Of all articles of diet, eggs are perhaps the most generally accepted; they are relished alike by sage and savage, and form a nutritious meal for prince or peasant. Nor is the taste for this universal food confined to mankind, for the hens themselves, the providers of the feast, often develop cannibalistic tendencies, and will peck and devour the very egg they have just deposited with so much care and cackling; whilst snakes will lie in wait for the delicate morsel, and will either swallow it whole, or tap it with their teeth and suck out the contents; and rats are credited with making wheelbarrows of themselves, allowing themselves to be pulled along by the ears by their comrades, in order to secure the prize held safely in their paws. Dogs also often develop a taste for eggs, which they will steal from the nest without compunction, the only cure for the propensity being to hold a hot egg in the mouth of the delinquent. Monkeys, and particularly baboons, will also diligently seek for and greedily devour all the eggs they can lay their hands on, and are consequently much dreaded by small birds. But, probably, rapacious birds are the greatest devourers of the eggs of other species. It seems a well authenticated fact, that the grey crow in Africa, will carry stones up to a considerable height and drop them into an ostrich nest, in order to crack the hard shell which would otherwise be prohibitive of the coveted feast; whilst travellers assert that wild ostriches always place several eggs round the nest to serve as food for the young when first hatched.

Happily for mankind, the eggs of noxious reptiles and insects are relished as well as hen's eggs, and thus the excessive increase of deadly reptiles is prevented. The ichneumon greedily devours the eggs of snakes and crocodiles, and white ants' eggs are considered delicacies, even by men. In our own country the magpie and the jay are notorious thieves of the eggs of smaller birds; whilst turkeys, pheasants, and guinea-fowls, will swallow millions of ant eggs in a day, if they can get them.

The problem which puzzled the learned, centuries ago, as to which was first created, the egg or the hen, has never yet been unravelled. Theologians would probably say, the hen, certainly; but Darwin would be in favour of the eggt as being of the nature of that protoplasm from which all life originates. The ancients were certainly of Darwin's opinion, and looked upon the earth itself as developed from an egg by the power of various divinities, hence the egg became a sacred symbol in many countries, was hung up in Egyptian temples, and represented in paintings and sculptures as encircled in the folds of the good Agatho-daemon, the serpent worshipped in so many lands, and which was doubtless connected with that other famous egg of antiquity, the serpent's egg of the Druids.

If we visit the British Museum we shall see eggs and egg-stands of various shapes and sizes, which have been found in tombs in Egypt, Greece, and Etruria; among the Etruscan relics are several ostrich eggs beautifully painted. These sepulchral eggs were, doubtless, symbolical of a future life, but were also probably designed as food for the dead, for it was well-nigh a universal practice to provide food for the departed spirit, a practice still in use among savages.

The eggs which are given at Easter time are supposed to symbolise the Resurrection, but it is certain that the custom originated in pre-Christian times. Eggs wrapped in various-coloured ribbons, and boiled - thus receiving the dye from the ribbon used - were formerly sent as Easter gifts. These are still sometimes seen in little shops, but the Easter eggs now sent as presents by those who can afford them do not owe their origin to any feathered fowl, but are artificially made of various substances, and filled with gifts of differing value, from chocolate creams to diamond rings or costly shawls. It is both curious and interesting to note that in almost all countries this custom of giving and receiving brightly coloured eggs at a spring festival, has prevailed from time immemorial; hence, probably, we see in the painted ostrich eggs from Etruscan tombs, which are at least two thousand years old, the spring gift of friends to the beloved dead. A writer in the Standard some years ago, in a very interesting article traced this custom to China; he says: - 'Gustave Schlegel, during his official residence in China as representative of the Netherlands, in his interesting and erudite researches through a mass of Chinese literature discovered that the "painted eggs," as they are called in China, were used in the great Spring Festival of Tsing-ming, and are noticed in the records of the ancient State of King-ts-oo under the date B.C. 722. The giving gifts to one another of brightly coloured hard-boiled eggs at this season he also found occurring in the annals of the old State of Ye, between the dates b.c. 481 - b.c. 255. Schlegel tells us the custom is met with in the records of the Tang Dynasty, a.d. 618 - a.d. 907. It seems the custom originated in China in this wise. Annually, at the mid-spring time of year, which answers to our Easter, Chinese functionaries were sent out through the towns, villages, and country parts, each armed with a wooden bell, their duty being to make proclamation that all fires must be put out, and must remain out for the space of three days, after which, by the friction of two pieces of wood, new fire was obtained, and from this the household hearths were rekindled. The three days specified seems to have been intended to ensure that no smouldering ember should by any possibility linger anywhere in the Celestial Empire. For as the old Chinese writer has it - "All fire under the expanse of Heaven ought to be extinguished before the new fire is lighted." During those three days "sacred to the revival of spring and the sun's heat," when in honour of the sun there must be no fire, of course no cooking was possible. It is highly probable a large number of the less devout among the millions of John Chinaman's compatriots were ill-pleased to have to submit to the cheerless, unpalatable diet imposed upon them while the fast from fire lasted. At any rate, the Chinese feast of Tsing-ming came to be popularly called the "Cold Meat Festival." Hard-boiled eggs would, of course, be an acceptable addition to the prepared viands to be used during the fireless three days. Whether they were so used before I know not, but it is attributed to a certain "powerful chieftain of antiquity" who lived in the before-named ancient State of King-ts-oo to have been the first person who laid in stores of "painted eggs," and set the fashion of dispensing them as gifts to friends and acquaintances at that same time of year when we celebrate Easter.'