April 9. 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
25 
EGGS. 
I thought I liad quite done with eggs, as far as pen and 
ink are concerned—the reader may be pleased and amused 
to find, by what follows, that such is not the case. A new 
year has produced a new deposit; and now that the fresh 
laying has begun, it is impossible to state to what extent it 
may be continued. —D. 
“ There appears to me much that is excellent in your 
observations on eggs. That, for instance, of limiting the 
number to hens sitting is most sagacious. I really hope to 
profit by it, and, by proportioning the number of eggs to the 
size of the hen, and the season of her incubation, to rear 
more and healthier birds than formerly I have done. Who 
knows but somewhat of the tendency of my Dorkings to 
that remarkable atrophy, with no observable diminution of 
voracity, which you so ably describe when writing of them, 
may be in some measure provided against and arrested? 
i One procedure I usually adopt, especially in cold weather, to 
! which, if I remember rightly, you do not advert—that is, 
giving the eggs to the hen somewhat tempered with warmth. 
I have the eggs laid upon a flannel in a small handy basket, 
i and placed for a short time just near enough to the kitchen 
fire to raise them to the warmth of that atmosphere. The 
other end of the flannel is then thrown over them, and they 
are carried and put under the hen, who is instinctively 
grateful for the care and tenderness with which you exercise 
your munificence—restoring her own as warm as she left 
them. 
“ This caution is not thrown away. I was speaking, only 
a day or two ago, to a farmer’s daughter about this matter. 
She had sent to me for a set of duck’s eggs I had offered 
her whenever she might have a hen wanting to sit: I dared 
not appear stingy, and send her half-a-dozen—I sent twice 
that number, adding a little advice. On my inquiring how I 
the hen sat, her answer was—‘ Oh ! sir, she wouldn’t take to 
the eggs at all.’ Thus the hen was instinctively more up to 
her work, and the probabilities of unprofitable confinement, 
than her rational owner. Besides, it makes one shudder at 
the idea of a poor hen parting with her vital heat to a dozen 
cold duck’s eggs in the middle of February! I begged this 
young person to use her eggs, and send to me for more. 1 
Tliis she would not hear of, but insisted she could keep 
them a very long time beautifully (!) in bran. She had 
kept some turkey’s eggs last year a very long time before 
she gave them to the turkey to sit upon. She was fain to 
acknowledge that she had very bad luck, ‘ very bad luck 
indeed, with them ! ’ It was waste of man’s noblest faculty 
to endeavour to convince her that her ‘ bad luck ' was her 
own bad management, in keeping her eggs so beautifully 
such a very long time. 
“ The Romans assigned a very significant term to express 
the shell of an egg. They called it putamen. Not only its 
pureness, its smoothness, its faultlessness, but also its 
suggestiveness, is acknowledged and conveyed under this 
expression. It means that an egg is full of thought, or 
material subject for thought, as well as full of meat. And I 
confess to you that‘1 am one of those ’ who indulge many 
very curious notions, sympathies, and susceptibilities, and 
own to much respect and wonder concerning these mys¬ 
terious embryos. I cannot behold the care, the affection, 
the joy and piide of the instinct that has deposited and now 
gathers them under her, cherishes them, broods over them 
long days and nights, speaks to them as if they were already 
sentient existences, without a feeling of inferiority. I would 
give worlds to learn from this mother all the secrets of her 
instinctive knowledge of these fondly-welcomed entities. 
Dare any man assert that more, that influence may not 
supervene? As regards sex: bees can take a worker, and 
make of him, or it, a queen. For colour: the mysterious florist 
runs through the bulb wherein resides the coming year’s 
perfect florescence, the strands of divers colours, which 
impart to the future blossom the hue, or hues, he willeth (?). 
Bear in mind that breaches have been made and repaired in 
the wall of the embryo’s dwellings ; and admit, as you must 
admit, that potent charms and pigments might have been, 
and might be, infused (? ?). Be not incredulous : neither 
believe too well, nor too much. 
