Birds’ -Nesting. 
1879.] 
4 8 5 
and bird which the preserved specimens recalled to mind. 
For two or three hours the rooms were filled with these 
happy-faced students of zoology ; and the remembrance of 
Sunday afternoons nearer home, spent by British peasants 
in less creditable ways, rose, not unnaturally, in the mind, 
with the reflection that “ they manage these things better 
in France.” 
In forming such a collection of birds’ eggs and nests as I 
have described, with the desire, at the same time, to collect 
with such discrimination and judgment as to limit to a 
minimum, if not to avoid entirely, cruelty or injury to the 
birds, there are certain broad maxims which must be held 
in mind ; and it is these which it is my objeCt to strongly 
impress. It is well established by experience that many 
birds will go on laying eggs in the same nest after the loss 
of their first eggs ; and, physiologically, there exists the 
most ample provision in the mother bird for such a contin- 
gency. Others will build new nests again and again after 
the destruction of their first efforts ; but manifestly there is 
a limit, if only in point of time and season, to these per- 
sistent efforts at propagating their kind. No egg collector 
should, therefore, ever take eggs or nests after a certain 
date, — say, 1st of June, — except in the case of very late 
migrants. This limiting date should, of course, vary with 
different species of birds, and in different parts of the 
country, but should be fixed and rigidly adhered to. 
A second maxim should be, that no collector should ever 
take partially incubated eggs, or disturb the nest in such 
case ; and lastly, that he should never take any egg or nest 
at all that is not intended to form part of some new public 
collection, or to supply a blank in such already-established 
one. The common possession of a perfect collection, which 
might thus be speedily formed, would not only have the 
influences which experience has proved similar ones to have 
on schoolboys, but with “ schoolboys of a larger growth ” 
birds and their nests and eggs would become more familiar 
and interesting objects, and the ranks of ornithologists be 
swelled by new and devoted students. Furthermore, with 
such opportunities of comparing observations and disco- 
vering variations in habits of nesting, or in the phenomena 
connected with birds’ eggs, the study of birds’ nests and 
eggs might in time be raised to the dignity, which it scarcely 
at present occupies, of a science. Vast as is the number of 
faCts which we are in possession of regarding the subject, 
the time scarcely seems to have arrived when these may be 
