Abstract
THE occurrence entitled “A Curiosity in Eggs,” related in NATURE for February 1, is by no means as unusual as your correspondent imagines. It occurs in domestic poultry from over-stimulation of the system by generous feeding. The explanation of the production of one egg within another is very simple. The ovum or yolk when mature is received into the upper part of the oviduct, a tube nearly two feet in length in the domestic fowl, and in its descent is clothed successively with the layers of albumen or white, the lining membrane of the shell, and finally, on arriving at the calcifying portion of the oviduct, is enveloped in the shell. In the ordinary course of events the mature egg is then expelled, but in the case of the production of a double-yolked egg, a reverse action of the oviduct occurs. In place of being expelled, the egg is carried back again to the upper portion of the oviduct, where it meets with another mature ovum, and the two descend together, both being surrounded with a second investing series of albumen, membrane, and shell.
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TEGETMEIER, W. Abnormal Eggs. Nature 49, 366 (1894). https://doi.org/10.1038/049366b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/049366b0
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