EGGS IN CHEMISTRY AND COMMERCE. 103 



gathering about the mouth of the river Amazon alone is some 

 five thousand jars of oil, and it takes five thousand eggs to make a 

 jar. The turtle comes at night, and deposits from one hundred and 

 forty to two hundred white eggs in the sand, carefully covering 

 them up before returning to the sea. In about fourteen days she 

 returns again to the same place to lay, and will come up about 

 four times before stopping laying, thus giving some six hundred 

 to eight hundred eggs. A native of Brazil will consume as many 

 as twenty or thirty turtles' eggs at a meal, and a European will 

 eat a dozen at a breakfast. They make an excellent omelet. The 

 Indians frequently eat them raw, mixed with their cassava flour. 

 The condition in which the egg of the turtle is best fit to be 

 eaten is when taken from the slain animal, before the formation 

 of the glaze and the surrounding parchment-like skin, which 

 answers the purpose of a shell. 



The eggs of a large lizard (Varanus vivitattus) are eaten in 

 Java. In the West Indies the eggs of the iguana are thought a 

 delicacy. One of these lizards will sometimes contain as many 

 as fourscore eggs, which, when boiled, are like marrow. They 

 are about the size of a pigeon's egg, but with a soft shell. The 

 eggs of the common teguexin (Teius teguexin), and of other large 

 species of lizards, are eaten in South America. 



In the Antilles and on the west coast of Africa the eggs of the 

 alligator are eaten. They resemble in shape a hen's egg, and 

 have much the same taste, but are larger. More than a hundred 

 eggs have been found in one alligator. 



The large eggs of the boa constrictor are regarded as a dainty 

 by the Africans from the Congo. One of these snakes, killed on 

 an estate in British Guiana in 1884, had fifty eggs, which were 

 eaten by the negroes. 



The eggs of various fishes differ remarkably in external ap- 

 pearance. Some would scarcely be believed to be eggs at all. 

 Take, for instance, the skate's egg. It looks like a flattened 

 leather purse, with four horns or handles at the corners. The 

 yolk is in the shape of a walnut, larger or smaller according to 

 the species. In the ElasmdbrancMi, sharks and rays, the ova are 

 not so numerous as those of other fishes, the eggs being gener- 

 ally inclosed in coriaceous or leathery capsules, familiarly known 

 to sea-side visitors as mermaids' purses and the like. 



The egg of the picked dog-fish, the yolk of which is about the 

 size of a pigeon's egg, is used by the inhabitants in parts of Sweden 

 and Norway as a substitute for other eggs in their domestic econ- 

 omy. Cod-roe is sold in London in a dried form, smoked, and thus 

 darkly colored. It is a delicious dish when partly salted, par- 

 boiled, and then fried. Cod-roes are exported in tins to Australia 

 and India in the salted state. The late Frank Buckland examined 



