s still maintained their
integrity. I remarked to the hen, that she would better keep on awhile
longer, and I would take the seven into the house, and provide for them.
She assented, having, justly enough, all confidence in my sagacity; and
I put them into a warm old worsted hood, and brought them into the
house. But the hood was not a hen, though it was tucked around them
almost to the point of suffocation; and they filled the house with
dolorous cries,--"yapping" it is called in the rural districts. Nothing
would soothe them but to be cuddled together in somebody's lap, and
brooded with somebody's hand. Then their shrill, piercing shrieks would
die away into a contented chirp of heartfelt satisfaction. I took a
world of comfort in those chickens,--it is so pleasant to feel that you
are really making sentient beings happy. The tiny things grew so
familiar and fond in a few hours that they could hardly tell which was
which,--I or the hen. They would all fall asleep in a soft, stirring
lump for five seconds, and then rouse up, with no apparent cause, but as
suddenly and simultaneously as if the drum had beat a reveille, and go
foraging about in the most enterprising manner. One would snap at a
ring, under the impression that it was petrified dough, I suppose; and
all the rest would rush up determinedly to secure a share in the prize.
Next they would pounce upon a button, evidently thinking it curd; and
though they must have concluded, after a while, that it was the hardest
kind of coagulated milk on record, they were not restrained from
renewing the attack in squads at irregular intervals. When they first
broke camp, we put soaked and sweetened cracker into their bills; but
they developed such an appetite, that, in view of the high price of
sugar, we cut off their allowance, and economized on Indian meal and
bread-water. Every night they went to the hen, and every morning they
came in to me; and still Dame Partlett sat with stolid patience, and
still eight eggs remained. I concluded, at length, to let the eggs take
their chance with another hen, and restore the first to freedom and her
chickens. But just as I was about to commence operations, some one
announced, that, if eggs are inverted during the process of incubation,
the chickens from them will be crazy. Appalled at the thought of a brood
of chickens laboring under an aberration of mind, yet fired with the
love of scientific investigation, I inverted one by way of exp