710
��Popiilcir Science Monthly
��mmimmm^^.
��of rubber tubing through which ice-cold
water from a lank susijcndeil from the
top of the henhouse was run to the
eggs. When the mothering instinct be-
came too great for a hen to resist she
would mount these joke-eggs. When her
warm breast came in contact with the
frigid eggs, she would leap off with a
cackle of anguish, and thereafter be cured
of the setting
habit.
Was it not
ingenious? In-
deed it was.
A contraj)-
tion devised
for the same
purpose and
also unearthed
from the scin-
tillating pages
of the Patent
Office Gazette
is displayed
pictorially in
these pages.
It has a de\'il-
ish ingenuit\'
all unto itself.
Look at this
picture in
which a hen
may be ob-
served leaping
angrily from a
nest of sjiikes.
This |iointed
warning to IJie
hen who aches
to set, belongs
to the same
category as
the machines
brought out for
slow torture at the time of the Spanisli
Inquisition. Some jirchistoric fragment
of barbarism in all of us makes a tlexice
of this sort unusually interesting. Un-
questionably, if lliis iiu'ention were in-
stalled in a barn\ard, the farmer-owner
could charge ten cents admission, and
the publii- would get a generous iiii
cents' worth in watching fowl agon\'.
Can \<)U jHit your own soul througii the
miserx' to which thewduld-bi'-inotlicr iien,
willi the <lc!icac\- whi
ulnnils hersell wluii
��she settles calmly down, with every
honorable intention, upon a nest of
naked, brutal sjiikes?
The hen-house-of-horrors, if properly
furnished with lliese machines of malice,
would not satisfy itself merely with ice-
cold eggs and spiked nests. Other in-
ventions, if they were attached, would
transform the peaceful hen into a pic-
turesque spec-
��r:^
��
��^m
��i 1 1 « «
����When the would-be-mother hen approaches this
nest she is received by an array of sprouting
spikes. The man who conceived the idea
probably derived it from a volume upon the
Spanish Inquisition. It is indeed most effective.
The hen squats upon the spurs; and she arises
with cackles of wrath, cured of her desire to set
��purposes of inllicting d
��tiuie, a cross
1 etwccn a tax-
icab and an
infernal ma-
( hine. In fact,
if the hen were
p r (J I) c r 1 y
i(|uipped with
all the "useful
(I e \' 1 c e s
w liich man has
iliouglufully
- nd modestly
pro^■ided, she
would not only
be bound,
gagged, fetter-
ed, spiked and
Uozcn ; but her
\ ision would
l:i' guided by
ijcgglcs; she
would stamp
each egg as it
was laid with
a trade-mark.
Altogether
she would bear
so much me-
chanical mis-
cellany upon
her innocent
^•oung shoul-
ders that she could neither sit in the for-
bidden nest, run amuck in the forbitlden
g.irden, tl\- into the forbidden air, nor,
indied. could she la>' the his(i()Us egg,
nor hatch the necess.ir\ and succulent
\(iung springling.
Human sympathy with the helpless un-
fortunates would promj)! one to say, "Let
I lie poor creatures alone!" Nevertheless,
tile farmer ma\- see in the numerous in-
\-entions menlioiied lu'lptul means of
augmenting .ind prolecling hiseggsupply,
and if so, liiini.inil.iri.ins h.i\-e no right
to hinder him \\i\\\\ inipl(i\iiH; them.
��
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