In the days of Edward II., the villagers who dwelt within a few miles of London daily surrounded its walls with their poultry and eggs. The poulterers were forbidden to become their factors; but unquestionably it was for the interest of both parties that some one should stand between the producer and the consumer. Without this, there would have been no regular production. Perhaps the production was very irregular, the price very fluctuating, the dearth often intolerable. This huckstering had to go on for centuries before it became commerce. It would have been difficult, even fifty years ago, to imagine that eggs, a frail commodity, and quickly perishable, should become a great article of import. Extravagant would have been the assertion that a kingdom should be supplied with sea-borne eggs, with as much speed, with more regularity, and at a more equalised price, than a country market-town of the days of George III. It has been stated, that, before the Peace of 1815, Berwick-upon-Tweed shipped annually as many eggs to London as were valued at 30,000_l._ Before the Peace, there were no steam-vessels; and it is difficult to conceive how the cargoes from Berwick, with a passage that often lasted a month, could find their way to the London consumer in marketable condition. Perhaps the eaters of those eggs, collected in the Border districts, were not so fastidious in their tastes as those who now despise a French egg which has been a week travelling from the Pas de Calais. But the Berwick eggs were, at any rate, the commencement of a real commerce in eggs.