Growing Up (de Schweinitz)/Chapter 2

by Karl de Schweinitz

Where Eggs Grow

Chapter II

Where Eggs Grow

Lions, elephants, dogs, horses, alligators, fish, robins, chickens, frogs all begin their lives in the same way that you did. They start as tiny eggs.

Even trees, carrots, roses, lilies, and other plants grow from eggs, that is, they grow from seeds and the seeds grow from eggs. The poppy seeds, the sunflower seeds, the hollyhock seeds, and the other seeds that we plant in the garden have grown to be seeds from little eggs.

When the eggs of the plants first begin growing they are quite small and one must have very sharp eyes to see them. You will find them in the flowers and the blossoms usually just above where the petals join the stem. Here there is a little place called the ovary, and in the ovary are the eggs.

If you pull the ovary apart very carefully you may see tiny bumps growing from its sides. These are the eggs.

Most of the plants you know have each at least one flower, and most of the flowers you know each have at least one ovary. The blossoms of the trees—the apple blossom, the cherry blossom, and all the other blossoms, are the flowers of the trees. At the bottom of the flower or blossom is the little place, called the ovary, which holds the eggs.

The eggs grow until they have become seeds. Then they stop growing. Before they can start growing again they must be placed in the ground. Sometimes we speak of the ground as mother earth. The earth is the great mother in the body of which seeds begin to grow to be plants—flowers, vegetables, trees, and grain.

The water, like the earth, is mother to many growing things. It is here that the eggs of most fish grow up.

If you have eaten shad roe you may have noticed the little round balls, each about as big as the head of a pin. These little balls are the eggs of the shad.

In the springtime, and in some parts of the

Photograph by J. Fletcher Street.

Jack-in-the-pulpit. Jack is the flower. The pulpit is really a leaf. The ovary is inside the flower at about where Jack and the pulpit join the stem of the plant.

Photograph by H. Armstrong Roberts.

Apple trees in bloom. At the bottom of each blossom or flower is the ovary with the eggs that will soon grow to be seeds of the apple.

world even earlier, the mother shad leaves the ocean where she lives and swims up one of the rivers that empties into it. She swims sometimes for more than one hundred miles until she has left the salt water behind her and has

Courtesy of the United States Bureau of Fisheries.

Eggs of Salmon. They are among the largest of fish egg.

reached the fresh water as it flows toward the sea. There she finds a place where the stream is shallow and quiet and where the sun takes the chill from the water. Here she lays her eggs. They have been staying in her ovaries—she has two ovaries—just as the eggs of the plants stay in the ovaries of the flowers. But, instead of being placed in the ground like the seeds, the eggs of the shad are sent into the water by the mother through an opening underneath her body.

After the shad has laid her eggs she swims away and forgets all about them. From four to seven days later each egg has become something that looks very much like a tiny fish, and in three or four weeks it has grown to be a little shad, about an inch long, which can swim about and take care of itself.

Birds and chickens grow from eggs like the fish and the plants, but instead of growing in the water or in the ground they grow in a nest. The hen has an ovary in her body. There the egg stays until the time comes for it to be laid. Then it moves down through a long pipe or tube, growing a little bit as it goes, and passes out of the hen through an opening under her tail feathers, and drops into the nest.

The hen keeps the egg warm by sitting on the nest and the egg begins to grow very fast. In three weeks it has become a tiny chick which breaks the shell that once protected the egg and comes out into the nest, a fuzzy little fellow. This is the way in which robins and sparrows and other birds are born.—The dog, the elephant, the mouse, and the other four-legged animals grow from eggs but

Photograph by Eugene J. Hall.

Just four hours out of the shell.

they do not grow in the ground or in the water. They grow up in the nest but the nest is not in the trees or in the bushes or in the grass. It is in the body of the mother. When the egg leaves the ovary it does not pass out of the mother. It goes close by into a little bag, called the uterus. The uterus is the nest in which the egg grows

Drawing by Laura A. Humphreys.

Calf in the uterus of its mother.

to be a mouse or an elephant or a dog or whatever other animal the mother happens to be.

This, also, is the way in which human babies grow. The eggs from which they come stay in Ovaries just as the eggs of the plants and of the fish and the birds and the four-legged animals do. Every baby's mother has two ovaries inside her body. They are very small, not much thicker than her thumbs.

When the egg leaves its ovary it goes into the bag or nest, called the uterus. Sometimes the uterus is called the womb. It is near the ovaries, and is in the very middle of the body of the baby's mother but quite low down, even below where the stomach is. It is here that the egg grows to be a baby.

What better place could there be in which to growe. The seeds in the ground can be disturbed by anybody who digs into the flower beds. The eggs in the water can be washed ashore and hurt in storms, and you have often seen birds' eggs that have been broken by being blown out of the nest. But nothing like this can happen to the egg that is growing to be a baby.

After DeLee. Courtesy of W. B. Saunders Company.

Baby in the uterus or nest of its mother.

In the body of its mother it is always safe and comfortable and warm.

This is where you started your life and this is where everybody who has lived began living. When you were a tiny egg you had the best place in all the world to grow—a little nest in the body of your mother.

Copyright, Underwood & Underwood.

Eggs of a red-winged blackbird in their nest.