

334 THE EGG. 



habits. A careful observer may indeed find that 

 there is in one part of the transparent jelly a little 

 portion which has more consistency than the rest ; 

 but still a stretch of fancy is needed before it can be 

 called organization of any kind. So that, if a person 

 were to be told that out of those jellies there were 

 to be evolved bones, and muscles or organs of mo- 

 tion, and nerves for sensation, and arteries and veins 

 for circulating blood, and lungs for breathing, and air 

 tubes in the bones to ensure the same purpose upon 

 emergency ; and that there were to be feet for run- 

 ning, or wading in the water, or swimming, or par- 

 tially for all those purposes, according to the habits 

 of some former organized beings, now dead or at a 

 distance ; and wings for flight, and eyes, and nostrils, 

 and ears, and a mouth armed with horny mandibles ; 

 that further, the production was to have the very 

 model of mechanical shape, for enabling it to make 

 its way on the earth, across the waters, or through 

 the air; and that it was to be clothed with plumage 

 of the smoothest gloss, and the most brilliant col- 

 ours ; and that it would, in the most unerring man- 

 ner, select those substances best adapted for its 

 purpose ; and by means of various sets of apparatus, 

 each the very best fitted for accomplishing the end 

 with the very least trouble, form them into the very 

 substances of which its own organization were 

 composed ; and not only keep itself in perfect order 

 and repair for its appointed time, but become the 

 source of future beings of the same kind, without 

 number and without end, excepting from the bar and 

 hinderance of external circumstances : if a person 

 who was ignorant of eggs, and the results of hatch- 

 ing, were to be told that, or even a small part of it, 

 it would utterly shake his belief in the testimony 

 of the narrator. Nor would his doubt be the less if 

 he were told that the being to come out of one egg 

 would have the fleetness of an arrow and the 

 strength of a giant ; that the gripe of death would 



