230 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XLI. No. 1050 



good cause, now continue to urge stringency 

 in state and federal laws beyond all reason. 

 Those in authority " high up " ought to know 

 better than to contribute to this stringency; 

 but they, yielding to the pressure of the mili- 

 tant sentimentalists, are allowing laws and 

 regulations to go through without giving 

 apparently any thought to their duty toward 

 the field naturalist, whose function is essen- 

 tial to the conduct of important phases of 

 ornithological study. 



Permits should be issued by both state and 

 federal governments freely to applicants upon 

 avowed sincerity of purpose. There should be 

 no hesitation unless there be suspicion as to 

 the honesty of the applicant. Limitations 

 may be properly imposed, as, for instance, by 

 excepting rare or disappearing species like the 

 ivory-billed woodpecker or the Carolina para- 

 keet. This is just as feasible as it is to forbid 

 the sportsman to shoot rare or disappearing 

 game species. Furthermore, the collector, by 

 reason of his more expert knowledge, is far 

 better able to discriminate between closely 

 allied species, and, because of his apprecia- 

 tion of the facts upon which the principles of 

 conservation are based, is more likely to ab- 

 stain from killing the wholly protected species. 

 As a rule, the birds which particularly inter- 

 ,,-est the collector consist of small species, of 

 wide distribution and large numbers. And 

 the daily " bag-limit " of the collector, self- 

 imposed because of the subsequent labor en- 

 tailed, is small, seldom exceeding 20 birds all 

 told, and, in my own experience, averaging 12. 



Collecting, at best, will be indulged in by 

 but comparatively few people, for it involves 

 much more effort than hunting ; the successful 

 collector must possess a considerable equipment 

 in the way of industry and artistic skill if he 

 expects to reach recognized standing in the 

 fraternity of collecting ornithologists; and at 

 the outset he must possess the naturalist's gift 

 or " bent " which is itself not common. 



It can be rightly urged in this connection 

 that the justification for collecting non-game 

 birds is just as well grounded as for shooting 

 or otherwise destroying game animals. Prac- 

 tically all small birds can better stand an 



annual toll than most game birds. Citing a 

 single species of non-game bird, the Audubon 

 warbler, I believe that its numbers within the 

 state of California at the beginning of the 

 winter season exceed the combined numbers of 

 all the species of game birds within the state 

 at the beginning of the open season. Yet for 

 the pursuit of game birds over one hundred 

 and thirty thousand hunting licenses were 

 issued last year here in California alone. In 

 the same state, only one hundred permits for 

 scientific collecting were allowed, or only one 

 permit to collect non-game birds to 1,300 li- 

 censes to hunt game birds! Most of these 

 permits were limited to two specimens of a 

 kind, and in many cases they were given out 

 grudgingly or under protest, as if the collector 

 were seeking something beyond his rights to 

 ask for, or even as if a question of morality 

 were involved! This again is an attitude (on 

 the part of sportsmen, which our State Game 

 Commissioners all are!) hardly consistent, but 

 evidently resulting from the wide-spread influ- 

 ence of the sentimentalist. 



As compared with the value of the game 

 bird shot, does not the bird killed for a speci- 

 men come much more nearly justifying its 

 end? The game bird practically ends its 

 career of usefulness when it falls before the 

 gun. It has incited recreation and a certain 

 amount of the esthetic in the way of admira- 

 tion. Perhaps the latter obtains for a few 

 minutes or hours after the death of the bird. 

 But it soon goes to pot and that is the end 

 of it. 



With the bird hunted for a specimen, the 

 collector is searching discriminatingly among 

 many species and often among a great many 

 individuals. He is observing many things 

 beyond the mere object of the shot. In addi- 

 tion, full recreative value is being obtained 

 as in the case of game (and this is generally 

 urged now-a-days as the value of game — in 

 its service, not as food, but as an object of 

 pursuit and contemplation before killing). 

 The value of a bird shot for a specimen does 

 not end with its death, although it has served 

 the other functions already. The collector 

 prepares the bird with painstaking care, at 



