The chick-making materials, exclusive of water, form only one-quarter of the weight of the liquid contents, or only about two hundred grains.
This seems to be a small beginning upon which to rear a full-grown rooster. The bulk or quantity as found in hens' eggs, and indeed in the eggs of all birds, is wonderfully disproportionate to the size of the mother bird. The laying of eggs must be regarded as a particularly exhausting process, and yet fowls will keep it up for a long time and not lose much in flesh. We have known a hen of the game variety which has laid twenty-two eggs in twenty-two consecutive days, and they average in weight one thousand grains each. This gives in amount twenty-two thousand grains, or rather more than three pounds avoirdupois, of which about two and a quarter pounds is water. The dozen or more ounces of rich, nutritive material, parted with in twenty-two days, would seem to be a prodigious draught upon the small physical structure of the bird, but there were no indications of exhaustion.
Whilst it is true that the quickening of an egg which results in the birth of a chick, is no more marvellous a process or result than the embryotic development of any creature endowed with the mysterious principle of life, yet there are some circumstances connected with it which make it a matter of greater perplexity and wonder. Here is an oval white body consisting of a calcareous shell, within which there are some semi-fluid substances, consisting mainly of albumen and water, without any signs of life. In fact, there is no life; it is simply a mass of dead, inanimate matter. Talk as much as we will about the germinal principles involved in the structure of the egg, we are totally unable to recognize it, or form any conception of its nature.
There is no evidence of the presence of any germ or principle of life whatever. The egg left to itself decays like other organized substances, but with our assistance in simply transferring it to a place where the temperature is in a certain uniform condition, in a few weeks, the albumen, water, oil and mineral salts are transferred into a living chick, which thrusts its little beak through the shell, and in ten minutes is running about, almost able to take care of itself.
Here is the development of life apparently without the agency of the mother, and what a marvel! The chemist may place together in a body in a warm place, just such elements or substances: he may carefully weigh the water, the albumen, the phosphotic compounds, the sulphur, the iron, soda, etc., and construct a very accurate egg mixture, but out of it all there will never come a living chick. In this, we obtain some idea how little we actually know about life, how dark is the region where the life principle begins, or where the vital forces originate. The indefatigable man of science has pushed his inquiries close up to the boundary between the inanimate and the animate; but he has never been able to obtain the least glimpse of anything upon the life side of the line. However great maybe our curiosity, our skill or knowledge in this state of existence, there is not the least probability that we shall ever be able to endow matter with life, or know much more than we do at present of its origin or nature.
Auntie, to a little four-year-old who is resting his head on the table—"Ah, Louis, you are sleepy; you will have to go to bed." "Oh, no, auntie, I aren't sleepy; but my head is loose, so I laid it down here."