October 17. THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 49 
shift it is. I think a bed of them would look well in 
the grounds at Sydenham; and if you think two hundred 
and fifty would make a respectable bed, and be acceptable, I 
could answer for their being sent. 
Now let me ask you not to forget your old friends the 
cottagers now you are so enquired after by the nobility, 
gentry, and clergy; for, rest assured, the well-kept garden 
keeps many a poor man from spending the greater part of 
his wages in the gin palace. 
I regret to add that gardens are almost beyond the reach 
of the poor man in this neighbourhood, and to show how 
they are valued, in case of want, they are the last thing they 
part with, and then, with many a mournful look. 
Black Beetles. —A hedgehog is tho best thing you can 
get to clear the house or kitchen of the above pests ; it is 
quite harmless, always out of the way, as it only comes forth 
at night. You should feed it as you would a cat.—A 
Cottage Gabdeneh, Birmingham. 
PHENOMENA IN THE EGGS OF A 
SHANGHAE HEN. 
I feel happy to furnish you with the following particulars, 
in compliance with a wish that has been Expressed that they 
should appear in The Cottage Gardener. 
In the summer of 1850, I bought a Cochin-China cock 
and hen of a poulterer in Piccadilly, being half-grown birds 
of that year. In the autumn of 1852, the hen only laid two 
eggs, and the cock, to whom she was attached, becoming ill, 
and being shut up in a house by himself, the hen never left 
the outside of her mate’s place of confinement, but lay day 
by day at the entrance of it, where she could see him 
through a lath-door. On the cock’s dying, the hen became 
very disconsolate, always lingering about the place where 
the cock had died. Having no mate for her, I gave her, in 
the beginning of the winter, to my brother, who lives in a 
very bleak situation near the sea. Moulting time came on, 
and what with this, and the loss of her husband, and the 
coldness of the situation, the hen lost flesh rapidly. She 
eat but little; her cheeks became pale and sunken, and she 
could scarce stand. Being apparently in a rapid con¬ 
sumption, my brother sent her back to me, that I might do 
as I liked with her. I determined to try and save her if I 
could ; so I placed her in a coop in the brewhouse near the 
oven where it was warm, and commenced feeding her 
generously. I gave her half a pat of fresh butter and a raw 
egg regularly every morning and afternoon. Besides this, 
she had boiled eggs chopped up, mixed beef or mutton, 
pearl barley, the remainders of puddings, and bread. I 
used to give her a small quantity at a time, feeding her 
several times in the day. At first it was with difficulty I 
could persuade her to eat, but soon she fed ravenously. 
She now made flesh very quick; and ere long was so com¬ 
pletely recovered, that my brother could hardly believe her to 
be the same bird. I now let her out, and, from this time, she 
never had any other food than what she got in common with 
the other fowls. One day after this, in the summer of 1853, 
the yard-boy told me that the hen had laid again. Her 
eggs were duly placed on one side for sitting. She laid 
regularly for about four days, and, on the fifth day, on 
going into the laying-house, I found that she had got on 
another bird’s nest. I, therefore, put her on her own nest; 
but, having been disturbed, she left the laying-house alto¬ 
gether, and would not lay that day. The following day, I 
found she had laid an egg as large as a goose’s. Itwas very 
heavy, and from the peculiar way in which it shook, I felt 
certain that there was another egg inside. I, therefore, 
blew the egg to see what it contained, and found, not only 
the ordinary amount of white and yolk with embryo ac¬ 
companying, but also a perfect, common-sized, hard-shelled, 
egg inside. With some little difficulty, I made a hole in the 
inside egg, sucked it, and found it to contain a perfect white, 
and yolk, and embryo. The egg, before the outer one was 
blown, and the inner one sucked, weighed OJozs. The 
following day she laid an ordinary egg. The day after that, 
being disturbed again, she did not lay; and on the following 
day we found another large egg (No. 2), exactly similar in 
every respect to that described above; this weighed 7 ozs. 
