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 vital air,
      _Common_ is the azure sky,
    _Common_ flowers are everywhere,
      _Common_ stars shine out on high:
    Music of the forest bird,
      Cometh without stint or measure,
    Friendly smile and loving word,
      _Common_ are as joy and pleasure;
    Why from _common_ things then turn,
    And for the _uncommon_ yearn?

But about this common thing, an Egg? It is the germ or seed, so to
speak, of animal life; in it is contained all that is necessary for the
formation of the perfect living creature; in that little oval case lie
snugly packed up, bones, and muscles, and sinews, and all the delicate
parts, organs, as they would be called, from a Greek word signifying an
instrument, thus the tongue is an organ of speech, the eye of sight,
and so on. But all these organs are in an _undeveloped_ state, as the
flower is in the bud; develope is a French word, and signifies to
unroll, or unfold. The animal is there in _embryo_; this again is
Greek, and means a thing unperfected, or unfinished, so the poet
Thompson says:--

            "While the promised fruit
    Lies yet a little _embryo_ unperceived,
    Within its crimson folds."

And so with closer reference to our subject, we might say,

            While the promised bird
    Lies yet a little _embryo_ unperceived,
    Within its oval shell.

Dr. Harvey, who made that great discovery, the circulation of the
blood, uttered a truth when he said _omne animal ex ovo_, every animal
is born of an egg, for although some animals are _oviparous_, and
others _viviparous_,--the two words come from _ovum_ egg, _vivum_ life,
and _pario_ to bring forth--yet may the first stage of all animal life
be compared to an Egg. From the smallest insect up to the most huge and
unwieldy creature that swims in the deep sea, or walks upon the land.
All were at one time alike, mere specks, surrounded by fluid matter,
which afforded the material for growth and nourishment, and enclosed in
some kind of a case, which if not exactly like an egg shell, answers
the same purpose of protection from injury.

What a vast difference is there between the bright-winged insect, whose
history we traced in our volume on Butterflies, and the bird with downy
plumage and the voice of melody; between that again and the great
crocodile, in his scaly coat of mail; the mighty boa constrictor, king
of serpents; or that tyrant of the deep, the fierce voracious shark;
and yet all these come from Eggs, very similar in form, and precisely
so in their nature and internal construction. Look too at the
difference in size, between the egg of the Humming Bird, no bigger than
a pea, and that of the Ostrich, as large as a man's head nearly, or
bigger still that of the Epyornis, of which fossil remains have been
found in Madagascar, the contents of which must have been equal to six
ostrichs', or one hundred and forty-eight common hens' eggs, that is
about seventeen English pints; and yet in all these the germ, or as it
would be called, the vital principle, that is, the principle of life,
is but a tiny speck, or circle, which is attached to the membrane that
surrounds the yellow portion, or yolk; it is from this that the animal
in embryo derives nourishment, and the size of it, and consequently of
the whole egg, is in proportion to the quantity that is required to
sustain life, until the protection of the shell is no longer necessary.
There is only so much food stored up as the bird, or reptile, or
whatever it may be, requires before it is strong enough to make an
opening in its prison, and come forth to provide for itself, or be fed
by the parent. Some creatures that eventually attain a large size are
born, or _hatched_, as it is termed, comparatively small; thus the size
of the egg is not always in proportion to that of the animal which lays
it; the crocodile's egg, for instance, is but little larger than that
of the common fowl; the young comes forth like a small lizard, about
two or three inches long, takes to the water at once, and begins to
catch insects on its own account; its mother may be twenty or thirty
feet in length. Most creatures that produce eggs small in proportion to
their size lay a great many; this is especially the case with fish,
whose _spawn_ must be numbered by millions: it has been calculated that
if the young of a single pair of herrings were suffered to breed
undisturbed, they would in twenty years together make up a bulk six
times the size of the earth; but so many creatures feed upon this
spawn, that few of the eggs of which it is composed ever come to young
fish, that is comparatively few, for the vast shoals which every year
visit our shores, for the purpose of depositing their spawn in shallow
water, shew that immense numbers must escape the dangers to which they
are exposed. There are some fish of the fierce and rapacious kind, such
as the Ray, the Dog-fish, and the Shark, which attain a considerable
size before they lose the protection of the egg-shell, which is of a
very peculiar shape and construction, being of a leathery texture,
flat, and four-cornered, with a long curling string-like projection
from each corner; frequenters of the coast, to whom they are very
familiar objects, being often cast up on the beach, call them Mermaid's
purses, and Fairy-purses, while the clustered Eggs of the Cuttle-fish
they term Sea Grapes.

All eggs require warmth to hatch them; the fishes know this, not as we
know it, because we have read, or been told so, and can _reason_ upon
causes and consequences, and so understand _why_, but they know it
_instinctively_; they possess, in common with all unreasoning
creatures, what we call _instinct_, that is, a natural impulse to do in
the right way, and at the proper time, whatever may be necessary for
the maintenance of that state of existence in which God has placed
them; so instinct directs the fishes when the time for spawning has
arrived, to leave the deep waters, where they generally remain safe
from the pursuit of man, for the shores, where the warmth of the sun
can reach the eggs, and awaken the principle of life within them. So
instinct teaches the bird to leave its winter home, in some far
southern country, and fly hundreds of miles across land and ocean, to
reach a spot suitable for the purpose of breeding and rearing its
young; to collect the materials and to build its nest, and after the
eggs are laid, to sit patiently on them the appointed time; to select
the food proper for those little gaping bills, and to tend the
fledglings carefully, until they are able to fly and provide for
themselves, and then, when their wings are strong enough for the
journey, and their food begins to get scarce, away they go back to the
south of Europe, or Africa, straight as an arrow, and the young ones,
which have never flown that way before, seem to know it as well as
those which have been backwards and forwards, often and often.

But the egg, what of that? Can we describe its nature and construction
in a way sufficiently clear for our readers to understand? Let us
try:--it is like a series of cases or envelopes, one within the other;
the outer one only, which is the last formed, being hard and unelastic,
that is, it will not stretch or change its shape. Like the shells of
some fish, and other testaceous animals, it is composed of carbonate of
lime, which the animal has the power of secreting, as it is called,
from its food. Hens sometimes lay soft eggs, without a shell; this
shews a deficiency of the secreting power, or a want of the necessary
material, and may generally be remedied by mixing some chalk with the
food, or scattering it about the yard. Next to the shell is a skin
called the _membrana putaminis_, that means the membrane or skin of the
shell; it has also a Greek name--_chorian_; it is divided into two
layers, which separate at the larger end, and leave a space called the
_vesicula aeris_, that is, air vesicle, or little bladder; this
contains the air necessary for the chick to breathe before it chips the
shell. Enclosed in this membrane is the _albumen_, or white fluid,
sometimes called the _glair_, from the Latin _glarea_; in the same
language _albus_ means white; and our readers who live in Albion, so
called from her chalky cliffs, ought to see at once from whence we
derive the word _albumen_; the little chords by which this bag of fluid
is suspended are called _chalaza_; this word comes