Vol. xxvii.] 18 



comments on Mr. Bunyard's exhibit^ and called on Mr. J. L. 

 BoNHOTE, who made the following remarks : — 



'^ I hardly like to rise in order to object to exhibitions that 

 Members at much personal inconvenience have been good 

 enough to bring here to show us ; but it seems to me that 

 we are hardly fair to ourselves if we let displays^ such as 

 Mr. Bunyard has brought before us to-night, pass without 

 comment. We are all, with the exception of a few guests. 

 Members of the B.O.U., and two years ago the B. O. U. 

 passed a rule condemning the taking or destroying of rare 

 British Birds and their eggs. To go back still further, this 

 very Club passed some years ago a pious expression of 

 opinion that its Members should stay their hand in regard to 

 the destruction of certain species ; yet we now find ourselves 

 looking on, if not with enthusiasm, at least with that silence 

 which gives consent, at a display of clutches of eggs of several 

 distinctly local birds and the exhibition of an extremely 

 rare clutch of eggs, in the taking of which, I am glad 

 to note, the exhibitor had no share, though we must always 

 bear in mind that eggs would not be taken if there was no 

 market for them. 



" I am the last to decry collecting ; how many of us owe 

 our interest in birds to the egg-collections we made as boys 

 at school, and where would our knowledge of the science of 

 ornithology be were it not for collections ? But the good of 

 collecting lies in its use and not in its abuse, and I do not 

 hesitate to say that no scientific purpose is served by the 

 accumulation of masses of clutches or by the destruction of 

 a single clutch of one of our very rare breeding species. 

 Such acts only pander to a collector's greed, and bring the 

 scientific study of birds into bad repute. Since our last 

 Meeting in June a letter, which some of you may have seen, 

 appeared in the ' Times ' from a former Member, decrying 

 the present attitude of the Union and stating that it had 

 become a society of exterminating collectors. Such remarks 

 as this, which tend to injure our whole status, must be 

 refuted in no uncertain manner, and if we continue to 

 witness exhibitions such as the present without a protest 



