214 IN BIRD LAND. 
becomes feeble or is crippled, it falls an easy prey 
to a prowling hawk, owl, shrike, eagle, or cat. 
Should a bird escape all these enemies, and finally 
lie down and die in a natural way, it would doubt- 
less scon be found and devoured by a carrion-eating 
fowl or quadruped, and thus its corpse would never 
be seen by human eyes. Sad indeed it is to think 
of the numberless ways in which birds meet “ the 
last enemy.” 
Be it far from me to use caustic speech against 
any man or set of men; but it makes me both in- 
dignant and sick at heart to read the bloody chroni- 
cles of most of the so-called “collectors.”” How 
many embryo birds they slay merely to gratify their 
morbid craze for gathering “clutches,” as they 
suggestively call a set of eggs! Not long ago a col- 
lector narrated, in an ornithological journal, the 
harrowing story of his having rifled the nest of a 
hairy woodpecker five or six times in a single season, 
the poor bird laying a new deposit after each bur- 
glary, until at last she grew suspicious and sought a 
safer site for her nest. The writer described his 
part of the performance with apparent gusto, as if 
he had made a splendid contribution to science ! 
If he must have a collection of hairy woodpecker’s 
eggs, why not take a single “clutch,” and then leave 
the bird to make her second deposit and rear her 
brood in peace? 
To my mind, many “ professionals ’’ shoot ascore 
of birds where they ought to shoot but one. ‘The 
long record of slaughtered birds is sickening. The 
