. Then, step by step, to-day in one direction, to-morrow in another, the flock explores the stubble and gleans the grain fallen from the ear, traverses the grassy meadows where the crickets leap, and penetrates the woods where is found abundant pasturage of chestnuts, beechnuts, and acorns.

“In spite of these rambles afield, which remind it a little of the wandering life it leads in the immense forests of its native country, the turkey never acquires in domesticity the plumpness of body and richness of plumage that belong to it in its free state. It is a curious fact that, contrary to all our experience with other animals, which have improved under human care and have increased in size, the turkey alone has degenerated in our hands, as if preyed upon by an ineradicable regret for its native forests, where bellows the buffalo, chased by the red-skinned Indian. The domestic turkey is not much more than half as large as the wild one. And then what a difference in the plumage! Our poultry-yard fowl is of a uniform black or of a dull red, sometimes white. The bird of the wooded solitudes of the New World is splendid in costume. Bronzed brown predominates, but the neck, throat, and back have, in the light, metallic reflections; and as the plumage is clearly imbricated, the whole gives the appearance of scale armor in gold and steel. Furthermore, the [[76]]large wing-feathers have a pure white spot on the tip.”

“From that description,” said Jules, “I see well enough that the bird has not gained by living with us.”

“Nor has its flesh gained in nutritive quality, that of the wild turkey being considered incomparably superior.”

“It is just the opposite with the common hen,” observed Louis. “Originally as small as the partridge and with as little flesh, it has developed into the fat poulard.”

“Such as it is,” said Uncle Paul, “the domestic turkey is none the less, next to the common fowl, the most valuable acquisition of the poultry-yard. Let us now turn our attention to it.

“The laying of its eggs takes place in April, when about twenty to a nest are laid, of a dull white with reddish spots. These eggs are scarcely ever used as food; not that they are bad—far from it—but they are too precious and too few to be converted into omelets. As fast as the turkey-hen lays them they are gathered and kept in a basket lined with hay or old rags until the time for setting. The gathering of these eggs is not always easy. Faithful to her wild habits, the turkey-hen does not willingly accept the poultry-house nest. She steals away to lay her eggs in neighboring straw-ricks, underbrush, and hedges. One must watch her proceedings therefore, foil her ruses, and from time to time visit her favorite haunts. [[77]]

“Incubation presents no difficulties, the female turkey being so good a brooder. Like the common hen, she devotes herself to her eggs with passionate love; like the hen, too, while setting she forgets her food, so that she must be taken off the nest every day and made to eat and drink, as otherwise she might let herself die of hunger. The little ones hatch at the end of thirty days. There is nothing more delicate than these new-born chicks; the least cold chills them, a shower of rain is fatal to them, even the dew imperils their lives, and a hot sun kills them in a trice. If there is delay in feeding, and the mother, of ponderous bulk, awkwardly plants her feet in the midst of her numerous offspring, then the greedy little things are liable to be trampled on and crushed to death. Another danger awaits them at the age of two or three months. Young turkeys hatch with the heads covered with down, with no sign of the red nipples that will ornament them later. Within two or three months these nipples, real collars, and pendants of coral begin to show; they say then that the red is starting. At this time there takes place in the bird a painful change which to many is mortal, especially in a damp season. To succor the sick ones, they are made to swallow a few mouthfuls of warm wine. All things considered, there are numberless chances of death for the turkey-hen’s brood. Add to that the small number of eggs laid, and we can understand why, in spite of its great utility, the turkey is less common than the ordinary fowl.

“Audubon has told us that when, from his concealment [[78]]in the bushes, he witnessed the mother turkey’s anxious procedure, the young ones left the nest almost as soon as the shell was broken. For a moment the mother warms and dries them under her breast; then, trotting and tumbling, they abandon the bed of leaves, never to return. In domesticity it is much the same; no sooner are they hatched than the little turkeys leave the nest and thenceforth have no other shelter than the cover of their mother, who protects them under her wings exactly as the hen protects her brood. She also takes the same care of her family, exercises the same vigilance in foreseeing danger, shows the same audacity in coping with the bird of prey. For the first few days the refuge afforded by the wide and deep coop, so useful to the little chickens, is not less useful to the young turkeys. The hen-turkey is put there with choice provisions, and the little ones are free to come and go as they please. These provisions consist of a pap similar to that given to young chickens and composed of bread-crumbs, curds, chopped salad leaves and nettles, a little bran, and hard-boiled eggs. Later comes grain, oats in particular. When the weather is fine the coop is put out of doors in a sunny spot, on very dry ground, and the brood is allowed to play about for a couple of hours in the middle of the day. Great care must be taken to avoid rain, dew, and dampness; a wet turkey chick is in grave danger.

