The age-herald., 1901-03-25
FOOLED THE HENS ALL RIGHT.
Silas Wass's Scheme for Doubling the
 Production of Eggs.
From the New York S,,n

From the New York Sun.
 Beddington, Me, March 1s.-Until three weeks ago silas wass believed he had made the greatest discovery of the age. MT. Wass draws a pension. As his quar- terly allowance does not supply all his needs he tries to make little money by raising eggs for the Boston market. His expenses are so great that he finds little profit in the eggs.
 He calculated that if every one of his hens laid 100 eggs year he would come out even, and that every egg more than 100 was clear profit. He had read great deal about the 200 egg-producing hen in the poultry papers that he took and had spent more money than he could afford to get the right breed. but the best hen he had been able to procure would not yield more than 125 eggs year.
 But his studies and experiments had not been in vain. He observed among other things, that the really good hens always went to their nests to lay as soon as they hopped from the roosts In the morning. Here was an idea worth fol- lowing up. If a hen laid every morning when the days were twenty-four hours long, she would no doubt keep up the practice of she lived on planet where the days were one-half so long There fore he went to work to change the length of the day.
 A hen Is a stupid creature that mistakes any kind of darkness for night. A flock has been known to go to roost at midday during a total eclipse of the sun. Hence, he reasoned that If he could have short night made to order along about noon the hens would take it for the real thing and would conduct business to conform to the new conditions
 The next time Wass went to Bangor to ship his eggs he brought home great roll of curtain stuff, which was made up into heavy shades and hung on patent rollers in front of the windows in the roasting pens of his fowls. After the hens had had their breakfast one morning and most of the active ones had laid their eggs, Wass began to pull down the shades letting them drop by degrees. In fifteen minutes the hens were grooming to them selves and going to roost. As soon as all were quiet Wass drew the curtains to the floor and let them remain for half an hour.
 Then he walked along the pens and let in a ray of light that set the roosters to growing. AS the curtains went up by degrees and the bright light filled the pens the hens flew down and ran to their feeding troughs for breakfast. When they had been fed and watered most of them mounted aloft to the nest boxes and squatted down to lay.
 T was making money hand over fist said Wass, and was getting ready to sell county and State rights for the use of my great discovery when my hens be- gan to shed their feathers and stopped laying. It was cold weather, and a lot of them died before new feathers could grow, because hens do not shed their featheers in the winter when left in a state of nature. The ones that lived grew stiff and dumpy, so they could hardly move about. They seemed to have caught the rheumatism.
 When I killed one to cook for the min ister the meat was so tough that nobody could eat it. Then I woke up to the fact that my hens were dying from old age They had been living two days to my one, and were worn out and old by the time they had ceased to be bullets. I was sorry things turned out that way. because l had made the greatest discov- cry the world has ever seen. It fooled the hens, sure enough, but when I tried to honeyfogle old nature I met my match and had to give in