﻿96 Bird - Lore 



The great majority of them are no more than collectors ; some are 

 describers, but very few are those that try to explain. The incentives with 

 most of them are, the esthetic one, — to hoard objects beautiful in color and 

 form ; and the huntsman's instinct, — to seek what is difficult to discover. 

 This aspect of collecting is like that of the bibliophile, who seeks beautiful 

 bindings, rare editions, first imprints, but never reads his books ; or like that 

 of the collector of china and pottery, or of postage stamps. Are not the 

 pages of the catalogues of the dealers in birds' eggs full of advertisements of 

 postage stamps and curios ? These dealers understand their public. Oolo- 

 gists may be painfully exact in keeping notes of their specimens, but have 

 an abhorrence for an egg-shell punctured at both ends, because this spoils 

 its beauty for them. They have just the same delight in an abnormal speci- 

 men as a bibliophile in a unique print with the title-page omitted. 



This form of oology can be justified on the esthetic side; but it is no 

 more than a pleasurable hobby, is in no manner scientific, and its licenses 

 should rather read "for esthetic purposes." Such men are seeking beauti- 

 ful oddities, with the instinct of a jeweler, but do not enlighten the world 

 in any degree. 



Let us ask what interpretative value might be derived from the study of 

 blown egg-shells ? They present characters of size and form, of color, 

 number, sculpturation, thickness and consistency. Qualities such as these 

 any broad taxonomist immediately recognizes as of trivial value, because 

 minimally conservative and therefore of small use in tracing genetic affini- 

 ties of the birds producing the eggs. Only one comprehensive work is 

 known to me, — that of Des Murs, which attempts to base racial connections 

 of birds upon the characters of their egg-shells. An examination of his con- 

 clusions shows how full they are of exceptions, though undoubtedly his 

 work deserves more consideration than it has generally received. A later 

 paper by Shufeldt states a number of supposed laws in regard to form and 

 coloration, but none of these hold for all cases, and one turns from its 

 perusal with a doubt as to the ultimate value of such study. Newton has 

 pointed out in his ' Dictionary of Birds ' that the study of egg-shells prom- 

 ises few interpretations of any broad significance. The number of eggs in a 

 set is, to some extent at least, dependent upon the relative size of the eggs; 

 the explanation of the size cannot be obtained by any investigation of egg- 

 shells, but must be founded upon the phenomena within the ovary. The 

 number of sets, also, cannot be elucidated from any study of the egg-shells; it 

 is probably rather a function of the environmental condition of the length of 

 the annual period favorable for brooding. The form of the egg must be ex- 

 plained from a knowledge of the shape of the oviduct and cloaca. The 

 degree of roughness of a shell's surface is dependent, so far as we know, 

 upon the consistency of the calcareous secretion, and that, as well as its 

 thickness, upon the nature of the genital organs. Not one of these charac- 

 ters can be explained by a knowledge of egg-shells alone. 