“The more delicate the bird at the beginning, the more robust it is when it has successfully passed the [[79]]period called the red. It no longer needs the shelter of the poultry-house at night. However cold it may be, it sleeps in the open air, roosting on the branches of some dead tree or on a perch fixed to the wall. Vainly does the north wind whistle and the frost nip; the turkey rests peacefully in the manner of its fellows in the woods of America, and without fear lest a snow-owl come to disturb its slumbers and compel it to spread its tail quickly and make a breastplate against the marauder’s talons.

“I will finish this story with a few words on a curious method of fattening used in certain countries, especially in Provence, Morvan, and Flanders. Over and above the usual food that fattening birds eat voluntarily, they force both the gobbler and the hen to swallow whole nuts.”

“Whole, but without the shell?” queried Emile.

“No, my friend; with the shell too; in fact, nuts just as the tree bears them.”

“A nut with the shell, no matter how small, must make a hard mouthful to swallow, and still harder to digest.”

“I don’t deny it; but finally, with the finger pushing the nut a little into the throat, and the hand gently pressing from the base of the beak to the crop, the voluminous mouthful ends by going down, not without some grimaces on the part of the bird.”

“And reason enough for them!” exclaimed Emile.

“One nut would be nothing; but that is not all. The next day they force it to swallow two, the next [[80]]three, and so on, augmenting the dose each day. In Provence they stop at forty nuts a day; elsewhere they go on to a hundred.”

“And the turkey does not die, stuffed thus with nuts as large and hard as stones?” asked Jules.

“You would be pleased to see how the bird prospers and fattens on food that would choke any other creature.”

“With a hundred nuts in its crop, or even only forty,” was Louis’s comment, “the turkey can’t be very comfortable.”

“They are not swallowed all at one time, but in portions during the day.”

“No matter,” persisted Jules; “if you hadn’t already told us, according to that learned Italian—Wait a minute; what was his name?”

“The abbot Spallanzani.”

“Yes, the abbot Spallanzani. If you hadn’t told us about his experiments and the wonderful power of the gizzard, I should never be able to understand how a turkey could manage to digest nuts, shell and all, up to forty and even a hundred a day.”

“Everything is reduced to a sort of soup in the gizzard—shells and kernels; all becomes as soft as butter; and the bird, fat as a pig, finally serves as the chief dish at the Christmas feast.” [[81]]

[1] The quoted passages are from Audubon’s “Ornithological Biography,” [[71]]vol. I, pp. 2–9, and are here reproduced verbatim, though very freely treated by the French author.—Translator. [↑]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER X

THE GUINEA-FOWL

“Once upon a time—That begins, you see, like the stories of Cinderella and of the Ass’s Skin. Are we going to spend our time in the recital of the wonders of some fairy godmother? Not at all. I am simply going to tell you the story of the guinea-fowl; and this story happens to be connected, in its first part, with a certain fable told thousands and thousands of years ago, in the evening by the fire-side, to little boys, just as to-day you are told the tragic adventures of Hop o’ my Thumb with the Ogre. I start again then.

“In that corner of the world known as Greece, a corner so illustrious in ages long past, there was once upon a time a valiant young man, son of the king of the country, whose favorite occupation was hunting. I say occupation and not recreation, because in those hard times when industrial pursuits were just beginning, the country was overrun with wild animals from which one had constantly to defend oneself and one’s flock, only recently herded together under the shepherd’s crook. At the risk of their own lives brave men undertook this harsh duty. Many succumbed to it, some acquired renown great enough to survive the lapse of centuries and come down to our [[82]]time. Surrounded by a heroic aureole, the names of these ancient slayers of monsters have reached us. Such is the name of Meleager, borne by the young man I just mentioned.

