INTRODUCTION. ° XXXII 
pea-shooters they had killed during the season fifty Robins and other birds which fre- 
quent the gardens, orchards, and cemetery. Such boys exist all over the United States, 
and war on birds as things made to be killed.... The pea-shooter* gives no sound, 
and can be carried in the vest-pocket; but so destructive is it in the hands of a skilful 
child, that the legislatures of some of the Western States were obliged to pass laws 
making the sale of the thing a misdemeanor, and punishing the possession or use of it.’ 
“Perhaps equally, possibly more destructive, and certainly more reprehensible, is 
the newly-arrived ‘foreign-born citizen,’ who, to demonstrate to himself that he has 
really reached the ‘land of the free,’ equips himself with a cheap shot-gun, some bird- 
traps, clap-nets, or drugged grain, one or all, and hies himself to the nearest haunt of 
birds for indiscriminate, often very quiet, slaughter or capture. Of course, only a few 
of our guests from foreign shores either possess or indulge in this propensity; but in the 
neighborhood of our larger cities, notably on Long Island, and elsewhere near New York, 
the destruction of bird-life thus effected, we are credibly informed, is startlingly large. 
“The destruction of birds by taxidermists, and for alleged ‘scientific purposes,’ has 
justly attracted attention, and has unjustly brought into disrepute the legitimate col- 
lecting of both eggs and birds for scientific use; but much of this alleged scientific 
collecting is illegitimate, being really done under false colors, or wrongly attributed to 
science. Of the birds killed or mounted by taxidermists, some, not unfrequently a large 
part, are for museums or private cabinets: another large share is put up for parlor or 
hall ornaments, either as groups or singly. All this, by a little license, may be allowed 
as legitimate, or at least not seriously reprehensible. But, unfortunately,.the average 
taxidermist has too often an unsavory alliance with the milliner, and, in addition to 
his legitimate work, is allured into catering on a large scale to the ‘hat-trade.’ Although 
a few of them are too high-principled and too much the naturalist at heart, to thus 
prostitute their calling, taxidermists as a class are at present in deserved disrepute, and 
are to a large degree responsible for much of the public and mistaken criticism of scien- 
tific collecting. This criticism is perhaps more especially directed against the ‘egg- 
collector,’ who ranges in calibre and purpose from the schoolboy, who gathers eggs as 
he does postage-stamps or ‘show-cards,’—for the mere purpose of ‘making a collection,’ 
— to the intelligent odlogist or ornithologist, who gathers his eggs in sets, prepares 
them with great care, with the strictest regard to correct identification, and in series 
sufficient to show the range of variation—often considerable—in eggs of the same 
species, and takes a few additional sets for exchange. He may have in the aggregate 
a large collection, numbering hundreds of species, and thousands of specimens; but in 
general the same species is not laid under serious requisition, and the sets are gathered 
at considerable intervals of time and from a large area of country. A squad of street. 
urchins set loose in the suburbs will often destroy as many nests in a single morning’s 
foray as a collector gathering for strictly scientific purposes would take in a whole 
season, and with far more harmful results, because local and sweeping. Most of the 
egg-collecting by schoolboys should be stopped, and can be easily checked ynder proper 
statutory regulations, as will be explained later in an article on bird-legislation. 
“The scientific collector, as already intimated, is charged, in some quarters, with 
* In the South called the “nigger-shooter,”’ and in the West the “sling or rubber-shooter.” 
