482 
Birds’ -Nesting. 
r J ul y> 
collection of eggs as much as another collector has 
one to make his of butterflies or birds, must be sought 
in another direction, and is worth the consideration of 
lovers both of birds and of intelligent and inquiring 
schoolboys. 
In passing it must be remarked that schoolboys alone are 
not to be blamed for purposeless birds’-nesting, and it would 
be unfair to pass over as great a culprit, the amateur adult 
collector, whose condemnation should be as much greater 
as is his opportunity of knowing better. It has been well 
remarked that few, if any, advances have been made by 
human beings in their history, but have been accompanied 
by a concomitant development of special vices, originating 
in a perverted application or use of the benefits gained by 
the advance. The form which this aberration assumes in 
connection with the rise and progress of biological science 
is as a mania for amassing large collections of animal 
structures, whether shells or birds’ eggs, or the animals 
themselves, without any reference whatever to their struc- 
ture or history, or to the educational purpose they might 
serve, when this latter exists at all. When you see in the 
drawers of a collector of birds’ eggs a long series of the 
eggs of the kingfisher or a wild duck, not one egg in each 
series differing in any way from another, the inane purpose- 
lessness of the thing — not to use any stronger term — is 
evident. No clearer proof could be given that the great 
majority of egg-collecting — that is, by others than school- 
boys — arises from a barbarous desire of possession alone, 
than that it is seldom if ever accompanied by the collecting 
of birds’ nests, from which probably much more is to be 
learned of bird history than from the eggs. I need only 
refer to the learned observations of Pouchet on the changes 
which he remarked in the building of the nests of species of 
Himndo, to instance the interesting and important results 
which a study of nests might lead us to. 
Compare the nest of a chaffinch with those of its conge- 
ners the greenfinch or the bullfinch, or that of a sedge 
warbler with that of the wood wren ; how totally different 
they are — one feels inclined to say, comparing incom- 
parables, more different than the birds themselves. Or to 
go further, compare one chaffinch’s nest with another, and 
note the variety in material, and even in construction, 
adapted to some peculiarity of situation or surroundings. 
Here is a field for observation and comparison by means of 
which the philosophical student may hope to catch some 
