BIRD ENEMIES. 17 
sets from one tree. I have heard of a collector who 
boasted of having taken one hundred sets of the eggs 
of the marsh wren in a single day; of another, who 
took, in the same time, thirty nests of the yellow- 
breasted chat; and of still another, who claimed to 
have taken one thousand sets of eggs of different birds 
in one season. A large business has grown up under 
the influence of this collecting craze. One dealer 
in eggs has those of over five hundred species. He 
says that his business in 1883 was twice that of 
1882; in 1884 it was twice that of 1883, and so on. 
Collectors vie with each other in the extent and 
variety of their cabinets. They not only obtain eggs 
in sets, but aim to have a number of sets of the same 
bird, so as to show all possible variations. I hear of 
a private collection that contains twelve sets of king- 
birds’ eggs, eight sets of house-wrens’ eggs, four sets 
of mocking-birds’ eggs, etc. ; sets of eggs taken in low 
trees, high trees, medium trees; spotted sets, dark sets, 
plain sets, and light sets of the same species of bird. 
Many collections are made on this latter plan. 
Thus are our birds hunted and cut off, and all in 
the name of science; as if science had not long ago 
finished with these birds. She has weighed and mea- 
sured, and dissected, and described them, and their 
nests, and eggs, and placed them in her cabinet ; and 
the interest of science and of humanity now demands 
that this wholesale nest-robbing cease. These inci- 
dents I have given above, it is true, are but drops in 
the bucket, but the bucket would be more than full if 
we could get all the facts. Where one man publishes 
his notes, hundreds, perhaps thousands, say nothing, 
but go as silently about their nest-robbing as weasels. 
It is true that the student of ornithology often feels 
