A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.

-Butler, Samuel
  Life and Habit, ch.8.

   Be courtly ay in clething and costlyarrayit, That hurtis yow nought worth a hen; yowr husband pays for all.

-Dumas, Alexandre, pe'  re
early 16c The Tua Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, l.268^9.

A Royal Commission is a broody hen sitting on a china egg.

-Foot, Michael Mackintosh
  Speech, House of Commons.

There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said,'It is just as I feared!ö Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nest in my beard!'

-Lear, Edward
  A Book of Nonsense.