102 ON EGGS: 



lays one round Egg, will continue to lay all her Eggs round ; 

 and ^he-Hen tbat lajs oae:oblong, will lay all oblong. Con- 

 sequently', one Eeri wo*iM^be the perpetual mother of Cocks, 

 aiio^h^r-mtiistwiemain tl^e .perpetual producer of Pullets; which 

 is absurd, as ctaily experience proves. Every dairy-maid knows 

 that when a Hen steals a nest and hatches her own Eggs only, 

 the brood which she brings home contains a fair proportion of 

 either sex. I know well that if any of the said Hen's female 

 acquaintance spy out her secret hoard, they will set other bipeds 

 a good example by adding to, instead of substracting from, the 

 property of. her neighbour. But chance additions are not suffi- 

 cient to account for the mixture of Cocks and Hens in self-set 

 broods, supposing the theory to be correct, that the sex of the 

 future chick is denoted by the form of the Egg. 



Here is an experiment in point. An old lady, whose fowls 

 were all white, gave me a small globular Egg, as round as a 

 ball ; it was added to a clutch of Speckled Dorkings. The re- 

 sult was the due number of Dorkings, and one white cockerel, 

 which we kept till he began to crow : it ought to have been a 

 pullet, unless the compositor's fingers have been busy in re- 

 printing one error at least. 



Another supposed test is the position of the air-bag at the 

 blunt end of the shell. We are told that, "if it be a little on 

 one side it will produce a Hen ; if this vacuity be exactly in 

 the centre, it will produce a Cock." But, take a basket of 

 Eggs, examine them as directed, by holding them between 

 your eye and a candle, and you will find very few indeed in 

 which you can say that the air-bubble is exactly concentrical 

 with the axis of the Egg. A Cock ought thus to be, like 

 Ovid's Black Swan, a rare bird. But, in many broods, the 

 cockerels bear a proportion of at least one-third, sometimes two- 

 thirds; especially in those hatched during winter or in unfavour- 

 able seasons ; the immediate cause being, doubtless, that the 

 Eggs producing the robuster sex possess a stronger vitality ; 



