EGGS 183 



is in truth no such thing. What engineer can be said to understand 

 his business if he knows not the purpose to which the machines he 

 makes are to be applied and is unacquainted with their mode of 

 working ? We may investigate thoroughly the organs of any 

 animal, we may trace them from the earliest moment in which they 

 become defined, and watch them as they develop to maturity, we 

 may comprehend the way in which every part of a complicated 

 structure is successively built up ; but, if we take not the trouble 

 to know their effect on the economy of the creature, we as natui'al- 

 ists have done but half our task, and abandon our labour when the 

 fulness of reward is coming upon us. The field-naturalist, properly 

 instructed, crowns the work of the comparative anatomist and the 

 physiologist, though A^dthout the necessary education he is little 

 more than an empiric, even should he possess the trained cunning 

 of the savage on whose knowledge of the habits of wild animals 

 depends his chance of procuring a meal. 



Perhaps the greatest scientific triumph of oologists lies in their 

 having fully appreciated the intimate alliance of the LiMicOL^ (the 

 great group of Snipes and Plovers) with the Gavije (the Gulls, 

 Terns, and other birds more distantly connected with them) before 

 it was recognized by any professed taxonomer — L'Herminier, whose 

 researches have been much overlooked, excepted ; though to such 

 an one was given the privilege of placing that afiinity beyond cavil 

 (Huxley, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1867, pp. 426, 456-458; cf. Ibis, 1868, 

 p. 92). In like manner it is believed that oologists first saw the 

 need of separating from the true Passeres several groups of birds 

 that had for many j'^ears been unhesitatingly associated with that 

 very uniform assemblage. Diflidence as to their own capacity for 

 meddling with matters of systematic arrangement may possibly 

 have been the cause which deterred the men who were content to 

 brood over birds' eggs from sooner asserting the validity of the 

 views they held. Following the example furnished by the objects 

 of their study, they seem to have chiefly sought to hide their off- 

 spring from the curious eye — and if such was their design it must 

 he allowed to have been admirably successful. In enthusiastic zeal 

 for the prosecution of their favourite researches, however, they have 

 never yielded to, if they have not surpassed, any other class of 

 naturalists. If a storm-swept island, only to be reached at the risk 

 of life, held out the hope of some oological novelty there was the 

 egg- collector (Faber, Isis, xx. pp. 633-688; Proctor, Naturalist, 

 1838, pp. 411, 412). Did another treasure demand his traversing 

 a bui-ning desert (Tristram, Ibis, 1859, p. 79) or sojourning for 

 several winters within the wildest wastes of the Arctic Circle 

 (Wolley, Ibis, 1859, pp. 69-76; 1861, pp. 92-106; Kennicott, 

 Eep. Smithson. Inst. 1862, pp. 39, 40), he endured the necessary 

 hardships to accomplish his end, and the possession to him of an 



