EGGS.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 2 September 1913, Page 4

EGGS.

Some old proverb says that an egg is one of the articles of food which can be eaten after passing <through the hands of the dirtiest cooks. This will comfort everyone who goes in for eggstravagancc at Easter. How large the consumption of the eggs of poultry is may be judged from the fact that the English Government lost <£20,~ 000 a year .when fhe tax on imported eggs was repealed in 18U0. But fishes and insects come from eggs when they are ripe, as well as chickens and canaries.. The eggs of birds from the large one produced by the ostrich to the tiny one laid by the wren, show beautiful varieties of shade and design.

Gloger, a German naturalist, says that birds whose eggs are of bright colours usually build in hidden places; and that birds who make open nests, build them with twigs and things, similar in colour to the eggs which are to be laid there. The woodpecker, for instance, hides her white eggs in the hollow of a tree, while the starling places her bright blue or green eggs in a nest of moss or grass.

Fishes eggs tire remarkable for their great quantity, but among insects we find the greatest variety. The eggs of all birds are alike in form, but the eggs of insects arc of all shapes—square, angular, flat, etc. The little fly, which is hatched in manure heaps, lays eggs with two little legs, which' creep down into the manure to the exact depth for hatching. The glow-worm lays eggs of a golden colour, and the brimstone moth, like the rhinoceros beetle, lays a yellow ogg with white spots. The spider covers her eggs with siken stuff to keep them warm. The gold-tailed moth, like the cider duck, plucks from her body a kind of down, with which she coats her eggs, dies in order to form a protection for them.

Insects seldom if ever sit on their eggs, but they are very devoted to their young. Mr Bonot mentions the ea'se of a spider which fell into the den of a large ant. who caught her by the bag and tore it away from her body. The spider might have escaped. but she remained until she was devoured, fighting for her offspring. Warmth is necessary to keep eggs alive, and many insects, for that reason, deposit their eggs in the bodies of living creatures. Caterpillars, bees, spiders, and cockroaches are all infested with flies that pierce their bodies and deposit their eggs.

It is an old belief that the best sort of silkworms are hatched in a woman's bosom, and the eggs of insects, like those of birds, can be developed by artificial heat in incubators. Reaumur enclosed the eggs of a butterfly in a glass egg and placed it under a sitting hen. In four days a butterfly appeared, the first, probably, that ever took life under a hen.