Letters, Extracts from Correspondence, Notices, ^c. 479 



ture^ has been rather too lavish of his indignation^ and has a little 

 overcoloured his statements. It is a charge frequently made 

 against egg-collectors, that they have been instrumental to the 

 extinction of certain of our rarest and most interesting birds. 

 As far as I am acquainted with the subject, the charge seems 

 to me to be incox-rect. " Oophilus " instances the Golden Eagle 

 as a case in point. I wish simply to ask him, Who is more 

 likely to preserve the remnant of this species in Scotland — the 

 Highland forester to whom (solely through the demands occasioned 

 by egg-collecting) an Eagle's nest is the source of a permanent 

 annual income of a few pounds, or the man who has every in- 

 ducement in the shape of rewards offered by his master for the 

 destruction of Eagles, without a counterbalancing consideration 

 of any kind ? I believe. Sir, that so long as we abstain from 

 putting the old birds to death, the occasional and judicious taking 

 of their eggs is no more likely to exterminate Eagles than 

 the same process to desolate our poultry-yards of their in- 

 habitants. 



" The indiscreet zeal of the true naturalist " has not much, 

 depend upon it, to answer for in the way of birds. With other 

 classes of animals it may be different. I could imagine that any 

 very local species of insect {Hipparchia blandina, let us say) might 

 be almost extii'pated in a single season by injudicious captures, 

 especially if effected before the newly emerged imago had been 

 able to deposit its fertile eggs. But I will not wander from my 

 subject, and I will leave this matter to those who concern them- 

 selves with butterflies, only in conclusion expressing my inability 

 to comprehend the connexion between the " ruthless feats " of 

 the unnamed friend of " Oophilus " and the presumed frauds 

 which he is so very properly anxious to expose. 



I am. Sir, 



Your obedient Servant, 



OOLOGICUS. 



The valuable and extensive collection of birds formed by the 

 veteran ornithologist, the late Baron F. de Lafresnaye, in his 

 chateau near Falaise, is about to be sold. The administrators of 



