Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 89.djvu/724

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��Popiilcir Science Monthly

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��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 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-

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����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

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��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 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(iUs egg, nor hatch the necess.ir\ and succulent \(iung springling.
 * nd modestly

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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