1 May, 1902.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 359 
Australian scale, being only 14d. to 2d. for ten eggs, but rising in the breeding 
seasons to 2s. for the samenumber. The eggs collected in the cheap time of 
the year are sent away to various countries, and sold at a good profit. Germany 
receives 37 per cent., while 30 per cent. goes to Austria, and 22 per cent. to 
Great Britain. Russia also goes in extensively for the “ yoke-and-white” . 
system, which takes up less room and reduces the freight, and the chances 
of breakages are done away with. The yolks are separated from the whites. 
During the years of 1898 to 1900 no less than 16,200 ewt. of yolks and 
2,580 ewt. of whites were exported to Germany, Denmark, Great Britain, and 
Holland, Germany and Great Britain taking by far the most whites. Thus 
Russia satisfies a considerable part of the ege consumption of Europe, and 
from sources that are primitive in the extreme, and under circumstances that 
are in some respects adverse when compared with the advantages possessed in 
Australia asa poultry raising and egg producing country.— Adelaide Observer. 
THE WET EGG. 
An egg when it is laid is a wet egg (the shell is wet), and the longer you 
can keep an egg wet the fresher it will remain. This is a truth, expounded, I 
believe, for the first time, and has never before appeared in print. Why do we 
hear so much, especially through the winter months, about bad and stale eggs ? 
We know that hens with all their faults never lay stale eggs; we also know, to 
our cost, that but few hens during the winter lay any eggs at all, good or bad! 
Then where do we get our stale British eggs from? We stupidly make them 
‘stale by dry storing. If all British eggs were wet stored the day they were 
laid, such a thing as a bad or even an indifferent egg would become a novelty, a 
curiosity, instead of being an everyday article of commerce. We all know that 
an ege becomes stale by keeping, but let me add, by improper keeping. If an 
egg is kept a week it is far from fresh, if kept a month it becomes very stale, 
even objectionable ; if kept three or four months it becomes what is termed 
“the egg,” “shop egg,” “the foreigner,” “not warranted,” or, to be more 
precise, the bad or rotten egg! 
We all know what dry storing is, when we look at a lot of eggs in a shop 
window or upon a shelf in the farmer’s larder. Wet storing is the placing of 
eggs the day they are laid in glass water, and leaving them there until they are 
sold or required for immediate use. It matters not whether they have been wet 
stored a week, a month, or even five or six months, they continue equally fresh 
and always good alike. Surely this is a matter of some importance to the 
British farmer, the shopkeeper, and to every housekeeper? There is one way, 
and only one way, of forcing our farmers and shopkeepers to practise a little 
care and attention on the freshness of the eggs they supply. Let all house- 
keepers refuse to purchase British eggs from any shop unless they see them 
taken wet out of the preserving pan, and let all shopkeepers refuse to take in 
farmers’ eggs except with a guarantee that they have all been wet stored the 
day they were collected from the nests. There is no more trouble to wet store 
than to dry store, the only difference being placing the eggs in a dry box or 
basket in the one ease, and into a bucket one-third filled with water glass in 
the other instance. Where, then, is the extra labour? Lime-water has, for a 
century or more, been used in many private families as a preservative, but 
water glass is far better. The American and our own agricultural experimental 
farms and colleges have conclusively proved that glass-preserved eggs, even 
after six months’ storing, were as nearly equal to a “new laid” as a preserved 
ege can possibly be. Eggs kept in lime-water after several months’ immersion 
are apt to partake of a limey flavour and are only used for kitchen purposes, 
but not for the egg-cup.* 1 can speak personally as to the efficacy of water 
glass, for I have just finished two 9-gallon barrels of eggs, which I so preserved 
* Not if properly cared for—i.e., kept as much as possible from warmth and air.—Ed. Q.A.J. 
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