Observations on eggs

The egge you sent with this notable signature of the figure of a duck soe fully detail'd as to the body, head, eye & bill somewhat open'd from the shall, all in a... colour, was a point greatly remarkable & one, not made out by phancy butt apprehended by every eye, is a present greatly remarkable.

The like I had not formerly seen though have very intentively looked upon the goose egge in Aldrovandus with man's head & hayre sped furie-like & terminating in some shape of geese heads. Though not meeting with any discourse thereon, I suspected much made out by fancy in that discription.

In stones wee find trees & often in common flints: in agates sometimes arise figures beyond all help of imagination & in such pit stones wee have found scews, snakes, darts, cockles &c.

Butt I.... the figures of bullheads in the gutts of... pressed out, & the figure....& head in the drye lyme of a cock.

Some not restraining the power of imagination might think this some character from the coition or attempt of a duck which sometimes will follow & least attempt to treaad hens.

Others at least conceive it some genetive impression from the seminall factor in impregnation, which breede... spred into excurrsorie assimulations in the remoter parts.

Others, considering the rare contingency, might conceive it a casuall stayne from some uterine tincture while it lay in the matrix in a softer covering before exclusion, yet in the progresse it may receave impression from some exudation from the vessells of the matrix, whereby sometimes wee meet with egges with bloody tinctures on the shell, & since we receaved this of soe notable a figure, wee have seen another of the same tincture confusedly dispersed through the greatest part thereof without making out any figure.

That the shell was made in the uterus & plastick power which formeth other parts of the egge, not by induration or harddening upon exclusion, is evident to observation in such as are found hard in the egge poke, which Dr. Harvey handsomely confirmeth from an egge found within another, wherein the inmost is fully shelled & hard