The Scottish Naturalist. 55 



passed by their delight at the discovery of old friends like AT. 

 Crapaud ox les pctites papillo?is bleus ; while older schoolboys con- 

 ferred together over cases of beetles or bottles of reptiles, or related, 

 in audible whispers, exploits with beast and bird which the pre- 

 served specimens recalled to mind. For two or three hours the 

 rooms were filled with these happy-faced students of zoology ; 

 and the remembrance of Sunday afternoons nearer home, spent 

 by British peasants in less creditable ways, rose, not unnaturally, 

 in the mind, with the reflection that '' they manage these things 

 better in PYance." 



In forming such a collection of birds' eggs and nests as I have 

 described, with the desire, at the same time, to collect with such 

 discrimination and judgment as to limit to a minimum, if not to 

 avoid entirely, cruelty or injury to the birds, there are certain 

 broad maxims which must be held in mind; and it is these which 

 it is niy object to strongly impress. It is well established by 

 experience that many birds will go on laying eggs in the same 

 nest after the loss of their first eggs ; and, physiologically, there 

 exists the most ample provision in the mother bird for such a 

 contingency. Others will build new nests again and again after 

 the destruction of their first efforts j but manifestly there is a 

 limit, if only in point of time and season, to these persistent 

 eftbrts at propagating their kind. No egg collector should, there- 

 fore, ever take eggs or nests after a certain date — say, first of 

 June — except in the case of very late migrants. This limiting 

 date should, of course, vary with different species of birds, and 

 in different parts of the country, but should be fixed and rigidly 

 adhered to. 



A second maxim should be, that no collector should ever take 

 partially-incubated eggs, or disturb the nest in such case ; and 

 lastly, that he should never take any ^gg or nest at all that 

 is not intended to form part of some new public collection, or 

 to supply a blank in such already-established one. The common 

 possession of a perfect collection, which might thus be speedily 

 formed, would not only have the influences which experience has 

 proved similar ones to have on schoolboys, but with " schoolboys 

 of a larger growth " birds and their nests and eggs would become 

 more familiar and interesting objects, and the ranks of orni- 

 thologists be swelled by new and devoted students. Further- 

 more, with such opportunities of comparing observations and 

 discovering variations in habits of nesting, or in the phenomena 

 connected with birds' eggs, the study of birds' nests and eggs 



