Montecito were celebrated for them. To destroy one or to rob a nest was 

 accounted desecration. 



"Today where are they? 



"Now and then, but with comparative rarity they are seen. In a few 

 secluded gardens they still nest and raise an occasional brood, and on some of the 

 larger estates they are protected and may be found more frequently but in 

 diminished numbers. 



"Where have they gone? 



"Ask the collector who maintains in his exchange drawers their nests in 

 all their virgin delicacy of weave, by the down, often with the forked twigs where 

 they have been securely hidden, as their builders thought, beneath canopying 

 foliage. Ask the collector who has sent their wee eggs out by the hundred and 

 perhaps by the thousands, each one a potential winged spirit of beauty incarnate, 

 of which Santa Barbara has been robbed — and who still keeps them enumerated 

 on his exchange list." 



To this we replied as follows: 



My attention has just been called to a letter which appeared in the columns 

 of your excellent paper on Monday, December 22. Although there was no 

 mention of names and the communication was unsigned, it was plain that our 

 fair critic had in mind the institution which I have the honor to represent. It 

 is my duty, therefore, to try to correct, if possible, the misapprehensions under 

 which your correspondent appears to be laboring. 



In plain English the indictment against the Museum of Comparative 

 Oology appears to contain three counts: 



First, that we are an important factor in the destruction of bird life; 



Second, that we are mercenary; and, 



Third, and more specifically, that we are responsible for an alleged decrease 

 in the number of Hummingbirds in Santa Barbara. 



To each of these counts we plead Not Guilty. 



To take up the second count first, I may say, briefly, that we never sell 

 eggs, and that we buy only of original collectors and pay sums equivalent to day 

 wages. The Museum of Comparative Oology is sternly set against the commer- 

 cialization of oological collecting; and, were there space to do so, we could show 

 your correspondent that we are at the present time helping to revise current 

 practice in this regard. 



Nor do we carry on exchanges in any such wholesale or indiscriminate 

 fashion as suggested by our critic. The vision of the M. C. 0. shipping our 

 Hummingbirds' eggs "by the hundreds and perhaps by the thousands" is very 

 diverting. As a matter of fact, we have disposed of about eleven sets of Humming- 

 birds' eggs by exchange in the four years of our institutional life. This, in view 

 of the fact that no less than twenty-five thousand Hummingbirds nest annually 

 within a seven-mile radius of Santa Barbara, is not a very serious matter — far 

 less than the depredations of a single stray cat. There is no shortage in hummers 

 in Santa Barbara, save in the case of the resident Anna Hummer, one of our four 

 breeding species, and this was caused by the little freeze of 1913. 



To take up now the first charge, viz., that we are an important factor 

 in the destruction of bird life, I have to say, first, that the killing of birds and the 

 taking of their eggs fall into two distinct categories. When you kill a bird, of 

 course that is the end of it. For that reason the Museum of Comparative Oology 

 is extremely judicious in its requisition upon bird-life. We do not exchange 

 bird-skins except in the rarest instances, and then only to reputable public 

 institutions whose credentials of service are as clear as our own. It is our aim to 

 provide only our immediate clientele, viz., the Santa Barbara public, with a 

 sufficient representation of bird-skins for study purposes. Our total accumula- 

 tion of birdskins today does not represent the toll levied by three female cats. 

 The correct identification of birds is, however, impossible without occasional 

 reference to a collection of skins. 



Regarding the collecting of birds' eggs, it is true, as the correspondent 

 suggests, that the operations of collectors might figure as a factor in the case of 



