328 



THE OOLOGIST. 



gathered them iuto their possession ! 

 They give us their notes on nidology, or 

 the nesting habits, which is all very in- 

 teresting and instructive, but which 

 certainly might be done without collect- 

 ing at all. No. I think you will agree 

 with me that it is too much the craze 

 for collecting. A good and very desir- 

 able craze so long as it is kept within 

 the bounds of inanimate objects — 

 stamps, curios, minerals, and the like ; 

 for the collector must necessarily re- 

 ceive some benefit from it and no one 

 receive any harm. But when extended 

 to eggs, birds, and other useful animate 

 objects it is, to say the least, injusti- 

 liable. Looking at it from an economic 

 and somewhat selfish standpoint, the 

 birds are a necessary help to the farm- 

 ers and the ultimate decrease in their 

 numbers caused by such collecting is 

 certainly perceptible ; from a sentiment- 

 al and rather less selfish standpoint the 

 birds themselves enjoy life and sensibly 

 increase the joy and happiness of the 

 world about them. For either one of 

 these reasons the collector should be 

 made to desist his marauders and give 

 vent to his craze on some other subjects, 

 where less harm will be done. Do not 

 think that we wish to condemn or de- 

 precate eollecting-Not so. but I do 

 wish that collectors should realize that 

 the only collecting which is justifiable is 

 that which is done for the purpose of 

 study and is wholly secondary to study; 

 and I do wish that public opinion and 

 the opinion of those collecting from a 

 proper motive would come out in 

 stronger condemnation of those who 

 attempt to conceal their depredations 

 in the cloak science and thus throw the 

 science of Oology into such disrepute 

 that of all people the Oologist is most 

 despised and contemptible in the eyes 

 of the farmer and all lovers of the 

 country. Against this each and 

 every honest lover of nature and each 

 and every student of nature should 

 make loud protest. 



Science is essentially knowledge. In 

 the pursuit of any Science the first thing 

 to be done is to collect facts ; the sec- 

 ond thing is to gain a knowledge of the 

 laws which govern the facts — i. e. to ex- 

 plain the eggs within any particular set, 

 and a comparison of sets of the same 

 species. This necessitates collecting, 

 but not extensive collecting, for a good 

 series of a few species of any one local- 

 ity will afford food for thought for some- 

 time. Hence I advocate the collecting 

 of a large number of eggs of 

 a few species — twenty sets of one 

 species of Hummingbirds eggs rather 

 than one set each of twenty species. If 

 one has seen an egg of any one species 

 of Hummingbird he has seen an egg 

 which will pass for a sample of almost 

 all other species, and he would know 

 little more, had he samples of each of 

 these various species, for he would be 

 simply verifying a fact well established 

 by hundreds before him — that there is 

 little difference, save in size, in all the 

 various species of Hummingbirds. 

 Were all eggs of any particular species 

 of birds laid under precisely similar 

 circumstances we might expect the eggs 

 to vary as little as the bird which laid 

 them, their existence and theirrelations 

 to one another. For the Oologist by 

 far the most accurate and convenient 

 method of collecting his facts is to col- 

 lect eggs. Each egg is a bunch of facts. 

 For example take the Catbird's eggs we 

 have right before our eyes the fact that it 

 has a thin hardshell, white on the inside, 

 green on the outside, longer than broad, 

 more pointed at one end than at the 

 other — and so on. Now it is for the 

 scientist to explain these facts. He 

 will probably satisfy our demands by 

 saying, it is thin in order that air may 

 pass through for the growing chick, 

 hard that it may not be crushed by the 

 setting mother, green because that 

 color blends with the green of the bush- 



(Contimied on page 337 '.) 