“The skin of a wild beast on his back for clothing, in his hand a stout stake sharpened to a point and hardened in the fire, on his shoulder a quiver full of arrows pointed with little sharp stones, in his belt a bludgeon of hard wood and a stone hatchet sharpened on the sandstone, the ardent hunter ranged over the country, tracking the formidable animals to their very lairs in dark forests and mountain caves overgrown with an impenetrable barrier of reeds.”

“Why didn’t those men,” asked Emile, “if they had to fight such ferocious animals, use something better than sharpened sticks and stone-pointed arrows? Why didn’t they take regular firearms?”

“For the very best of reasons: metals were unknown, and iron, one of the latest to be discovered, was not used by man until long after this time. Men armed themselves, therefore, as best they could, with the point of a bone or the sharp edge of a broken stone.”

“I understand, then,” said Louis, “how dangerous such hunts must have been, and how courageous the hunters. To-day one would cut a sorry figure attacking a wolf with only a sharpened stake for a weapon.”

“And how would it be if one found oneself face to face with the wild boar of which Meleager rid the country? According to the old writers who handed [[83]]down the affair to us, it was an animal such as had never been seen before and will never be seen again. Heaven, in its wrath, had sent it to ravage the fields. It surpassed in size, they say, the strongest bulls. From its bloodshot eyes lightning darted; from its horrible mouth exhaled a fiery breath that instantly withered the leaves of trees; with a few blows of its snout it uprooted oaks; with its tusks, more formidable than the elephant’s, it ripped up the earth and sent great masses of rock flying like so much dust. What became of the poor people when this brute rushed at them in all its fury? They all fled, wild with terror, their hands upraised to heaven, their voices choked with fright.”

“There must be some exaggeration there,” interposed Louis. “A wild boar does not grow to such a size and such strength.”

“Yes, certainly, there is exaggeration in this as in many other stories in which the real facts, coming down through long centuries, finally become greatly magnified and take on most marvelous additions. Let us bring things back to something like probability. An enormous wild boar sets the country in a panic. For a people unprovided with good weapons and having no refuge but fragile huts of reed, it must be a very dangerous situation.

“To exorcise the common peril, Meleager calls together the best men in the neighborhood and places himself at the head of the hunters, among whom are to be found two of his uncles, his mother’s brothers, violent men and very jealous of the fame their [[84]]nephew has already acquired by his valorous exploits. They go to meet the monster. The first to approach the beast pay for their temerity with their lives. Already several have been made to bite the dust, without any result, when Meleager, more fortunate and no doubt also more skilful, succeeds in stabbing the beast with his stake. Victory is his, and the boar should belong to him, or at least the head, as a trophy of his courage; but his uncles, furious at their nephew’s acquisition of a new title to fame in addition to so many former ones, do not look at it in that light. The dispute becomes heated, and, as usual in those brutal times, the disputants pass quickly from argument to blows. Meleager, beside himself with wrath, kills his two uncles with the same stake that has drunk the blood of the beast.”

“Oh, wretched man!” cried Jules.

“Evil overtook him. On hearing of the death of her two brothers, Meleager’s mother loses her reason from grief. She draws from a cupboard, where she has kept it with the greatest care, a firebrand blackened at one end. With a hand trembling with anguish, she takes this firebrand, this precious firebrand for which hitherto she would have given her very eyes, life itself, and throws it into the fire, where it is straightway consumed. Ah, what has she done, the unhappy mother, what has she done! At that moment her son Meleager is dying, consumed by an inner fire; he is dying, he is dead, for the firebrand has just given its last flicker. In her despair the poor mother kills herself. [[85]]

“The connection between this firebrand that was reduced to ashes and Meleager’s end escapes you; I hasten to throw some light on this point. I will tell you then that at Meleager’s birth a firebrand suddenly sprang from beneath the ground and began to burn in the middle of the room, while a voice from the depths, like an infernal rumbling, said: ‘This child will live until the firebrand is consumed.’ ”

“Why, this is nothing but a fairy tale!” Jules exclaimed.

“Very true. History here gives place to fable. Now the firebrand was burning on the floor and threatened soon to be entirely consumed. They hastened to pick it up and extinguish it with water. From that time the mother preserved it with the greatest care, as the most precious thing she had, persuaded that her son would live to a great age, when, crazed with grief at the news of her brothers’ death, she threw it into the fire. As the subterranean voice had said, the moment the firebrand was consumed Meleager succumbed, devoured by an inner fire.”

