XIV 
person who lives by the sea-side can testify that it does 
during the close season, when the selfish gunner’s hand 
is stayed, who, for his own short hour of private gratifi- 
cation, has made the coasts a desert during the rest of 
the year for a whole town-full of his neighbours, who 
would have taken infinite delight in the presence of those 
beautiful living things, whose absence renders every 
landscape a comparative blank. 
The desire is condemned also in the collector to have 
more and rarer than his neighbour, and this is imputed 
as a low ambition, yet it is amdztion, and it is so prevalent 
as to be, if the truth were told, universal; but wzthout 
ambition nothing would go forward in art, or in science: 
curiosity alone would not be sufficient to sustain men. 
If men had none to whom to show, or explain their 
treasures, and inventions, they would soon cease to collect, 
or invent. If everybody had the eggs of the Knot, and 
Solitary Sandpiper there would be no more pleasure 
in possessing them, and in showing them; than in pos- 
sessing the eggs of the American Robin, and the Hedge 
Sparrow. 
The difficulty in getting some of the eggs is the 
charm which set Mr. Seebohm his task, to procure the 
unknown eggs of six well-known birds, the Knot, the 
Curlew Sandpiper, the Grey Plover, the Little Stint, the 
Sanderling, and Bewick’s Swan; which has resulted in 
the production of two of the most delightful books which 
have enriched the subject, being second not even to 
Wolley’s Egg-work. 
The difficulty, nay the present zmpossibrlity, for 
curiously enough this is the only collection that can be 
made, I believe, which to make complete, the collec- 
tor is bound to possess that which no human eye, so far 
as has been recorded, has seen, and yet which can be 
