LAYING. 211 



PRESERVATION OF EGGS. 



The ancients had very imperfect notions of preserving eggs 

 fresh, if they knew no other method than what the elder Pliny 

 says "The best way to keepe egges is in bean-meale or 

 floure, and during winter in chaffe, but for summer time, in 

 branne." (Holland's Plinie, i., 301.) This would no doubt 

 preserve them longer than if they were left entirely uncov- 

 ered ; but it could not be depended upon, as we shall presently 

 see, no more than the similar advice of Columella, who says 

 " The manner to keep egges a long tyme is, in the winter in 

 straw, and in summer in branne or meale." 



Old Gervase Markham says " Because egges of themselves 

 are a singular profit, you shall understand that the best way to 

 preserve or keepe them long is, as some thinke, to lay them 

 in straw and cover them close ; but that is too cold, and besides 

 will make them mustie. Others lay them in branne, but that 

 is too hot. The best way to keepe them most sweet, most 

 sound, and most full, is only to keepe them in a heape of old 

 malt, close, and well covered all over." (Cheape and Good 

 Husbandrie, p. 142. 4to. London, 1616.) 



Nothing was known scientifically on the subject of preserving 

 eggs till M. Reaumur was led to take it up. Eggs after being 

 laid, it was shown, lose daily by transpiration a portion of the 

 matter which they contain, notwithstanding the compact text- 

 ure of their shell, and of the close tissue of the flexible mem- 

 branes lifting the shell, and enveloping the white. When an 

 egg is fresh, it is proverbially full, without any vacancy; and 

 this is matter of common observation, whether it be broken 

 raw, or when it is either soft or hard boiled. But in all 

 stale eggs, on the contrary, there is uniformly more or less 

 vacancy, in proportion to the loss they have sustained by tran- 

 spiration ; and hence, in order to judge of the freshness of an 

 egg, it is usual to hold it up to the light, when the translucency 



