Wind-eggs are smaller, less palatable, and more liquid
than true eggs, and are produced in greater numbers. When they are put
under the mother bird, the liquid contents never coagulate, but both
the yellow and the white remain as they were. Wind-eggs are laid by
a number of birds: as for instance by the common hen, the hen
partridge, the hen pigeon, the peahen, the goose, and the vulpanser.
Eggs are hatched under brooding hens more rapidly in summer than in
winter; that is to say, hens hatch in eighteen days in summer, but
occasionally in winter take as many as twenty-five. And by the way for
brooding purposes some birds make better mothers than others. If it
thunders while a hen-bird is brooding, the eggs get addled.
Wind-eggs that are called by some cynosura and uria are produced
chiefly in summer. Wind-eggs are called by some zephyr-eggs, because
at spring-time hen-birds are observed to inhale the breezes; they do
the same if they be stroked in a peculiar way by hand. Wind-eggs can
turn into fertile eggs, and eggs due to previous copulation can change
breed, if before the change of the yellow to the white the hen that
contains wind-eggs, or eggs begotten of copulation be trodden by
another cock-bird.
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