A Last Year's Bird's Nest 217 



the larger the better, that the sum of human 

 knowledge may thus be increased. Granted that 

 the object is primarily scientific, I challenge the 

 right of the egg collector to make persistent in- 

 roads upon our vanishing wild life, for we are 

 not to lose sight of the fact that the egg of the 

 rare bird is sought above all others. For a fact, 

 collections of eggs and stuffed birds are of small 

 value to the student of Ornithology and worthless 

 to everyone else. The wise teacher of such 

 studies says with the poet Bryant: "Go forth under 

 the open sky and list to Nature's teaching," and 

 the soul of the teacher who would send a student 

 to a city to study a musty, moth-eaten collection 

 of either birds or eggs, must be already dead 

 within him. 



To me, an empty nest, a last year's bird's nest, 

 if you please, is still wonderful as wonderful as 

 the life for which it stands. I have seen some 

 of the great collections of eggs in this country 

 with only weariness and disgust and I have found 

 a half shell on my lawn and found in it a message 

 so wonderful that when I append it here and at- 

 tempt once more to tell its story, I have the same 

 feeling that I had then, that the story of the 

 half shell is not half told. 



To call one half of a blue shell an "Azurite" 

 would be a stilted and fanciful way of speaking 

 of a fragment of a Robin's egg found in the green 



