What constitutes a Museum Collection of Birds ? 145 



collection of birds is assuredly uncalled for. Nor am I here 

 so especially concerned with this branch of the subject. 



I will simply state, therefore, that a study collection will, 

 of course, contain — (a) skins, (b) skeletons, (c) spirit speci- 

 mens, (d) nests and eggs, (e) economic material, if it be 

 proposed to investigate this branch of the subject. A Museum 

 collection of skins, it may be added, should contain a 

 sufficient number of specimens to represent changes in 

 plumage due to age, sex, and season, geographical variation, 

 and geographical distribution at all seasons. 



In some instances so large a series of specimens is required 

 that indiscriminating critics have, on occasion, classed the 

 scientific collector with the millinery taxidermist. It should 

 be remembered, however, that the Museum's demands are 

 limited, while the milliner's are unlimited; that the Museum's 

 series of specimens of a species have been taken throughout 

 its range, while the milliner's agent takes his thousands and 

 tens of thousands from a single locality. 



Few Museums, as the result of years of collecting, possess 

 100,000 bird skins ; while, to the writer's knowledge, a single 

 winter's work on the west coast of Florida brought a party of 

 millinery collectors 300,000 birds. 



These remarks should not be interpreted as an endorse- 

 ment of wholesale killing of birds or robbing of nests by 

 irresponsible "collectors" who for selfish or commercial 

 reasons may exterminate a species locally. Nor, indeed, 

 would I advocate any form of collecting which threatens the 

 existence or serious diminution of a species. 



It is, of course, neither necessary nor desirable that every 

 one forming a collection of birds or their eggs should attempt 

 to represent each species by the large series of specimens 

 to be found in Museums. To avoid, in a measure, such 

 duplication of material and unnecessary collecting, I would 

 urge the maintenance in Museums of collections of bird 

 skins, representing at least the local ornis, to which every 

 applicant, whether or not he be known to those in charge, 

 shall have free access. 



A collection of this kind need contain no examples of birds 

 which, for one reason or another, it would be difficult to 



