216 What Birds Have Done With Me 



eggs, many secretly from children, and had 

 spent money to indulge this passion as he would 

 not spend money for anything else. A devout 

 church member, when I asked to see his collection 

 he looked me in the face and most emphatically 

 denied having one. The light of a star helped 

 his memory and he took me to his barn, with 

 profuse apologies. The necessity of catching a 

 train prevented me from going through it all, 

 but I had rarely seen the like in any private col- 

 lection and this the strangest thing of all : he was 

 afraid to own it, would neither sell nor give it 

 away and had no one to leave it to. I imagine 

 that I will not be believed when I assert that 

 fortunes, both in this and other countries, are be- 

 ing spent for birds' eggs and these collections will 

 be inherited by people who in our better civiliza- 

 tion, already knocking at the door, will be 

 ashamed to have it known that among their an- 

 cestors were nest robbers and they will secretly 

 destroy a gruesome and worthless inheritance. 



''The Oologist" is the name of a little magazine 

 having Science pilloried on its title page, the little 

 mother of yellow journalism, for it is published 

 in the interest of the birds' egg collector, the 

 scientific birds' egg collector, if you please. Be- 

 hold the noble ambition of "The Oologist" to 

 promote the distribution of birds' eggs so that 

 every museum and school shall have a collection, 



