EGG FACTS AND FIGURES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 16 September 1907, Page 4

EGG FACTS AND FIGURES.

England spent the vast sum of £7,095-122 122 on foreign eggs last year. In addition was paid nearly a million pounds to the foreigner for poultry and game, making a total of £8,084,000. The consumption of eggs is approximately as follows:

English eggs, 1,4; 0,000,000; Irish eggs, 750,000,000; foreign and colonial eggs, 1,264,870,000—t0ta1, 4,404,870,000. This givos 114 eggs for each man, woman, and child. But we do net eat them all. Large quantities are used for leather-dressing and in other industries. Many go so bad that they are thrown away.

Probably the quantity available for eating amounts to no more than two per week for each person in the country. Twenty eggs would make an omelette measuring one square foot, therefore our total consumption of eggs would make an omelette 5124 acres, or over eight square miles in extent. It would take four hours to walk around it, and he would be a good man who could eat it in a million years.

A good black Minorca hen'ought to lay 180* eggs in a year. An Andulasian can easily do 150, a Wyandotte 140, and a buff Orpington 130. It is possible to get 240 or more from a really first-class spangled Hamburg, Xo one should be satisfied with fewer than an all-round 120 eggs per bird. What would this plentiful supply of nutritious food cost? Economically managed a hen ought to cost no more than iy,d per week. Some large keepers allow only Id. Thus the eggs could be obtained for 5d per dozen.

The weight of the egg ought to be more, not less, than 2oz. A trifle over 2oz is a good average, but the dark Bramah fowl gives' an egg of 2 l-3oz. By putting 4oz of salt in 1% pints of water you can easily measure the age of your eggs. An egg one day old will sink to the bottom; from two to three days old it does not go to the bottom, after three days it floats on the surface, rising higher with every addition to its age.

I A remarkable surgical operation was i performed at the Kyneton Private Hospital, Victoria, on the 2nd inst. The patient was a boy three and a-half years of age. Five weeks ago the child was playing with a Lee-Metford bullet, which he had placed in his mouth, when it was passed into his windpipe and worked its way far down into the right lung._ To locate the position of the bullet in the lung it was necessary to subject the patient to X-rays. This was done in Melbourne, where a specialist was consulted, and the seat of the obstruction located. An operation had to be performed in the back of the sufferer, and some of the ribs removed ?n order to reach the part of the lung in which the bullet was embedded. This was successfully done. The bullet was found and removed.

An interesting case, which shows how money-lenders become wealthy, was brought to light in Melbourne recently, when Harrr Lyon Moss, of Little Co'llius street, sued a civil servant named I). Wilson for £63 10s on account of two promissory notes. Seven years ago Wilson borrowed £SO from Moss on personal security. The iuterest was fixed at £5 10s for three months. The loan was renewed from time to time, and at the end of three years and six months Wilson found that he had paid £77 iu interest on the loan of £SO, that is 44 per cent, per annum. There was still £3O of the principal owintr, and on that Wilson paid £4l 10s in interest, or 40 2-3 per cent. When he expostulated, and asked that the rate should be reduced, the money-lender said, "No; the interest is too low; 1 think lam a philanthropist." Judoe Eagleson, however, failed to see the "humanities" of the case. It seemed to him, in fact, to come within the meaning of the words "harsh and unconscionable" in the Money-lenders Aci, and he ordered that all the transactions between the two men should be set aside, that Wilson should not pay anything in excess of the sums actually advanced, that if excess had been paid it should be refunded, and that the interest on money still owing should be reduced to 12>/ 3 per cent. Moss also sued Wilson on a promissory note of £3O, which he had endorsed for another man, who was paying 80 per cent, per annum. The Judge decided on a technicality that Wilson was not liable as an endorser, and as this bargain also seemed to him to be "harsh and unconscionable," he ordered that the interest should be reduced to W/ 2 per cent, as in the former case.