Incubator

Incubator eggs might hatch better if less attention were paid to uniform temperature and more to reproducing actual conditions beneath a setting bird. That idea occurred to N. A. Meshcheryakov of Moscow's Zoological Park. Eggs beneath a setting mother are several degrees warmer on top than at the bottom. Every time the bird leaves the nest for food or exercise the eggs cool off a little.

Accordingly Comrade Meshcheryakov devised an incubator with heating units so placed and controlled as to provide a 2-to-7-degree difference between egg tops and egg bottoms and overall cooling two or three times every 24 hours. Hatchings in his imitative incubator averaged 78% as against 55% obtained on the average in Russia in uniform-temperature incubators. Last week it was reported that Zoologist Meshcheryakov had hat bed every one of a clutch of ostrich eggs, a feat rarely accomplished even by a mother ostrich.

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