Their numbers were such that my ambition as observer was amply satisfied.

The eggs were ripe, on the point of hatching, and the warmth of the fire, bright and penetrating, had the effect of sunlight in the open.

I was quick to profit by the unexpected piece of good fortune.
At the orifice of the egg-chamber, among the torn fibres of the bark, a little cone-shaped body is visible, with two black eye-spots; in appearance it is precisely like the fore portion of the butter-coloured egg; or, as I have said, like the fore portion of a tiny fish.

You would think that an egg had been somehow displaced, had been removed from the bottom of the chamber to its aperture.

An egg to move in this narrow passage! a walking egg! No, that is impossible; eggs "do not do such things!" This is some mistake.