114 SOME ERRORS REGARDING 
that apparently might have been avoided, we should also, 
all of us} never hesitate to expose and to correct whatever 
we know to be wrong. We all know but too well, that 
when a grave error has once been deliberately given as 
a fact by a distinguished authority, how hard and appa- 
rently impossible it is to stop its currency as truth, and 
to correct the mistaken belief it has caused, and is con- 
tinually causing. 
Take for instance the statement made by one of the ear- 
liest explorers of the natural history of our Pacific shores, 
that the egg of the California Vulture (Cathartes Califor- 
manus) is jet black. However conflicting with all infer- 
ence by analogy this statement must have ever appeared 
to every one familiar with Odlogy, it has found its way 
into nearly every work on American Ornithology pa 
lished during the present century. 
In no department of natural history is extreme accu- 
racy so absolutely indispensable as in that to the study of | 
which oe writer has given his chief attention, the nest- 
ing and eggs of birds, which, for convenience, is called 
ment, will have to confess himself not an exception to 
the rule—to which he can find none—and must retr 
amend, and, if he can, efface, it will become him to 
peel lenient in his allusions to the mistakes mat 
: lo 
