Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1878-04-13

400 grains Of the recky material have
been derived? The answer to this ques
ton opens up some of the most curious
and wonderful facts connected with
animal chemistry, and affords glimpse.
of many of the operations of organic
life, which, to the common mind, seen
in'the highest degree paradoxical and
perplexing. The body of bird, like
that Of man, is but a piece Of chemi'
cal apparatus, made capable of trans
forming hard and fixed substances into
others of very unlike nature. In oats
there is contained phosphate of lime,
with abundance OF silica, and the stom.
ach and assimilatlng organs Of the bird
are made capable of decomposing OF
rending asunder the lime-salt, and
forming with the silica silicate of lime.
This new body is itself made to under
90 decomposition and the base is COM
bined with carbonic acid, forming car
Donate of lime. The carbonic acid is
probably derived from the atmosphere,
or more directly perhaps from the blood.
These chemical changes among hard in
organic bodies are certainly wonderful
when we reflect that they are brought
about in the delicate organs of COM
paratively feeble bird, under the influ-
ence of animal heat and the vital forces.
They embrace 4 series of decomposing
and .recomposing operations which it is
difficult to initiate in the laboratory.
In the experiment to which allusion has
been made the amount of earthly ma
terial found in the eggs and the excre-
ment of the hen exceeded that contain
ed in the food she consumed. This
seems paradoxical, and can only be ex-
planned upon the ground that birds as
well as animals have power in times of
exigency of drawing upon their own
bodies for material which is required to
perform necessary functions.
The shell of an ordinary sized hens
egg weighs Jog grains, that is, the inor-
ganic portion of it; and if bird lays
100 eggs in year, she produces nearly
% ounces of pure carbonate of lime in
that period of time, which would afford
chalk enough for farmer, or even a
of moderate business,
for a twelve months.
If farmer has a flock of one hundred
hens, they produce in egg-shells about
1877 pounds OF chalk annually; and yet
not pound of the substance, or per-
haps not even an ounce, exists around
the farmhouse within the circuit OF their
feeding grounds. This is source of
lime production not usually recognized
by farmers or hen fanciers, and it is by
no means insignificant. The materials
of the manufacture are found in the food
and in the sand, pebble
stones, brick dust, bits of bone, ETC.,
which hens and other birds are contin.
ually picking from the earth. The in
stinct is keen for these apparently in
nutritious and refractory substances,
and they are devoured with as eager a
relish rs the cereal grains or insects. If
hens are confined to barns or outbuild-
ings, ii is obvious that the egg-produc-
ing machinery can not be kept long in
action, unless the materials for the shell
are supplied in ample abundance.
Within the shell the animal portion
of the egg is found, which consists Of a
viscous colorless liquid called albumen,
or the mhite, and a yellow globular mass
called the vitellus, or yelk. The white
of the egg consists of two parts, each of
which is enyeloped in distinct men,
branes. The outer bag of albumen,
next the shell, is quite thin watery
body, while the next which invests the
yelk, is heavy and thick. But few
housekeepers who break eggs ever dis
between the two rhites, or
know of their existence even. Each has
its appropriate Office to fulfill during the
process of incubation or Matching, and
one acts, in the mysterious process, as
a part as the other. If We
remove this glairy fluid from the shell
and place it in a glass and plunge into it
a strip of REDEEMED litmus paper, blue
tinge is Immediately produced, which
indicates the presence of an alkali. The
alkali is soda in free condition, and
is presence is of the highest conse-
quence, for without it the liquid would
h.. soSo1,k1a A ,,n,.tio,, nf tho rx-b,ta of