304 Notes and News. [J u u £ 



says the circular, "it is justifiable to shoot specimens which are new to 

 you for purposes of identification, but you should make the best use of 

 the bird before you kill it, so it will not be necessary to shoot more of 

 the same kind in order to tell what they are." It is the aim of the cir- 

 cular to discourage the ' fad' of egg-collecting and its consequent waste 

 of bird life, while still encouraging the study of birds. 



A sophism more or less current among advocates or abettors of indis- 

 criminate bird destruction, either for millinery or other needless pur- 

 poses, is perhaps too obviously disingenuous to require serious treatment, 

 yet doubtless many thoughtless people are liable to mistake it for a sincere 

 statement of fact, namely, that because millions of birds are reared 

 annually for no other purpose than to have their necks wrung or their 

 heads chopped off and their bodies used for food, or to be daily robbed of 

 their eggs for man's use, therefore there is no reason why Egrets, Terns, 

 Birds of Paradise, Tanagers, Warblers and other wild birds of fine plumage 

 should not be killed without stint, or their nests robbed by the small boy 

 and the commercial egg-collector. The whole tribe of barn-yard 

 fowls is under man's protection, and reared for profit under artificial 

 conditions, the supply being easily rendered equal to the demand, just as 

 in the case of hay or grain or other farm products. Man's pecuniary 

 interest is here involved in such a way that the extermination of a species 

 is impossible. In the case of wild birds and beasts the case is wholly 

 different. Here man interferes only as a destroyer, with the sad results 

 we already too well know, whether we turn to the wild game animals 

 and birds, or to the numerous victims of the milliner's greed. When 

 free from man's interference nature maintains a fair equilibrium ; the 

 death rate, from normal causes, just about equalling, in the long run, the 

 natural limit of reproduction. Hence when man interferes, and fashion 

 claims certain species as her victims, a wholesale, senseless, indiscriminate 

 slaughter supervenes, over and above the death rate nature is prepared 

 to meet; and the small boy and the ' egg-hog' add their powerful aid, in 

 the diminution of our insectivorous song birds, to the efforts of the 'plume 

 hunter' in sweeping from the face of the earth some of the most graceful 

 and beautiful forms of bird life, and which it is beyond man's power to 

 replace. 



Erratum. — In printing Dr. Thomas S. Roberts's article ' The Prothon- 

 otary or Golden Swamp Warbler {Protonotaria citrea) a Common Sum- 

 mer Resident in Southeastern Minnesota,' appearing in this number of 

 "The Auk' (pp. 236-246) the name of the author was accidentally omitted, 

 although duly given in the page-headings. 



