MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES:GIANT EGGS IN EARLY 20TH CENTURY MADAGASCAR

Folks, here is a report from the Brownsville Daily Herald of August 4th 1902 on a giant egg found in Madagascar.

EGG LEADS TO SEARCH FOR GIANT BIRDS

St Augustine, July. An egg of the giant bird, epyornis found floating in St Augustine Bay, southwest of Madagascar, has given rise to the supposition that living specimens of this creature, which hitherto it was thought became extinct in Pleiocene times , may yet be found in the interior of the island, and a party of Germans, headed by Gottleth Adolf Krause, have undertaken an expedition with the object of tracing it to its home or solving the problem of the existence.

The first acquaintance with the bird was made through Captain Abordie, the master of a French sailing vessel, who in 1850 was surprised to find the natives using as a vessel a fragment of a huge egg shell. He purchased the piece, and upon offering a reward for a whole egg received in a few days from the natives one which had been found in the dry bed of a river. Since then a number of eggs, together with some bones, have been recovered from the alluvial deposits of the island. These eggs, which are now in the possession of several museums, measure over a foot in length, the longest one being 14x9 inches in diameter. They are seven times larger tah an ostrich egg, 184 times larger than a hen`s egg and 20,308 times larger than a wren`s egg. One of them would supply a square meal for a well-patronized country boarding-house, or it is estimated, for sixty persons. (1)


1. Brownsville Daily Herald August 4th 1902 p.1