"That much good work has been done by egg collectors, and that many valuable 

 facts have been brought to light by their work, is beyond dispute, [remember this, 

 please] but it is no less certain that the scope of their investigations is strictly 

 limited." That is to say, Mr. Pycraft limits it. The case is therefore closed! 

 That Mr. Pycraft is entitled to an honest difference of opinion from ours regarding 

 the value of oological investigation none would deny. Mr. Pycraft is an avian 

 anatomist, an able if somewhat incoherent concoctor of bird-books, and his 

 methods of approach are naturally quite his own. But that this gentleman, in 

 defence of the British Museum, that supposedly inviolable ark of safety, or in 

 the name of an outworn ornithological creed, should seek to call down upon our 

 heads the vials of protectionists wrath is neither — well — sportsmanlike, nor just. 

 Mr. Pycraft avers as a casus belli against our institution that "already many great 

 Museums with collectors of eggs exist." Precisely! But what are the managers 

 of these great Museums doing with these eggs? Hiding them away shamefaced- 

 ly, in forgotten galleries, or placing them under the administration of men who 

 openly ridicule their appointed task. If there were a single well-appointed, 

 thorough-going research institution in oology in the world, or if there was a 

 single "great museum" giving adequate attention to this department, admin- 

 istered under a man of vision, the Museum of Comparative Oology would have 

 had little excuse for entering the field. The National Museum of Washington 

 comes, perhaps, the nearest to being such an institution, for its eggs are at least 

 in a safe place, and its buried treasures are being reviewed by a painstaking and 

 competent oologist, Mr. A. C. Bent; but I violate no confidences when I say that 

 the egg collections of the National Museum both in concept and execution leave 

 much to be desired. We do not wish to be presumptuous, but London started 

 this thing, and it would rather look to us as if the British Museum, through its 

 chosen representative, were trying to justify its own slack administration in this 

 department by raising false issues. 



It is to laugh of course. And we repeat that so far as the world's collectors 

 of birds' eggs are concerned, we could ask no finer line of advertising than this 

 which Brother Pycraft has so generously lavished upon us. Most ornithologists 

 know the narrowness, the illiberality, and the essential falsity of Mr. Pycraft's 

 assertions, while every collector is grateful to him for having pointed out alike 

 the necessity of cooperation and the means by which it may be accomplished. 



But there is a more serious side to this anti-everything crusade of which 

 Mr. Pycraft has become the latest exponent. In the first place, it tends to 

 confuse the public mind about the real issues of conservation; and in the second 

 place, it affronts the very charter of zoological science. Evidence is not wanting 

 that the campaign, so conspicuously launched by a poseur, is bearing fruit alike 

 in England and America. Of course it is an open secret among the well informed 

 that the discordant elements in British ornithological circles are fighting over old 

 battles in our name. We are not so conceited as to suppose that all this pother 

 is about us. We are just a text dragged in to justify renewed pounding of 

 Protectionistic pulpits. But the public doesn't know this and the public is 

 being deceived. Little me-toos are dutifully repeating the sentiments of the 

 London gods, and the virus of suspicion, exaggeration, and misrepresentation, 

 is filtering down. For example — a departmental editor of "The Family Herald 

 and Weekly Star" of Montreal, Canada, under the caption of "A New Bird 

 Enemy," and over the initials "E. I." denounces the proposals of the Museum of 

 Comparative Oology as "a wicked scheme." Verily the author of the once 

 popular "Bird Nesting" was doing penance for the sins of his youth. For it was 

 the same brother [peace to his ashes!] who said, in 1882, "It is well, therefore, 

 particularly if at a distance from home, to take all the eggs at once, and the nest 

 along with them, if you need it; nor, if you propose to make a close study of 

 oology, will a single set, or, sometimes even a dozen sets, suffice to show extremes 

 of variation." 



And now comes the exhibit of "The Royal Society for the Protection of 

 Birds, ' 23, Queen Anne's Gate, London, S. W. I. A typewritten circular com- 



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