Word: hen
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...mind and manners to an order of courtesy above us all ... He has kept before us the example of a classically educated intelligence . . . He is one of the first poets, in any language." Ransom has written poetry, one critic remarked admiringly, about "everything from Armageddon to a dead hen"; his language is quiet but barbed. Of a dead lady he wrote...
Dividing twelve white Leghorn hens into three groups of four, Smith and Hale allowed the natural pecking orders to establish themselves. When each hen clearly understood its rank in society. Smith and Hale selected pairs of hens from each group. To the wings of the high-ranking hen of each pair, they attached wires from an electric-shock device. Then both were put in a pen with a single dish of grain...
Under such circumstances the high-ranking hen normally eats first, but either Smith or Hale was always lurking outside the pen, finger on the button. Whenever the No. 1 hen tried to eat or peck, it got an electric shock. It also got a shock when the low-ranking hen of the pair plucked up courage to peck it. After a short course of this treatment, the upper-class hens began to have serious doubts about their place in society...
Twelve treatments were enough. Smith and Hale reported that each group had its social order turned upside down. Its top hen became its bottom hen. In two out of three groups, the bottom hen rose to the top. In all groups, the upper middle-class hen-No. 2-clung most tenaciously to its position. The No. 25 needed twice as many shocks as the others to accept a new place in society...
...money Social Credit movement, which held 19 seats in the old House of Commons. Surveying the wreckage of his party's national ambitions, Alberta's Social Credit Premier Ernest Manning offered a wry jest: "The voters have put all their eggs in one basket and shot the hen...