Henry had seen thrushes’ eggs, and eaten hens’ eggs, but they were so unlike this black leather bag that he thought his papa must be joking.
PURSE OF SKATE.
“Not the egg of a bird, but of a fish. As we came through the market to-day, I showed you some flat and very ugly fishes, with eyes and mouth something like those of a human being, and with a long tail like that of a quadruped.”
Henry remembered to have seen them, and that they were called skates. “And is this the egg of a skate?”
Not exactly the egg, but the egg-shell. There was once a yelk in it, something like that in a hen’s egg. Out of this yelk a young skate grew, and when it was large enough it forced its way out through this end.
Mr. Miller pinched one end of the egg-shell, or purse, as it is called, between his finger and thumb, holding it as one would a letter which one wanted to read without breaking the seal, and the end of the purse opened.
“And did it float about in the water while the young fish was growing, or was it laid on the beach?”
“Neither: if it had been left to float about in the water, it would soon have been eaten by gulls, or driven ashore; and how can fishes lay their eggs on the land? No, it was left by the fish among the weed which grows at the bottom of the sea, and the hooked horns held on by the stem of one of them, until the fish had escaped. The late storm, I suppose, tore it away from the weeds and washed it ashore. I have found them with a yelk in them, but this rarely happens.”