orrespondence exists in all the
Vertebrata; for do not fine ladies similarly dust themselves? They do
not, indeed, sit in the road _a la Turque_. They box up the dust, and
take it to their dressing-rooms, and, because Nature has not provided
them with feathers, ingenuity more than supplies the deficiency with the
softest of white down brushes, that harbor and convey the coveted dust.
I doubt not through the races one resembling purpose runs; and many a
stately matron and many a lovely maiden might truly say unto the hen,
"Thou art my sister."

Did I say I knew all about hens? The half was not told you, for I am
wise about chickens too. I know their tribe from "egg to bird," as the
country people say, when they wish to express the most radical, sweeping
acquaintance with any subject,--a phrase, by the way, whose felicity is
hardly to be comprehended till experience has unfolded its meaning.

When hens have laid a certain number of eggs,--twelve or twenty,--they
evince a strong disposition, I might almost say a determination, to
sit.[D] In every such case, it is plain that they ought to be allowed to
sit. It is a violation of Nature to souse them in cold water in order to
make them change their minds; and I believe, with Marcus Antoninus, that
nothing is evil which is according to Nature. But people want eggs, and
they do not care for Nature; and the consequence is, that hens are
obliged to undergo "heroic treatment" of various kinds. Sometimes it is
the cold bath; sometimes it is the hospital. One I tied to the bottom of
a post of the standards; but, eager to escape, and ignorant of the
qualities of cord, she flew up over the top rail, and, the next time I
entered the barn, presented the unpleasing spectacle of a dignified and
deliberate fowl hanging in mid-air by one leg. Greatly alarmed, I
hurried her down. Life was not extinct, except in that leg. I rubbed it
tenderly till warmth was restored, and then it grew so hot that I feared
inflammation would set in, and made local applications to reduce the
tendency, wondering in my own mind whether, in case worse should come to
worst, she could get on at all with a Palmer leg. The next morning the
question became unnecessary, as she walked quite well with her own. The
remaining hens were put in hospital till they signified a willingness to
resume their former profitable habits,--except one who was arbitrarily
chosen to be foster-mother of the future brood. Fifteen eggs, fair