The daily morning journal and courier., 1901-11-02
THE HOME OF THE SEA EGG
A Queer Article of Food In the Wes

A Queer Article of Food in the West
 Indies.
 q never tasted more delicious food
 while there than the sea egg and cou-
 cou made from the maize of Indian
 corn English Traveller Relating His
 Visit to Barbados.
 Tit ti an tan tan!
 | Tit Il afi tan tan!
 Tit ii an tan tan!
 Such was the familiar cry that used
 to wake us from our morning slumbers
 some years ago. Alas those days are gone The sea egg Is nearly thing of ! the past. Shall we ever again see those large shells that Roach and others of l that ilk used to hawk about our city, | thus affording ouE.mothers the oppor- tunity of giving us cheap, wholesome and delicious breakfast? Surely fate hasdealt hardly with us. The misera- ble attenuated articles sometimes sold and called sea eggs are not to be com pared with those of former years. What Is the cause? Many have tried to solve the mystery, but the fact re- mains that the sea egg of the present day are 8 miserable failure. Had the matter been adjudicated by the fisher men of St. Philips and Christ church parishes, we must have arrived at wiser conclusion as to the cause of their scarcity, whereas under present circumstances the industry bids fair to cease entirely.
 The home of the sea egg is or used to be, the windward part of this is- land. Some are found to leeward, but not in quantities to encourage trade in them. In former years they were not only to be found in the shallow waters to windward but reaching out as far as men could dive They were found in such numbers that men would carry down a bag, and with piece of iron hoop scrape them up until they had as many as they could possibly bring to the surface. Those days have passed away, and the primary cause is the ab- sence of rough seas that used to prevail in the past years. Let any one exam inc a sea egg as 1t is taken out of the water. Break it in two with a knife and he will see a mass of slime and strings in the center. If the sea egg hasattained it's full strength or nearly so, there will be seen rows of flesh at tached to the shell that look like the eggs of the lobster. Now these are not eggs. They are positively the flesh of the sea eggs. If these are the eggs, where is the body? We see eggs in the lobster whether inside or after they have spawned, but we also see that they emanate from the body of the lobster We see eggs in the roes of many fish, as the flying fish, dolphin, billfsh, conger eel, etc.. but they also come from the body of the fish. These l so-called eggs have not the germ of | life in them, and, should the sea egg not be broken, they perish without per ! petuating their species. It is only l when the sea egg is broken by the | waves against the stones in the sea | that the real embryo of the future sea egg is released, and, fastening itself to the stones, becomes in time sea egg. If any one finds sea egg and breaks 1t While he is in the water, ne soon | feels a stinging sensation in his body | that is in the water Let him examine | the cause and he will see a quantity of small black objects that have come out of the sea egg, and which as they touch his body cause this stinging sensation. This is the egg of the future sea egg, and the more of these that are released the more sea eggs we will have.
 The surging seas of past years, while destroying millions of sea eggs in wa ter so deep that no human agency could reach them, yet released these eggs, which in their turn became the sea sggs of the following year, The so- called eggs perished. Now we have had no surging seas latterly. The