May I venture to add a few mo: wards regarding this wonderful Tint'ai country, this time of a more peaceful character, Daring the spring and early summer, one of the commonest sights about the streets and high-road is to see three and four-tier baskets being carried filled with wee chirping, motberless chicks, Tt has long. since been evident to me and somehow on no small scale. Today, however, in the midst of an 18- mile journey across an unfrequented part of the country at the base of the mountains, we were invited to dinner by (to myself) an unknown gentleman of degree, Among the guests was farmer, who it transpired part of the year engaged ini the above industry, and he willingly offered to show us his plant. The building was an ordinary shed, long, low, and dark. Along the sides and up and down the centre were ranged some 30 to 40 what appeared at first sight to be ordinary waterbutts, with an opening below for charcoal, but upon examination one found that they were of compound nature, the upper part only deep enough to admit a bamboo basket about a foot high, and the lower part, scorningly built up of red clay mingled with plaited straw, A straw cap some four inches thick covered the mouth, and the whole was suggestive of comfortable warmth without heat. At the end of the building facing south was a board let into the wall, in which bad been cut two circular holes the size of the transverse diameter of an egg, for pur-of examination.
Overhead, hardly high enough for one to walk, were placed runs of grass matting, the length of the building, supported on laths, while in the contre under the a xy wore too deep.
The method of procedure is as follows: Exch basket holds about 1,200 and every six days, from the 2nd to the 5th moons, 10,000 eggs are placed into the ineabators, under which are kindled gentle charcoal fires; every aperture ing closed. At the end of the fourth day the eggs are taken one by one and examined through the testing holes, and any not showing signs of fertilization immediately discarded to be sold cheap. At the end of the sixth day the baskets are removed to incubators, where the temperature is slightly lower (the degree of heat appears to be regulated entirely by rule of thumb, bat one set of incubators is apparently fed with live ch: and another with ash only), and at of the twelfth day, the eggs are taken, laid out upon the matting overhead and cover: ed with cotton quilts. Each day hereafter
ally worked from the centre to ti they must be changed about, being gradu jes till the chicks appear, when they are taken by vendors and conveyed to the populous cities in the north of the province and \to Kiangsu. The average is 5,000 chicks from 10,000 eggs, and in the season six workmen at least are kept continually engaged day and night. If, therefore, 100,000 chicks are sent forth from on among whom we dwell which creates 50 great a demand. It is a matter too for conjecture as to what proportion of the tiny trustful little balls of down attain to maturity and finally reach the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.