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III. 



PLOVERS' EGGS. 



ONE of the first delicacies that spring-tide brings is 

 Plovers' Eggs. By the first week in April we begin to see 

 them in the game-dealers' and poulterers' shops, snugly 

 lying in little round baskets of green moss, or packed 

 carefully amongst bran and sawdust in the original boxes 

 which brought them up from the country. The gathering 

 of these pear-shaped, brown spotted eggs is a profitable 

 industry, which the country folk look forward to with 

 anxious interest, for it increases their scanty earnings 

 considerably, especially if the season be a good one for 

 the birds. The earliest eggs, of course, command the 

 highest prices ; and Society pays eagerly and dearly for 

 these objects, which Hodge picks up from the fallows 

 and the moors. In the beginning of the season from 

 eight to ten shillings a dozen are asked and obtained for 

 these eggs ; but they soon become plentiful, and prices 

 decline to as low as eighteenpence per dozen. Many 

 hundreds of dozen come up to Leadenhall Market alone, 

 and this represents but a small number of the actual 

 harvest. 



