HOW rO PROTECT BIRDS. 
43 
competition, arid a tea given to those who have sent in papers. 
I can see the Avay to a delightful evening when the papers should 
be read, comments kindly offered, mistakes corrected, informa- 
tion given, and some fresh subject set for the next time. The 
whole village would be full of chat about this gathering ; each 
child would naturally bring much of the knowledge gained into 
his own home, and thus parents would indirectly be enlightened 
on natural histor}' subjects on which they are usually deplorably 
ignorant. 
These humble suggestions are offered as being the best means 
I can at present bring forward in order to attain the end we have 
in view, and they apply equally to young people in a higher 
position in life, but I earnestly hope that far better plans may be 
evoked from others as a result of, bringing the subject promin- 
ently forward. 
I would conclude with an e.xcellent idea borrowed from Miss 
Carrington’s valuable paper just published on “The Extermina- 
tion of Birds,” and that is that our young people should be 
encouraged to model birds’ eggs in wax, and colour them exactly 
according to nature. 
It seems hardly possible to prevent bo}’s making collections of 
birds’ eggs, and since they will do it, we can but guide them to 
a humane method of carrying on the study of oology. 
Even the one egg used as a model need only be borrowed 
from a nest and returned when the model is coloured. The 
collection would be a permanent one, and formed absolutely 
without robbing the valuable birds, without whose incessant 
labours we should have endless insect plagues. For the modus 
operandi of this last idea I would refer my readers to Miss 
Carrington’s little book.* 
In trying to discourage the collecting mania, I know I am 
treading on delicate ground, and must define my meaning 
clearly, or I may convey wrong ideas and provoke a needless 
correspondence. I do not think very young children should be 
allowed to kill any living creature in order to make a collection 
— it must tend to make them hard-hearted; far better is it surely 
to teach them to watch and admire every bird and insect they 
come across. As they are thus taught to know the ways and 
habits of living things, and year by year they grow up with 
kindly feelings towards them, I think they will hardly be likely 
to develop into the heartless beings who can destroy perhaps 
fifty lovely butterflies in order to complete a circle of colour in 
some case of insects. That is the kind of collecting I wholly 
condemn as both senseless and cruel. So much study can be 
carried out without taking life that it seems undesirable to take 
up in early days any line of investigation which involves the 
death of the things studied, at any rate until the student is old 
* “The Extermination of Birds,” by Edith Carrington. Published by William 
Reeves, 185, Fleet Street. Price 2d. 
