made valuable gains both in breadth of appeal and in dignity during the past 

 year. Serious structural and systematic inquiries are being undertaken, as by 

 van Pelt Lechner and Schalow. With due apology, but with a new respect and 

 under the impulse of a new demand of public interest, various ornithological and 

 popular reviews have touched upon the nesting realm, or reviewed the out- 

 standing features of oological theory. Intensive efforts have been more and more 

 centered upon problems of oological inquiry, and upon their psychological as- 

 sociations. No more striking or instructive instance can be cited than that of 

 Edgar Chance, Esquire, who patiently followed the fortunes of a Cuckoo (Cucu- 

 ius canorus canorus) through three seasons' nesting, and who last year secured 

 twenty-one eggs from one bird. No doubt a certain school of faddists will affect 

 to be horrified by an investigation which demanded the oological output of an 

 entire meadow season by season (although if a crofte ' had cut his hay from the 

 same meadow the value of the fact as news would have been scouted at the vil- 

 lage store) ; yet the insight afforded by these studies is thrilling and valuable in 

 the extreme. That the outcome of such observations, systematically and ardent- 

 ly pursued, may revolutionize many of our cherished conceptions of bird-life, 

 goes without saying. Howard's "Territory in Bird Life", while not primarily the 

 work of an oologist, so clearly illustrates the field of inquiry to which oologists 

 may address themselves, that its publication cannot but prove a wholesome in- 

 centive to all students of the breeding cycle. 



With the quickening of interest in field studies has come an increasing in- 

 vasion of fields still unknown or but little explored. As a stimulating example of 

 this oological occupation of the world, we may cite the case of Africa. The 

 M. C. 0. has correspondents and Members in Cape Colonv, Natal, the Transvaal, 

 and the old Orange Free State, with two applications on the way from Rhodesia. 

 Our Major Pitman has gone to British East Africa, where he will represent us on 

 the Honorary Board of Foreign Advisers. Charles F Swynnerton, Esq , has 

 just reported in from Tanganyika Territory (once "German East Africa); while 

 Hon. Charles F. Belcher is settled at Zomba, the capital of Nyasaland. And if 

 we add that Judge Belcher's fine collection of eggs, secured at Entebbe in Uganda, 

 — exactly under the Equator — has just arrived at the M. C. O., our readers will 

 understand what a pride our fellowship takes in seeing the oological sun rise upon 

 the Dawning Continent. It is the day of internationalism; and not until every 

 zoogeographical unit of the earth's surface is linked up in a cooperative system, 

 shall we realize the fullest advantages which are to accrue from comparative 

 studies. 



It takes neither prophet nor son of prophet to observe that the oological 

 ambition is kindling. How far this ambition is to spend itself in acquisition, in 

 private possession or hoarding, remains to be determined. There are hopeful 

 signs not a few, that ambition is to take the form of achievement, of ancient 

 difficultie conquered, of problems solved, of laborious investigations successfully 

 carried out. Progress, moreover, is to be qualitative rather than quantitative. 

 A single species thoroughly studied out and adequately represented in the collec- 

 tion is sometimes better than a miscellaneous assortment of a hundred times the 

 size. Here as elsewhere distinction and value are almost synonymous. Better 

 a single masterpiece than a gallery of daubs! That series of Cuckoos' eggs, now, 

 forty-six from a single bird, would Mr. Chance swap it, think you, for a "general 

 collection" of a thousand eggs? There are a thousand general collections, but 

 there is only one such series of Cuckoos' eggs. 



Although there is, just now, a slight recrudescence of general collecting, 

 it will give way, in all probability, before the superior claims of specialization. 

 The psychology of this is precisely the psychology of internationalism. A general 

 collection of a hundred species of birds' eggs gives a boy a certain standing, or 

 notoriety, in the village; but it does not interest the more experienced collector 

 at the county seat. The general collection of five hundred species, maintained 

 in town, may only make the connoisseur yawn; and it may have in it no single 

 item which would justify publication in a provincial organ. But a collection of a 



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