Both of these curious eggs, together with the eggs which they 
contained, were pretty perfect in shape, one was quite perfect. 
There was, however, this difference in each, between the 
outer and the inner egg; the inner ones were of the ordinary 
thickness, and of the usual rich chocolate colour of Cochin- 
China eggs ; but the outer ones were extremely thin in the 
shell, so thin, that when first laid the smallest end yielded 
to the slightest pressure, and when the egg became cold, it 
easily cracked. The colour of the outside egg was also, in 
each, much lighter than that of the inner one. After pre¬ 
senting me with these two, she laid irregularly; and when 
she did lay, she laid sometimes an ordinary egg, and some¬ 
times a “ liisus natures." She laid somewhere about sixteen 
or seventeen eggs in all. The extraordinary eggs that she 
laid, besides the two mentioned above, were as follows:— 
No. 3. An ordinary egg with membrane encasing it outside, 
like that which may be seen inside the shell of any common 
egg. The egg inside the membrane contained white, and 
yolk, and embryo. The membrane was tight round the 
shell of the egg it enclosed, except at the top of the egg, 
where the egg contained about a teaspoonful of “ lymph.” 
No. 4. An egg similar to the two first described, but the 
outer egg of the two very crooked in form. No. 5. An 
ordinary egg, with white, yolk, and embryo, and a membrane 
(similar to that of No. 3,) encasing it, with neither “lymph,” 
albumen, yolk, or embryo within it, but wrapped close round 
the egg. No. C. An ordinary egg with white, yolk, and 
embryo, encased by a membrane containing “lymph,” with 
no yolk or embryo. This egg was equal in size to any of 
the three large perfect double ones. No. 7. A shell-less 
membrane, containing only thick “ lymph,” with a very 
small mixture of thin yolk-like appearance, the membrane 
being rather smaller in size than a common egg, and 
running into a tail of about three inches long, and two- 
eighths-of-an-incli in diameter, filled with “lymph,” and 
open at the end. The above eggs are still in our possession. 
Some of them were laid in the laying-house; others were 
dropped about the place. I myself saw her lay one in a 
standing posture, as I was walking through the chicken-yard. 
The hen also laid another egg, similar to the first two de¬ 
scribed; I destroyed the outside shell, and put the inner egg 
under a hen with a sitting of eggs, all of which became addled. 
The hen never sat after laying the eggs ; but from this time, 
to the autumn of 1853, (when she was killed, owing to her 
becoming consumptive again,) she always sat on her nest in 
the laying-house for a couple of hours every morniny, 
whether there were any eggs for her to sit on or not. I 
think that eggs, Nos. 3, 5, 6, 7, plainly showed how eggs, 
Nos. I, 2, and 4, were formed. When the hen was prevented 
laying her egg, the unlaid egg remained within her, and the 
second day’s egg formed outside the unlaid one. Whenever 
she was two whole days without laying, two perfect eggs 
were formed, the one within the other. When she was more 
than one day without laying, but laid before the second day 
was fully expired, the first day’s unlaid egg had the shell¬ 
less membrane encasing it, with the membrane either 
empty, or partly filled, or completely filled with lymph or 
albumen, as above described, in proportion to the time when 
she laid it. Nobody can doubt that her having been pre¬ 
viously semi-barren, and having recovered from her severe 
illness in so remarkable a manner, had something to do with 
the wonderful character of the eggs she afterwards laid; but 
what her internal structure was, and what enabled her to 
lay eggs of so extraordinary a nature, it is impossible to 
conceive. She was sentenced to death without my know¬ 
ledge, when I was away from home. Had I been at home, 
I might have been able to institute a post-mortem examina¬ 
tion, which was not done. I should be interested if any of 
your readers could solve this mystery.— Henry A. Hammond, 
St. Albans-Court, Kent 
WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE CRYSTAL 
PALACE. 
(Continued from paye 15.) 
Piranesi’s view of ancient Rome, some quarter of a century 
ago, were only known to a few hundred connoisseurs and ar¬ 
chitectural artists ; at the present time, we apprehend, they 
