to the patient effort of poultry "fans/' poultry enthusiasts,, — chicken-lovers, 

 if you please. Yet the whole system has been based on robbery; upon a method- 

 ical spoliation of innocent female birdsl To be sure, the world in common sense 

 mood has connived at this practice, because it has always been interested, and 

 always will be, in sharing the pelf. Yet a sentimentalist could find villainy 

 enough in this system to keep reformers awake o nights. Think of it! Trustful, 

 affectionate fowls, ruthlessly despoiled, their tenderest instincts violated, nay, 

 their very mother love exploited, in order that it may be more frequently be- 

 trayed! Tender infants torn from their mother's breast solely that they may be 

 shut up in nunneries, or henneries, and similarly exploited. Out upon such a 

 cruel system! A system which threatens alike the sancity of the (galline) home 

 and the security of the hen race! A system which must inevitably react to the 

 moral undoing of the monsters who perpetuate such outrages! 



Fiddle! Yet it is not a whit more sensible to cry out against a system 

 which seeks to exploit {very modestly) another section of the bird world, namely, 

 the feral, and which would turn to the intellectual profit of the human race the 

 carefully conserved trophies of such investigation and the evidences of con- 

 clusions reached. The absurdity of the argument advanced on behalf of the 

 "rights of hens" is immediately manifest once the vein of common sense is struck. 

 We shall eat eggs and "broilers" too till kingdom come. And we shall do so with 

 no thought that we are cruel, ruthless or even inconsiderate. And here is the 

 curious thing. The great "hen" race will not only increase in numbers and im- 

 prove in quality, but those who serve it and "exploit" it, will find intense mental 

 satisfaction through life-long association with their favorite breeds of birds. The 

 enlightened self-interest of poultry owners will assure in increasing measure the 

 physical (and psychical, if you like) wellbeing of domestic fowls. And in like 

 manner, and with only one-thousandth part of the assumption of arbitrary con- 

 trol exercised by poultry owners, the collector of birds' eggs will satisfy scientific 

 curiosity, at the same time that he joins in heartily with any sane program for 

 the conservation of bird life and the promotion of altruistic interests in birds. 



We are not advocating the indiscriminate collection of birds' eggs, any 

 more than we are the "indiscriminate" robbing of hens' nests. But if the human 

 race requires hens' eggs for food and birds' eggs for study, we reckon that the 

 human race will continue to help itself in common sense fashion. 



THE OOLOGICAL OUTLOOK 

 An Editorial Review of Conditions and a Forecast for 1921. 



History no less than prophecy is a form of divination; for whereas events 

 are objective, they are by the same token incomprehensible. Only through the 

 insights of the historian do we obtain glimpses of reality; and the historian, like 

 the prophet, is one to whom events reveal their inner meaning. It is not inten- 

 tion but necessity which compels the editor to combine the functions of historian 

 and prophet; and he would not do so were it not for the conviction that these 

 functions are really one. For, truth to tell, the preoccupations of a year which 

 has seen the launching of "The Birds of California" have left little enough time 

 for the fashioning or noting of oological events, albeit the Zeitgeist of Oology has 

 been an almost palpable presence. The historian, then, will make an early exit, 

 and the soothsayer shall have the floor. 



In sooth, it has been a great year, an almost overwhelming year. The 

 response which the collecting world made to our proposal of organizing a world 

 fellowship of oologists, was so instant and so generous that we have been well nigh 

 overwhelmed with appreciation as well as with gifts and offers more substantial. 

 There is no doubt of it in the world! Oologists will cooperate] And they will 

 establish a fellowship as dear to them as their dearest hobby has always been. 

 The outlines of that structure of fellowship are now clearly marked, and all that 



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