Year: 1871

The correspondent of Scotch paper says :
The dearth of eggs this season is TO be attributed
to the fact that worm and insect life has been
less plentiful than usual by reason of the excep-
tiOnaly cold and ungenial character of the past
quarter. A common idea is that of two or more
eggs of equal size and equal freshness, the one
will be just as good as the other, but
this is great mistake. The egg of well-ied
hen is not only larger as rule, but bulk for
bulk heavier, more nutritious, and of finer fla
vor than that of a hen whose food is scanty or
unsuitable, and if at any time a due supply of
worm or insect life is impossible a substitute in
the shape of fresh minced meat is absolutely
necessary if you would have an egg as full and
fine favored as it would be on your breakfast
table of morning 1t would be impossible,
perhaps, to find anything of equal bulk at once
so delicious and nutritious as really good fresh
egg, and really good fresh egg is raTer far than
people generally wot of


The highest price, perhaps, ever paid for an
egg as an article Of diet was the seven and
twenty silver roubles-about four pounds ster-
ling-paid by Count Schrieswolg, a Russian no.
bleman, for two eggs during the siege Of Magde-
burg, and cheap, too, at the money if, as the
count tells us, they were fresh and good, and
mainly helped to pTolong his life for three days
when he was glad to procure a couple of lean
rats at about the same price as the eggs. One,
however, can easily fancy any amount being
paid for an egg whole and perfect, tOtue teres
0tqUe sOtundur, when fingers, pale and palsied
from hunger, are at the purse strings, but what
think you of one hundred and twenty pounds
sterling for mere egg SHE'LL and that shell not
quite perfect either2 Such was the sum, never
theleSs, actually paid by an ardent ornithologist
of London for an egg shell of the gigantic New
Zealand bird the Moa, now supposed
to be extinct. This egg, with the ex-
ception of another specimen not nearly so per-
feet, the only one of the kind perhaps in exist
ence, was found in a Maori grave about a
cIl Ma
but very high still, as the reader will admit
was the sum of eighty guineas paid for four
eggs of the Great AUX duplicates from the
cabinet of a London naturalist, seventy years
ago. The Great or Greater Auk-Atcd Impen-
ms, Linn; Atcd Major, Bris; at one time COM
mon IN the OrkneyS, and about the Outer
Hebrides, is, like the Moa, now also supposed
to be extinct, no specimen of it having come
under the notice of our naturaiists for many
years. We ourselves have never seen the bird
living or dead though familiar with all its web
feet congeners. We should not grudge under
taking the longest midsummer days Journey
for the privilege of meeting with a tolerably
perfect specimen of the bird at its close, and
examining it at ieaSure, Dearer than either of
the above, and more unpleasant, must have been
the price-fve pounds-paid by the late Mr..
Nlcker of Portrce for a couple of cuckoo's eggs,
which, however, turned out not TO be cuckoo's
eggs at all, but those of the common goat
sucker or nightjar (CdpriDlulguS.) We had
an opportunity of pointing this out to NJ.
Necker in his own house at Portree, the cue
k0o's egg, genuine specimen of which we
afterwards sent him, being not only much less
than the nightjars, but also very differently
marked. On the mistake beng explained to
him he laughed heartily at having been so sold
in the transaction, and quoted French proverb
to the effect that had he been left undisturbed
in his error, his eggs might have passed as the
cuckoo's as well as if they were the genuine ar
ticle.