and now even the old birds suffer with cold. Imagine a Wood Thrush protecting through the long hours 
of a rainy night her hungry nestlings and rude habitation by her warm body and oily plumage. Without 
moonlight or starlight, her only company the falling drops of rain, the whistling wind, the sighing trees, 
and, perchance, the hollow hoot of the Owl, watching for some such morsel as she and her brood. 
Certainly this is dismal, and well calculated to still the music of the feathered tribes until brighter days 
and warmer nights return. If you have ever heard the Brown Thrush singing to the rising sun, after a 
few days of gloomy, falling weather, you have listened to a story of joy beyond the power of an English 
tongue to speak. 
Bird-life, then, is not all sunshine. It has its lights and its shadows, each individual working out 
for itself the problem of existence with earnestness and feeling. 
* 
* * 
It is very important that there should be well selected and well preserved cabinets of nests and eggs. 
It is not necessary that these be very numerous; one for every state would perhaps answer all the 
requirements. It is prejudicial to bird-life for every amateur ornithologist or oologist to aspire to a 
cabinet. Few reach their expectations, and abandon their endeavor after sacrificing thousands of birds 
and breaking up hundreds of homes; and in a few years their longed-for collection, so far as it has 
progressed, has been given over to the moth and other insects. It is commendable to love the study of 
birds, and to hunt up their nests, consider the materials of which they are composed, and measure and 
classify them. It is also commendable to study their eggs, compare those from one nest with those of 
another, and in every way to bring one’s self in close relationship with our feathered friends. But it is 
despicable to rob every nest in wood and field to swell the numbers of a worthless collection. The true 
naturalist is sparing of life and feelings, and kills and robs only when science demands it. When 
collections must be made, the collector should exercise moderation as well as skill. It has been 
recommended by some that but one egg be taken from a nest, thus sparing the birds the loss of home 
and young. But one egg from a nest here and another from one there would constitute a cabinet of no 
scientific value. A typical nest of the desired species should be selected, and when filled with the 
complement of eggs the whole should be taken. If in a tree or bush, the branches should be carefully 
cut so that the nest will not fall from its position, and when secured they should be so fastened as to give 
them permanency when dried. The destructible parts of the nest should be soaked with a weak solution 
of corrosive sublimate in alcohol, or powdered with some drug that will effectually keep away insects. 
A label should then be attached, stating locality in 'which the specimen was found, the position in which 
it was built, the date of its collection, the name of collector, and, finally, the Latin and English name 
of the bird, and by what means the birds were identified. The eggs should be carefully drilled on one 
side only, cleaned of their contents, dried and sealed. They should then be packed in soft cotton in a 
small wooden box, the lid of which is labeled accordingly with the nest. When it is thought desirable, 
the male and female bird should he killed when the nest is taken and skillfully skinned, and these skins, 
packed in a box, should go with the nest and eggs. A cabinet of this kind would consume much space, 
it is true, but it would have a value which few collections now jiossess. Unless some such systematic 
effort is intended, it will be found much more profitable to the student to content himself with field 
work ; to record in a field-book all about the birds, their nests and eggs. The last may even be measured 
without detriment, if handled carefully. Never hesitate to take a nest and eggs if its rarity or any 
other circumstance demands it. Even kill the parents, if necessary, hut do not fill your box with every 
egg within reach, to he blown by the dozen, or perhaps hundreds, marked up with pencil or pen, and 
lastly to find a place in some obscure drawer, where, faded and moth-eaten, they are as empty in value 
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