aims, we cannot now consider. The point is that the right to collect birds' 

 eggs has been sharply challenged, and a popular hue and cry has been raised 

 which threatens the very life of this and, indeed, of all science. If there is a 

 witch to hang or a "nigger" to burn, the sanctions of religion or virtue are as 

 easily invoked as any other; and the mob will follow any leader, so her language 

 be picturesque and denunciatory. True to form, scientists, a few of them, have 

 joined the rout, and those who merely kill birds, or lure mammals to a lingering 

 death, are loudest in their outcries against those, their brothers, who collect 

 birds' eggs, and who are the appointed victims of today's intolerance. 



But if the oologist is a culprit, he shall be tried before a fair tribunal. 

 If he has incurred the public displeasure, he shall appear before a jury of his 

 peers, and he shall be allowed counsel. If so be that he shall be found innocent 

 either of economic damage or of moral offense, he will demand not only a member 

 ticket in the Zoologist's Union, but admission to the council chamber of Conserva- 

 tion. Let's get right down to brass tacks, and have done henceforth with mutter- 

 ings and grumblings. 



Your Honor, and ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the prisoner at the 

 bar, the Scientific Oologist, is accused of depleting and wasting the world's store 

 of birds. He is accused of practicing unnecessary and wanton cruelties in the 

 pursuit of his profession, and of debauching the youth of our land, who have been 

 but lately and painfully weaned from the vice of bird-nesting. He is accused 

 of idling, in the pursuit of mere egg-shells, when at the very least he might have 

 been disarticulating bird bones, or profitably waylaying mice in death-traps. 

 He is accused of profligacy in the pursuit of fantastic goals of science, alike unde- 

 sirable and unattainable. To each and all of these charges we enter an emphatic 

 plea of not guilty. 



The Oologist has also been accused of finding pleasure in his pursuits 

 afield, in gloating in satisfaction over the out-spread treasures of his cabinets, 

 and of having induced his lay friends to share his pleasures or to learn from him 

 the lore of nature. He is even accused of daring to claim the discovery of certain 

 important laws of phylogeny, and of having staked out claims to a larger realm 

 of biological inquiry, — all in the name of his alleged science. To these latter 

 charges we enter a cheerful plea of, Guilty as charged. 



And now, lest we should seem to deal too flippantly with our critics, we 

 confess at the outset two lines of inquiry which we believe ourselves bound to 

 meet with the utmost candor. All doubts, however conceived, of the propriety 

 of collecting birds' eggs, concern themselves, in the last analysis, with questions 

 of sentiment or of economy. By sentiment, we do not mean anything un- 

 wholesome or unfounded. It is difficult to characterize by any other word this 

 province of inquiry. For whether we speak of justice or mercy, of square- 

 dealing or of humanity, we are discussing sentiments, and are sincerely asking 

 ourselves what importance should be attached to them. In what belief or 

 sentiment shall we ground our action with reference to the birds? If we treat 

 them kindly, shall it be out of respect to the birds themselves? Or, if we lay a 

 certain tax upon the bird world, shall we be acting in contravention of the rights 

 of birds, and not rather in obedience to a higher interest, viz., the demands of 

 human curiosity, the will to understand? Upon these answers the whole in- 

 quiry turns. 



What, then, are the rights of birds? or have birds any rights? This is to 

 inquire boldly what are the foundations of the moral order. From what quality 

 or endowment do rights derive? And we answer, as boldly, from enduring 

 moral values only. Is the bird an end-in-itself? Or does its apparent value 

 derive solely from its relation to self-conscious (hence, immortal) beings? We 

 answer unhesitatingly, the latter. The value of the bird is a derived value, a 

 relative value only. If the bird is, indeed, a sort of god, unique, self-conscious, 

 immortal, then are we rebuked who would molest its peace or hinder its destiny. 

 If, however, it is only a part of a natural and perishable order, if it is only an 

 occupant of one of the many blind alleys through which Nature or the Creative 

 Urije or the Infinite Intelligence (call it what you will) has sought (and sought 



