2 I O Correspondence. \_A$\ 



A Protest. 



Editors of ' The Auk' : — 



Dear Sirs: — Let me add my protest against the present collection- 

 rage, especially the egg form. The persons given over to this mischiev- 

 ous passion see their own side of the matter and often, no doubt, feel 

 innocent. There is, of course, something to study, however little, com- 

 paratively, even in a boughten egg shell. I emphasize the boughtet; 

 because, the wholesale robbing of rookeries being barter, specimens 

 gotten in this way lack even the power which an egg of one's own 

 collecting has to call back the vision of the nest and its environment. 



Any breeding colony, like that of the Brown Pelicans at Pelican Island 

 is especially tempting to these individuals, and especially at their mercy. 

 And while truer students are delighting in their occasional visits to such 

 a place, and living on the memory; and whereas such a colony within 

 reach is a priceless treasure for the world of students of the Life History 

 of Birds, any one of these less intelligent persons may at one swoop, 

 like a monkey in a flower garden, very nearly sweep the whole colony 

 from the face of the earth ; and at the best, for so proportionately poor 

 a reason that his act stands black against all the beautiful good he has 

 marred. 



There should be no confounding of the horde of ignorant persons in 

 whom the getting-fassion is their only claim to the name of naturalist, 

 with the student who must have a large series ; and advice to amateurs 

 to get all the specimens they can wjll prove pernicious in ninety-nine 

 cases out of a hundred. 



I think it very necessary to publish widely in all bird-magazines such 

 names as that of L. W. Brownell of Nvack who has given us in 'The 

 Osprey' his own account of his looting of Pelican Island, and bringing 

 away one hundred and twenty-five sets of eggs, — about a quarter of the 

 entire number. 



Yours very truly, 



Abbott H. Thayer. 



Scarborough, N. Y. 

 Mar. 23, 1899. 



