Unless an egg is perfectly fresh it is unfit for any purpose. You may try the freshness of eggs by putting them in a pan of cold water. Those that sink the soonest are the freshest. Eggs may be preserved a short time by putting them in a jar of salt or lime-water with the small ends downwards. The salt should not afterwards be used. They may be preserved several months by greasing them all over with melted mutton suet, and wedging them close together in a box of bran. The small ends always downwards.

There are, of course, several sorts of eggs, according to the species of poultry which produce them. The turkey egg is the largest and the most delicate, after which, in point of flavor, is the guinea-hen's, and, in that of size, those of the goose and duck. Although all these are employed in cookery, yet the eggs of the "common barn-door fowl" are those most generally used when served up separately and boiled in the shell, in which case the main point is their entire freshness. This can partly be judged of by putting them between you and the light, and seeing that the white is clear and the yolk unclouded; for although nothing can be more delicately nutritive when newly laid, few things are more nauseous when they are stale.