“Well,” answered Cousin Jasper, as they all looked at the eggs in the sand, “a turtle lays eggs like a hen, but she cannot hover over them, and hatch them, as a hen can, because a turtle has no warm feathers. You know it takes warmth and heat to make an egg hatch. And, as a turtle isn’t warm enough to do that, she lays her eggs in the warm sand, and covers them up. The heat of the sun, and the warm sand soon hatch the little turtles out of the eggs.”
“Would turtles come out of these eggs?” asked Nan.
“Really, truly?” added Flossie.
“Just as surely as little chickens come out of hen’s eggs,” answered Cousin Jasper. “But they must be kept warm.”
“Then we’d better cover ’em up again!” exclaimed Freddie. “We found the turtle’s eggs when we were digging in the sand—Flossie and me. And I didn’t know they were there and I busted one of the eggs. First I thought they were white stones, but when I busted one, and the white and yellow came out, I found they were eggs.”
“And the shells aren’t hard,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, as she leaned over the hole and touched the queer eggs in the sand-nest. “The shells are like the shell of a soft egg a hen sometimes lays.”
“Except that the shells, or rather, skins, of these eggs are thicker than those of a chicken,” explained Cousin Jasper. “These egg-skins are like a piece of leather. If they were hard, like the eggs of a hen, perhaps the little turtles could not break their way out, as a turtle, though it can give a hard bite, has no pointed beak to pick a hole in the shell.”
“Well, you have made quite a discovery,” said Mr. Bobbsey to the little twins. “Better cover the eggs up now, so the little turtles in them will not get cold and die.”
“Are there turtles in them now?” asked Freddie.
“No, these eggs must be newly laid,” Cousin Jasper said. “But if they are kept warm long enough the little turtles will come to life in them and break their way out. Would you like some to eat?” he asked Mr. Bobbsey.