“It’s a good story,” was Emile’s comment, “but I don’t at all see what it has to do with the guinea-fowl.”

“You will see in a minute,” his uncle reassured him. “Inconsolable at the death of their brother, Meleager’s sisters unceasingly shed tears that rolled like pearls over their mourning garments; night and day they filled the house with their distressing sobs. Heaven had pity on them and changed them into [[86]]birds until then unknown, into guinea-hens, whose plumage is still sprinkled with the tears of the unhappy girls, and whose unceasing cries are the continuation of their sobs. Such, according to the ancients, is the origin of guinea-fowls, called by them Meleagridæ in honor of the hero of the legend.

“The childish imagination of the ancients elaborated this story of the metamorphosis of Meleager’s sisters out of the two most prominent traits of the guinea-fowl, its plumage and its cry. On a background of bluish gray, the color of mourning, are sprinkled innumerable round white spots. Those are the tears, running in pearly drops over the bird as they ran over the somber garments of the inconsolable sisters. The guinea-fowl’s voice is a discordant, continuous, unendurable cry, in which the fable recognizes, unquestioningly, the painful sobs of Meleager’s sisters.”

“Those resemblances are ingenious,” said Louis, “but they do not take the place of real knowledge of the guinea-fowl’s origin. Not even in those old days could every one have believed in the singular tale you have just told us.”

“Many were satisfied with it and sought no further information. And even in our day, my friend, in this so-called enlightened century, is it so unusual that the more absurd a thing is the more easily it takes root in our minds? Many were satisfied with the story, but the wise knew well that the bird came to us from Africa, and for that reason called it the African fowl. [[87]]

“These old names are now out of use and are replaced by the word guinea-fowl, or pintade, which some, not without reason write peintade (painted). In fact, the white spots, spread over the bluish-gray ground of the plumage, are so round and so regularly distributed that one might say they were traced with a brush by a painter. The bird looks painted; hence its name.

Guinea-fowl

“The guinea-fowl has rounded outlines. Its short wings, its drooping tail, and the general arrangement of the feathers on its back give it a deformed appearance, which is misleading, for when plucked the bird shows none of its former gibbosity. The neck is lank. Imitating in that respect its compatriot, the camel, the guinea-fowl straightens it up and stretches it out when it runs away, and then it looks like a rolling ball. The head is small and partly bald, like the turkey’s. Two wattles, tinted red and blue, hang from the base of the beak. The top of the skull is protected by dry skin, which rises in the shape of a helmet and is perhaps not without use when in their quarrelsome moods the guinea-fowls have a trial of skill in splitting one another’s head with blows of the beak.

“Many qualities recommend this bird to our notice. The eggs are excellent and numerous, a hundred [[88]]and more annually. They are a little smaller than the hen’s, with remarkably thick shells of a yellowish or dull reddish color. Its flesh is superior, veritable game, nearly equal to that of the pheasant and partridge; and yet the guinea-fowl is rare almost everywhere. Three great faults are the reason: its cry, its quarrelsome disposition, and its wandering habits.

“First, its cry. He who has not had, for hours and hours, his ear tortured by the satanic music of the bird is ignorant of one of the most irritating of minor torments. The rasping of a file upon the teeth of a saw in process of sharpening, the discordant screech of a strangling cat, the final roulade of a braying donkey, are trifles in comparison. And this charivari goes on from morning to night with a reënforcement of the orchestra when the weather is about to change or something unexpected happens to worry the performers. If one is not blessed with a special ear, if the head is not void of all preoccupation, one simply cannot stand this deafening racket. They say the guinea-hens have inherited the wailings of Meleager’s sisters; but I like to think that the poor girls put a little more reserve into the heartbreaking expression of their grief. In short, never tell Uncle Paul to have guinea-hens under his window; he would flee to the farthest depths of the forest, never to return. There are others, and they are numerous, whose nerves are irritated just as much by the insufferable bird; that is why the [[89]]guinea-fowl is rare in poultry-yards, and by reason of its music escapes the spit.

