148 THE BIRD WATCHER 
good Homer, and agethen urged and begged to con- 
tinue with “ Kill more, and fill our museums. Forget 
not us poor old professors wearying amidst empty 
glass cases. Throw us a specimen or two to mumble, 
while yet there are specimens left. For the sake of 
science, gentlemen, for the sake of science!” And 
so, for the sake of science, they add to the dearth of 
its living material, and kill, very complacently, the 
goose with the golden eggs. 
Science might use her influence to check the dance 
of death, instead of making it caper more wildly, but 
there is something in a museum which brings down 
the high to the level of the low, and makes the 
learned biologist and the banging idiot the best of 
good friends and confederates. That museum must 
be filled, and when it is full the next thing to do is to 
fill it again; so the cry is ever for specimens, ever 
“Kill!” That the creature wanted is rare makes it 
all the more wanted, and a moment’s pause in getting 
it may lead to another museum getting it first : per- 
haps—coveted honour !—only just before it becomes 
extinct. For extinction adds a charm to a specimen 
when once your own museum has obtained it: the rarer 
it becomes after that, the more the curators chuckle, 
and with its ceasing for ever rivals are left out in the 
cold. So science leagues itself with death, and the 
museums roar, one against another, ‘ Kill!” 
A young shag, now, to take these unpleasant re- 
flections out of my mind, is being fed by one of the 
parents on a great slab of rock, which has no nest 
