The Project Gutenberg eBook, Nests and Eggs of Familiar British Birds, Second Series, by Henry Gardiner Adams

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Title: Nests and Eggs of Familiar British Birds, Second Series

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

Author: Henry Gardiner Adams

Release Date: December 4, 2012 [eBook #41550]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NESTS AND EGGS OF FAMILIAR BRITISH BIRDS, SECOND SERIES***

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,

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 æȝ, 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.

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:—