“Second, its love of fighting. The parchment helmet standing up on top of the head betrays at the first glance the quarrelsome mania of the bird. The guinea-fowl is the bully of the poultry-yard; it domineers over the others and for a mere nothing will pick a quarrel. Hens and chickens are tormented for the possession of a grain of oats; the cock must on all occasions have a trial of skill with the beak to make his and his family’s rights respected; the turkey-gobbler himself, the burly gobbler, must reckon with it. The guinea-cock, quick at attack, delivers ten assaults and twenty blows of the beak before his big adversary can put himself on the defensive. When at last the gobbler parries and thrusts, the turbulent aggressor makes use of tactics that he seems to have learned from his compatriot, the Arab. He turns his back on the enemy, flees in haste, then abruptly returns to the charge and hurls himself suddenly on the gobbler at a moment when the latter is off his guard. The beak having dealt its blow, the flight recommences. Nearly always the gobbler is forced to capitulate. I leave you to imagine what sort of harmony must prevail in a poultry-yard harboring such disturbers of the peace.

“Third, its wanderlust. The narrow limits of the poultry-yard are irksome to guinea-fowls. They are glad enough to be on hand at feeding time, but, their crops once full, they must have a long walk across [[90]]country. Off they go, always by themselves, without ever admitting the common poultry to their ranks. To the music of its harsh chatter the flock goes on from one hedge to another, one bush to the next, snapping up insects. The distraction of the hunt makes them forget distance, and soon they are beyond supervision. Let a dog appear, and these half-tamed game-birds are seized with a foolish panic. They fly in all directions, with a cry of alarm resembling the harsh note of a rattle. The disbanded flock will have much trouble in getting together again; perhaps when they do come together one or two will be missing. Another inconvenience no less grave: during these excursions the eggs are laid almost anywhere, in the wheat-field, on the broad meadow, amid the tangled underbrush. Except by attentive watching at the moment of laying, it would take a sharp eye to find the nest of the suspected bird.

“The guinea-hen broods in about the same manner as the common hen, but it is preferable to set the eggs under a common hen; she will perform the imposed task perfectly and make no distinction between her own eggs and those of a stranger. The hatching takes place about the twenty-eighth or thirtieth day. On coming out of the shell, the little guinea-chicks can walk and eat alone quite as well as the other chickens. They need warmth and assiduous care. The first week they are fed with a pap of bread-crumbs and hard-boiled eggs, to which are added ants’ eggs or at least a little chopped meat. After that they have the same diet as ordinary chickens. [[91]]Like young turkeys they pass through a critical period, the time when the red begins to show on the bald skin of the head. To pass through it well, the best way is to give them strengthening food and shelter them from all dampness.” [[92]]

[[Contents]]

CHAPTER XI

THE PALMIPEDES

Hawk

“The workman is known by his tools, and by the tools of the feathered creatures—that is to say, their beaks and claws—their way of life is not less easily recognized. If it were not already known to us, who could fail to infer the carnivorous disposition of the hawk from the shape of its beak—short, sharp, and hooked—and from the structure of its talons, armed as they are with pointed nails grooved underneath with a narrow channel after the manner of certain daggers, to facilitate the flow of blood from the wound? Does it call for any extraordinary perspicacity to recognize, in the heron’s long legs, veritable stilts which enable it to traverse, step by step, without getting wet, the inundated flats, as does the hunter in his long, waterproof marsh boots? And then, that long beak, pointed like a nail, does it tell us nothing? Does it not say that the bird bores deep [[93]]in the tufts of rushes and in the soft mud to pull out reptiles and worms?”

“It is the heron,” put in Emile, “that the fable tells about when it says:

“The long-necked, long-beaked heron went walking;

On its stilt-like legs one day it went stalking.”

Heron

“Yes,” said Uncle Paul, “that is the bird. Everything about the heron is long—legs, beak, neck. The length of its legs enables the bird to explore the swamp at its ease all day long without wetting a feather; its length of neck is needed that it may reach the ground without stooping; and the long beak is indispensable for burrowing in the tall tufts of grass where the reptile lurks, and for probing the mud where the worm buries itself.”

“I begin to see now,” said Jules, “how the character of a bird may be judged from its shape. The heron bears its trade stamped on its form.”

“The duck, in its turn, makes an equally unmistakable announcement. Let us forget its habits, which are so familiar to us, and try to rediscover them in the shape of the legs and beak.

