How many people crack an egg, swallow the meat, and give it no further
thought. Yet, to a reflective mind the egg constitutes, it has been
said, the greatest wonder of nature. The highest problems of organic
development, and even of the succession of animals on the earth, are
embraced here. "Every animal springs from an egg," is a dictum of Harvey
that has become an axiom.
In an egg one would suppose the yolk to be the animal. This is not so.
It is merely food--the animal is the little whitish circle seen on the
membrane enveloping the yolk.
We hope to group a number of eggs, to enable our readers to compare
their size and shape, from that of the Epyornis, six times the size of
an Ostrich egg, down to the tiny egg that is found in the soft nest of
the Humming-bird. This gigantic egg is a foot long and nine inches
across, and would hold as much as fifty thousand Humming-bird's eggs.