82 The Oologisis' Record, Deceuiber 1, 1923. 



EGG-COLLECTING. 



By E. C. Stuart Baker, F.Z.S., F.L.S., M.B.O.U. 



So much has recently been written on the cruelty and uselessness 

 of egg-collecting that perhaps it will jiot be out of place to state 

 in your columns the case from the point of view of the egg-collector 

 who believes himself to be scientific and rational. Nor would I 

 include in these terms the vast majority of those who collect, for, 

 as one of our most famous ornithologists recently remarked, 

 " Oologists can be counted on the fingers of one hand ; collectors 

 are countless." I would, however, include those numerous collectors 

 who try to be oologists and who collect with some definite aim in 

 view, and with the intention of adding something to the sum-total 

 of human knowledge. 



Much has been written by kindly people who, in a beautiful 

 but complete ignorance of Nature and its waj^s, think that all birds' 

 nesting conducted in methods other than their own must be cruel. 

 In this category are those who encourage their own children to 

 take one or more eggs from a clutch, leaving the remainder to the 

 parent birds, and at the same time discourse on the cruelties of 

 those who take whole clutches. But the man who knows anything 

 about birds and their ways, and has not merely studied them from 

 books, knows that the taking of one egg from a nest is the most 

 cruel form of birdsnesting. If one or two eggs are taken, the hen 

 bird will often hang about the nest for days, sometimes sitting, 

 sometimes refusing to do so, and will finally desert altogether 

 after the sitting furore has ceased. It is then too late to start 

 again, desire has passed, and no young are raised. But if the whole 

 clutch be taken the parent birds, in the great majority of cases, at 

 once set to work to make another nest and to bring up other young. 



In spite of all that has been written on the agony of birds deprived 

 of their eggs, there is little, in fact, to support the statements. At 

 the time the eggs are laid, and for some short time after, the one 

 dominating influence in the bird is the desire for reproduction, 

 first resulting in the laying of the egg and, secondly, in its hatching. 

 This influence remains dominant until the chick is hatched, after 

 which the reproductive desire gives place to the necessity for the 

 provision of food. Once the young are hatched, doubtless birds 

 do suffer to some extent if they are stolen, though even then they 



