6 2 Report of Committee on Bird Protection. j_^ k 



It is not desirable to prevent a beginner from collecting, 

 as is done in some States where no permits are given to those 

 under 18 years of age. But nothing need be feared from young 

 students if our active ornithologists will take pains to give them 

 a few words of advice. 



Too often boys regard the formation of a large collection 

 of eggs or birds as necessarily the first step towards becoming 

 an ornithologist of note ; but if those who have already won their 

 spurs, will take the trouble to point out to the beginners, the lines 

 of work which yield results of real benefit to science they will be 

 led to see exactly how much collecting and what sort of specimens 

 are really needed for scientific research and not needlessly dupli- 

 cate what has already been procured. Further, they will in all 

 probability become known as original contributors to ornithological 

 science, while as mere collectors they would bid fair to remain 

 in obscurity. 



As bearing directly upon egg collecting by boys, a letter dic- 

 tated by the late Prof. Spencer F. Baird, shortly before his death 

 and kindly placed at my disposal by his daughter, Miss Lucy 

 H. Baird, is so pertinent that I make the following quotation 

 from it, to show the feelings of one of America's greatest ornithol- 

 ogists upon this subject. 



"When I was in the [egg] 'business,' I was collecting mate- 

 rial for an exhaustive work on the natural history of the birds 

 of North America, and a set of nests and eggs of each species, 

 in all variations, was a necessity. I consequently needed to 

 have as large a variety as possible, so as to complete the ground. 

 The ordinary bird-egging boy, however, whose enterprise is 

 not to be frowned at, is not such an individual, he simply wants 

 to make a collection of eggs without an' ulterior scientific object. 

 A single egg will answer the same purpose in his case as the one 

 hundred required in the one first mentioned. ... I am inclined to 

 ascribe the reduction in the number of our home birds as much 

 to the taking of eggs for various purposes and driving away the 

 parents as to actual extermination of the birds themselves. 

 However, the most effectual way of preventing the difficulty is 

 by prohibiting the taking of eggs entirely, which I would earnestly 

 recommend." 



