16 BIRDS. 



nest in the country round about that the wretches caa 

 lay hands on is harried. Their professional term for 

 a nest of eggs is u a clutch," a word that well ex- 

 presses the work of their grasping, murderous fingers. 

 They clutch and destroy in the germ the life and 

 music of the woodlands. Certain of our natural 

 history journals are mainly organs of communication 

 between these human weasels. They record their 

 exploits at nest-robbing and bird-slaying in their col- 

 umns. One collector tells with gusto how he " worked 

 his way ' : through an orchard, ransacking every tree, 

 and leaving, as he believed, not one nest behind him. 

 He had better not be caught working his way through 

 my orchard. Another gloats over the number of 

 Connecticut warblers — a rare bird — he killed in 

 one season in Massachusetts. Another tells how a 

 mocking-bird appeared in southern New England and 

 was hunted down by himself and friend, its eggs 

 '' clutched," and the bird killed. Who knows how 

 «nuch the bird lovers of New England lost by that 

 foul deed ? The progeny of the birds would probably 

 have returned to Connecticut to breed, and their 

 progeny, or a part of them, the same, till in time the 

 famous songster would have become a regular visitant 

 to New England. In the same journal still another 

 collector describes minutely how he outwitted three 

 humming-birds and captured their nests and eggs,— 

 a clutch he was very proud of. A Massachusetts bird 

 harrier boasts of his clutch of the eggs of that dainty 

 little warbler, the blue yellow-back. One season 

 he took two sets, the next five sets, the next four sets, 

 besides some single eggs, and the next season four sets, 

 and says he might have found more had he had more 

 time. One season he took, in about twenty days, three 