“With all these ruminations and regards—these deep con¬ 
victions of the respectability of eggs, you cannot but suppose 
me somewhat qualmish as to the desirableness, and even 
the propriety of eating them. It is not that I attach undue 
weight to the fact that one anticipates a dinner for two in 
thus supplying less than half a breakfast for one, and this 
greatly to the prejudice of an esurient public; neither is it 
that I am a disciple of Pythagoras, or Empedocles, and 
subscribe to the doctrine of Metempsychosis. I had rather 
not believe in the transmigration of souls. That an egg 
is an egg is a consideration with me of interest to 
awaken thoughts profound and grave. I should discover no 
great improvement in the flavour, nor presage amelioration 
of aliment, in being allowed to indulge tbe pleasing per¬ 
suasion that the egg which I might eat might perchance be 
the germ of a musty Forr-elder, about to strut and crow in 
forma Galli, had I not disappointed him. Something rather 
shocking to the finer feelings I may discover in a practice I 
lately heard of—that of an affectionate family extending their 
love to their poultry, and manifesting the universality of their 
tenderness by calling their chickens and ducklings after the 
names of the various members of the family circle. Would 
it not be a startling announcement—‘We’ve got Dick for 
dinner to-day ; will you have his leg ? ’ Again : ‘ May I 
have the pleasure of helping you to a slice of grandma’s 
breast, and a hug-me-close ? ’ ‘ To-day we have frolicsome 
Miss Katie; what can I send you?’ ‘Oh! her merry¬ 
thought, of course.’ Suppose it should happen to be the 
pious maiden-aunt Dinah, who looks more tempting through 
her white sauce than ever she does in her sprucest habili¬ 
ments ; would any of the numerous party ask for, or expect 
to find in her, any merry-thought ? 
“None of these considerations create that trepidation I 
cannot plead guiltless of, whenever I absorb an egg. It is 
not the idea of having eaten what, mature and fattened, 
would have been a more plentiful repast; of having 
swallowed a venerable ancestor or a defunct friend ; but of 
having devoured one’s Triumph ! Conceive the mortification 
of the most remote persuasion of the possibility of having 
mingled with salt and bread-and-butter, ami washed down 
with infusion of souchong and sloe-leaves, a bird that, had 
he not been thus nipped, or rather masticated, in the bud or 
germ, might have stood the proudest, and crowed the 
loudest, in Bingley Hall, at Birmingham 1 Then, again, as 
bantam’s eggs don’t reckon in our tale, I am constrained by 
the government I live under, to see those 'Cla (TLyahievra 
of my charming little pets brought to the breakfast table. 
My terrors are mocked by the administration of three 
smaller, instead of my two larger mouthfuls, without re¬ 
morse or compunction from the purely mathematical calcu¬ 
lation, that my chances ovandi, ah ovo —of an ovation hatched 
out of an egg—are diminished, and my agonies increased, 
exactly in the ratio of three to two. Is it not enough to 
paralyse one’s arm, and cause it to drop from one’s expectant 
lips the morsel that might have eventuated in the faultless 
feather and tbe tail immaculate ? The subject is too nervous 
to be dwelt upon longer. 
“ I must, however, take it as a melancholy datum, that 
whatsoever I may say against the practice, eggs will still be 
part of the food of humanity. The next consideration is, 
how they should be prepared. I do not intend to pass the 
limits of the breakfast-table. There lies my forte. To 
meddle with the multifarious compounds that adorn the 
dinner-table I essay not. One thing I must say, as 
honorable members of ‘ another place ’ declare, when they 
are about to fumble for an hour or two for the handle of a 
subject without finding it—one thing I must say, and that 
is, that we once had fewer religions and one more sauce. 
But I am as far from reminding the world of the egg-sauce 
one used to have when a youngster, with roast turkey or 
chicken, as I would be from recalling the memory of a 
foot-path that once lay through one’s grounds or garden. 
I adhere to the day’s primal meal. 
“ M. de la Fontaine had the honour of repairing the de¬ 
ficiencies of my attainments in French under M. de Couffon. 
Indeed, M. de C. was an able instructor, and, moreover, a 
perfect gentleman ; but he had always to answer me so 
many questions concerning Louis XVI., and bis family, the 
Battle of Waterloo, Trafalgar, the Nile, Ac., Ac., and par¬ 
ticularly to enlighten my young mind as to the number of 
Frenchmen required to beat one Englishman, that the study 
of the French language occupied a merely evanescent point 
of the hour assigned to each lesson. That M. de la Fon- 
