AMERICAN RAVEN (Corvus corax sinuatus) CASE XXII, DRAWER 6, M. C. O. 



or envious assertion that we shall discover nothing will have about as much 

 weight with us, or ultimately with the public, as did the opinion of the courtiers 

 who scoffed that day on the dock at Palos. A negative assertion reveals nothing 

 beyond the degree of enlightenment (or unenlightenment) of the observer. 



The Museum of Comparative Oology with its widely affiliated member- 

 ship will go calmly, nay, even joyously, on with its task of assembling all possible 

 evidence of the Story of Life as recorded in the egg. It will do so in the full 

 conviction that it is serving a public need, and in the full assurance that it is 

 furnishing instructive entertainment to visiting thousands. Though its minis- 

 trations should multiply, and its supporters should number tens of thousands, 

 instead ot hundreds, its collections will never, by any conceivable stretch of the 

 imagination, contain as much oological material as is destroyed by the blue jays 

 of California in a single season. 



Lack of space forbids consideration of the economic question, save as 

 more or less incidentally touched upon in the following papers, but our friends 

 may rest assured that we have absolutely nothing to fear on this point. Except 