“The duck’s beak is very wide and flat, and round at the end. Shall we compare it with the hen’s beak, [[94]]a slender pair of pincers that snaps up seeds and kernels one by one? Comparison is impossible. Do we see there a tool working in the manner of the heron’s pointed probe? Still less. Shall we make it the equivalent of the bloody hooked beak of the bird of prey? No one would dream of such a thing, so great is the difference. But one sees at once in this wide, rounded beak a spoon shaped expressly for scooping up food from the water, just as our table-spoons enable us to take out pieces of bread or lumps of rice swimming in a thin soup. The duck dabbles, then: it dips up water in large spoonfuls—that is to say, in beakfuls—and seeks its food therein. It is a soup of the thinnest sort and, in itself, of no nutritive value. Consequently the liquid that fills the bird’s mandible must be rejected, but at the same time it must be drained out in such a manner as to leave behind what little alimentary matter it may contain. For this purpose the edges of the beak are fringed with a row of thin, short blades which let the liquid run out when the bird has once filled its mouth.”

“That’s an ingenious way to eat,” remarked Jules. “In order to snap up what it takes a fancy to, perhaps a tadpole, or a little water shell, or a worm, the duck is obliged to fill its beak with water. To swallow the whole mouthful without sorting would simply stuff the crop with a useless liquid. What does the bird do? It closes the beak, and the water, driven back, runs out through the fringed edges as if through a grating. The tadpole alone remains [[95]]behind the grating, and goes down into the stomach.”

“You can see, any time,” observed Louis, “the ducks on the pond dipping up water by the mouthful. It certainly isn’t just for drinking that they work their beaks so.”

“Certainly not,” assented Uncle Paul; “they drain the water of the pond through the fringe of the beak to gather worms and other small aquatic prey.

“The spoon-shaped beak of the duck indicates the bird’s dabbling habits; now let us see what the feet have to say. They are composed of three toes connected by an ample and supple membrane. Is that, I ask you, the footgear of a bird destined to long walks? With such a sole, so fine, so tender, and by its extent of surface exposing itself so much to the hardness of the stones, is the duck made for foot-racing? Note, on the contrary, the foot of the hen and the guinea-fowl, both untiring walkers. The toes are short, knotty, and sheathed with strong leather, without any connecting membrane. That is the true footgear of the pedestrian. But what will become of the duck on rough ground, with its wide sandals that a mere nothing can wound? You all know its pitiful walk. It waddles along, as ill at ease as a person afflicted with corns on the rough pavement of some of our streets. No, the duck is not made for walking.

“But in water those expanded feet will make vigorous swimming oars. If the bird throws them out behind, they spread wide open merely with the resistance [[96]]of the water; and their fan-shape gives them purchase enough to send the duck forward. When the duck draws them in again under its breast, they are closed automatically by the resistance of the liquid acting in a contrary direction; the membrane refolds in the manner of a closed umbrella, thus doing away with all shock or recoil. The twofold essential of a perfect oar lies in its presenting to the water the greatest possible surface on the stroke, and the least possible surface on the recovery, so as to furnish adequate purchase against the water in the first movement and to offer only very feeble resistance in the second. If the oar moved alternately forward and backward while presenting the same extent of surface to the water and driven with the same vigor, the recoil would equal the advance and there would be no progress. Man, with all his skill, does not yet know how to ply his oar so that it shall offer this alternating maximum and minimum of surface. Therefore, in propelling a boat, he is obliged to bring the oars back to their first position through the air instead of through the water, which latter would be much more direct. The duck scorns this clumsy method: with its foot, which opens wide of itself in the backward thrust and closes again of its own accord in the return movement, it moves forward or puts about, without ever lifting the oars from the water.

“Thus the duck is an expert swimmer; the shape of its feet tells us as much, and a glance at any duck-pond demonstrates it. Who has not admired the [[97]]aquatic evolutions of the bird, so awkward on land with its tender feet, so graceful when once on the water, its proper element? Sometimes they race with one another, whitening their breasts with a band of foam; sometimes, in order to explore the depths with their beaks, they plunge half-way in and point their tails heavenward; sometimes, also, yielding to the current, they let themselves drift idly down-stream or hold their position by paddling a few strokes when necessary. Water is their chosen domain; there they take their recreation, seek their food, and enjoy their sleep.