Xvi 
the necessity to do so ceases to exist: and moveover it 
is a very different thing, for genuine sczentific purpose, to 
shoot an extremely common bird within the Arctic circle 
for the sake of identifying the eggs, and which would 
also serve as an article of food, from shooting the one 
Devonshire Nightingale, in full song, to prove that it had 
so sung, in that unusual county; which thing was actually 
done, and triumphantly recorded in one of our Naturalist 
periodicals. 
Thus a gentlemen records in the Zoologist (p. 2528), 
the discovery of four Night Herons near Ermebridge, 
in Devonshire, May 23rd, 1849, all of which he suc- 
ceeded in “bagging;”’ about a week later, from informa- 
tion he received, he renewed his search, and killed two 
more and on the 22nd June, two more were secured : was 
any comment made upon this in the periodicals devoted 
to those who profess to be /overs of birds. 
It was by shooting the parent birds that many eggs 
were at first identified; few are the eggs which cannot 
now be labeled by experienced judges; the Nutcrackers 
for example; I doubt greatly that the Jackdaw, Jay, or 
Magpie could lay an egg that an experienced Naturalist 
should mistake for this bird’s. But the difference between 
eggs of the Chough, and of the Alpine Chough is so 
indistinguishable, that only from a most reliable source 
would one accept the former; it ought, of course, always 
to be the larger, but is it ? 
As to what sources, whence eggs are procured, are 
reliable, we are obliged to put faith in reliable persons; 
who in turn must trust to their collectors being reliable : 
without this we could scarcely get together two-thirds of 
our desiderata. 
In every collection that I have seen the collector has 
had to thus rely for some of his rarest specimens: it is 
