526 BIRDS 1 EGGS. 



and then blow the solution back into the glass. Your egg-shell is 

 now beyond the reach of corruption ; the membrane retains for ever 

 its pristine whiteness ; and no insect, for the time to come, will ever 

 venture to prey upon it. If you wish your egg to appear extremely 

 brilliant, give it a coat of mastic varnish, put on very sparingly with 

 a camel-hair pencil. Green or blue eggs must be done with gum 

 arabic ; because the mastic varnish is apt to injure the colour. 



This is all. How dull I have been, not to have found out this 

 simple process long ago ! I have used the solution to preserve skins, 

 furs, and feathers from putrefaction and the moth, for nearly twenty 

 years ; still the idea never struck me, till three weeks ago, that it 

 could be so servicable in preventing all tendency to putrefaction in 

 the membrane of the shell, which had given me so much trouble, and 

 caused so many useless experiments. I trust that the kind-hearted 

 naturalist will not turn this little process of preparing eggs into afflic- 

 tion to poor birds. One egg out of each nest (with a few exceptions) 

 will not be missed by the owner ; but to take them all away would 

 be hard indeed. Such an act would make the parent bird as sad 

 and sorrowful as Niobe. You know Niobe's story : Apollo slew her 

 every child. 



My friend George Walker, of Killingbeck Lodge, thinks that copal 

 varnish is better than mastic varnish for eggs. 



I have made an improvement in blowing larger kinds of eggs. I 

 find that one hole is sufficient. When that hole is made, introduce 

 a straight wire, with a little piece of dry cotton or thread tied round 

 the end introduced. Then, holding the egg with the hole downwards, 

 you use the wire, which acts as a piston, and forces a sufficient 

 quantity of the contents of the egg out, to enable you to get out the 

 rest by sudden jerks. This is a much longer process than blowing ; 

 but you have the advantage of having only one hole in your egg 

 instead of two. 



