THE OOLOGIST. 



59 



SILLY ! 



The Outing Magazine for April an- 

 nounces that it is about to undertake 

 a militant campaign for the conserva- 

 tion of our natural resources. Follow- 

 ing this is an article by the editor on 

 "A Pernicious Collecting Mania," 

 wherein he excoriates without limit 

 the collecting of birds' eggs, and an- 

 nounces that parents should "make 

 clear to their children that for every 

 egg they take they are subtracting one 

 from the number of future birds which 

 are doing their best to make the out- 

 doors a pleasant place to live in." 



This is all very well in its way, if it 

 were consistent. But coming as it 

 does from a man who has spent his 

 life largely in the destruction of our 

 wild creatures, pursuing them into 

 the uttermost recesses of their further- 

 most habitations; and coming as it 

 does from a magazine, a very large 

 portion of whose advertising columns 

 is taken up with the exploitation of 

 murderous paraphernalia ranging 

 from trout flies to repeating shot-guns 

 and automatic fire arms, and a very 

 considerable portion of the cuts and 

 plates appearing therein are pictures 

 of wild animals and wild fowl stricken 

 unto {'eath by the tremendous efficien- 

 cy of tJ.e engines of destruction there- 

 in exploited, leads one to believe that 

 this militant campaign against the boy 

 who desires to make a collection of 

 birds' eggs in his vicinity, is largely 

 for the purpose of raising dust behind 

 which to hide the greater offense — the 

 destruction of the bird that laid the 

 egg. 



True, the taking of the bird's egg 

 may decrease the number of future 

 birds one; the chances are that it 

 will not; for the mother bird almost 

 invariably selects another site and 

 lays another clutch of eggs. But the 

 taking of the life of the mother bird 

 so heartily pursued by the editor of 



Outing, and so expressively exploited 

 in the columns of Outing, would most 

 certainly reduce the number of pres- 

 ent birds one, and reduce the number 

 of future birds, many. 



The collecting of birds's eggs for 

 scientific purposes is just as legiti- 

 mate as collecting in any other line 

 of natural history. Nearly all the birds' 

 eggs collected by the boys of the 

 country, ultimately find their way in- 

 to permanent quarters, either in large 

 private collections or in public mu- 

 seums. Many of our leading scientists 

 in the line of ornithology have com- 

 menced their life as collectors of birds' 

 eggs in early days. This is true of 

 Charles E. Bendire, William Brews- 

 ter, John M. Thayer, Frank M. Chap- 

 man, T. S. Palmer, Otto Widman, Ju- 

 lius Grinnell, and Walter Emerson; as 

 well as many other lesser lights. 



Mr. Chapman, in his latest book, 

 says that egg collecting has been prac- 

 ticed in England almost from time im- 

 memorial, without appreciably reduc- 

 ing the number of birds. The small 

 boy goes into the woods and makes his 

 modest collection of eggs, and thereby 

 acquires a healthy love of investiga- 

 tion along natural history lines, fills 

 his young lungs with ozone, and builds 

 real red blood, as the result of his out- 

 door exercise: and the enthusiastic 

 action of his mind. 



It belittles a magazine of the stand- 

 ing of Outing to make war on the boy, 

 because the boy may remember that 

 the writer of the article is the very 

 man who spent nearly all of one win- 

 ter wandering through the Arctic 

 snows of Northwestern American in 

 an effort to kill off and destroy at 

 least a portion of the very limited 

 number of wild bison left in the en- 

 tire world; and thereby endeavoring 

 to hasten the complete extinction of 

 this noble animal. 



Outing had better commence its 

 militant campaign at home; clean its 



