Eggs and Chickens
Since it’s almost Easter, I thought an egg related post might be in order.
The Hooke Folio details a meeting on 16th January 1679, where Mr Henshaw gives an account of Dr Kuffler’s way of ‘hatching chickens’ using artificial methods rather than leaving the eggs to hatch naturally with the mother hen. Kuffler kept the eggs on a wire over a balneum (similar to a modern day bain marie) with a cover over and placed it close to a furnace. He turned the eggs each day for eighteen days before removing them and putting them ‘on a hair cloth near the ash hole of a stove’. Soon after Kuffler claims the eggs began to hatch and three days later the chicks were able to feed themselves. Kuffler’s method of artificially incubating the eggs prompted further discussion on 23rd January 1679 concerning whether the chickens produced ’ would be fruitfull & produce eggs and chickens as others that were hatchd the naturall way’. To which Mr Henshaw confirmed that they ‘were euery deale as fruitfull … as the other’.
The Hooke Folio’s account of Kuffler’s work shows how the Fellows of the Society were interested in the way the workings of nature could be ’artificially’ replicated and how the results of such artificial methods compared to those of the natural world.
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