350 Next to the Ground 



to thirty-three days. Goose eggs are pure 

 white, and of an almost perfect oval. Duck 

 eggs are pale sky-green, so pale they look 

 white in some lights, and rounded at both 

 ends. Ducks lay their eggs either at dawn 

 or just before it. Puddle ducks make no 

 nests, dropping the eggs where they roost. 

 Guinea eggs are sharply oval, with a shell 

 several times as thick as that of a hen egg, 

 and in color a delicate yellowish-brown. A 

 turkey egg, three times as big as a guinea egg, 

 is also sharply oval, with a thin fine white 

 shell, richly freckled all over with brown 

 freckles, light or dark. Ducks lay only in 

 spring, from twenty-five to fifty eggs. Geese, 

 also spring layers, produce from ten to fifteen 

 each. Guineas begin laying about mid-May, 

 and keep on until September, if the eggs are 

 taken duly from the nest. If the eggs re- 

 main, the guinea hen sits when she has laid 

 twenty or twenty-five. Guineas are to a 

 degree monogamous — almost strictly paired 

 where the sexes are equal. But plural wives 

 among them lay in the same nest — which is 

 made as far a-field as possible. While a 

 guinea hen is laying, her mate perches upon 

 a near-by stock or stone, and shouts a defiant 

 " Ch-che-ch-ch-ze-ze-che-che-ee ! " to all the 

 world. Both sexes have another cry, inter- 

 preted in the farmlands as " Pot Rack ! Pot 



