16 BULLETIN 775, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
CONDITION OF COMMERCIAL PACKAGES AS STORED. 
Most warehouses require an examination of the cases of eggs for 
mechanical damage before permitting them to be taken to the cold- 
storage rooms, the thoroughness of the examination depending upon 
the strictness of the management. The officials of some warehouses 
demand that representative portions of carload lots be inspected, 
while others ask that each case be examined. In some cold-storage 
plants the examinations are made by the employees; in others, by the 
patrons. In the latter instance some firms exercise more care in 
inspection than the rulings of the warehouse require. In the ware- 
house where the eggs used in these investigations were stored, each 
patron examines his eggs and usually every case is opened. The top 
layers of each case are examined without being removed (PI. V, fig. 1), 
or they are lifted from the case and both the upper and lower sides 
examined (PL V, fig. 2 and PL VI, fig. 1). When evidences of broken 
eggs are found in the top fillers (PL VI, fig. 2) each layer is inspected, 
and all leaking eggs discovered are replaced by eggs with whole shells 
in dry fillers. If no breakage is found in the top layers the remaining 
layers are undisturbed. 
The cases of eggs under observation were inspected according 
to the system shown in Plate V, figure 2, and Plate VI, figure 2. 
These cases, then, represented the condition of commercial packages 
on entering storage. The eggs were next candled to determine 
quality and to ascertain the number of dirty, cracked, leaking, and 
bad eggs included with the good, clean eggs. Representative 
samples were also broken to further discover the quality and to 
find the number of bad eggs not recognized by candling, and 
samples of the liquid edible product were prepared for chemical 
analysis (Table 9, "Eggs as stored", and Tables 12 and 13). 
