BIRDS, SECOND SERIES***


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NESTS AND EGGS OF FAMILIAR BRITISH BIRDS,

Described and Illustrated; With an Account of the Haunts and Habits
of the Feathered Architects, and Their Times and Modes of Building;

SECOND SERIES.

by

H. G. ADAMS.

Author of "Favorite Song Birds," "Beautiful Butterflies,"
"Humming Birds," &c., &c.

With Eight Coloured Plates of Eggs,
Containing Thirty-Eight Different Species.







London:
Groombridge and Sons, 5, Paternoster Row.
M DCCC LVII.




INTRODUCTION.

WHAT IS AN EGG?


It may at first strike our young readers that this is a question very
easily answered; if they think so, let them try what sort of an answer
they can give to it, and if they break down in the definition, we will
endeavour to help them, as we are told in the old fable, Jupiter did
the waggoner; but it is best for young people to _try_, and, for that
matter, old people too; let them never believe that they _can't_ do a
thing--"where there's a will there's a way." Many a boy that will take
a deal of pains, and incur no inconsiderable risk of life and limb, to
climb up a tree after a bird's nest, finds it too much trouble to read
and learn about the habits of the creature he is thus ready to deprive
of its warm comfortable home and beautiful eggs. He cannot tell you, if
you ask him, of what the nest is composed, nor how, nor when it was
built, much less can he answer the question which we have just put to
our readers,--

WHAT IS AN EGG?

"Well," we hear some one say, "an Egg is a thing of an oval shape,
large or small, white or coloured and speckled, as the case may be; it
has a shell which breaks if you knock it, because it is brittle; and
inside is a yellow substance called the yolk, surrounded by a white,
clear liquid; if you boil it for a little time it becomes _set_, so
that you can take it up in a spoon, and in this state it is good to
eat. Oh! very good, I like an egg, especially for breakfast, with a
little salt; and then eggs, and other things with them, make custards,
and pancakes, and puddings, and all sorts of nice things; and then I
recollect some such funny '_Stanzas to an Egg by a Spoon_,' which begin,

    'Pledge of a feathered pair's affection,
      Kidnapped in thy downy nest,
    Soon for my breakfast--sad reflection!
      Must thou in yon pot be drest.'"

Well, never mind the rest. Now listen to our definition of an Egg. The
word itself, we may observe first of all, is of Saxon origin; that this
is how the ancient dwellers on our island used to write it aeg, you may
call it _aeg_ or _oeg_, which you like. Johnson says the term means,
"That which is laid by feathered and some other animals, from which
their young is produced;" it is also, we are told by the same
authority, "the spawn or sperm of other creatures," as fish, which
are said, you know, not to lay eggs, but to _spawn_. Another
dictionary-maker defines it to be "the _ovum_ of birds," giving us here
the Latin for egg, hence that peculiar shape is called _oval_, and the
science of eggs is sometimes termed


OVOLOGY.

As we have told you in the first volume of this series, _Oology_ is
another term for this science, which has occupied the attention of many
learned men, who have gone deeper into Eggs than ever you or I shall,
and told us such strange things about them, as would scarcely be
believed by the very hens that laid them. Little does the happy mother
think, when she goes cackling about the yard, proclaiming the event,
that she has produced such a wonderful object. It looks a simple affair
enough, one might make a thing very like it with a piece of chalk;
touch it, roll it about; boil it, eat it, or crack it, and let the
inside flow out; there's the yellow, and there's the white; there's
nothing very particular in that, all eggs are so. Well, who made them
so? and of what _are_ they made? and what reason is there for this
peculiar arrangement of the different parts of an Egg? and how is it
that, under certain circumstances, so complete a change should take
place in the nature of its contents--that the fluids should be
gradually absorbed into a solid body, and that, by and by, at the end
of a period which can be calculated to a nicety, the shell should be
burst open, and there should come forth a living creature? Truly this
_is_ wonderful; but we are surrounded by wonders, and only heed them
not because they are so common.

    _Common_ is the