148 
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 
exist. The whole remaining creation combined would not 
be able to arrest the destruction caused by insect life so 
effectually as birds.” 
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The Protection of Birds’ Eggs. 
That the decreasing number of birds is an important 
subject is duly testified by the attention that has been 
bestowed upon it by various Legislatures, not in this country 
only, but in our colonies ; also in America and Germany. 
The protection that was intended to be provided by the Act 
of 1880 is minimised by the omission of a most important 
and essential feature—the protection of the eggs. I venture 
to affirm that it is from the taking of eggs that birds are 
more likely to be reduced than by the adults being shot—the 
gun tax was the best bird protection act ever passed and 
ought to be more rigidly enforced—as it stands to reason 
that a visitor to a breeding station of Gulls, for example, 
could, if so disposed, easily take 100 eggs. It is argued 
they will lay again, and that in the neighbourhood of these 
breeding stations the eggs are used as an article of food, and 
that the gathering of them finds work for several men. No 
doubt the birds will lay again after being robbed, to have the 
operation repeated the second time, and when any young are 
afterwards hatched the period is too short for them to be 
able to fly before the close time expires, when indiscriminate 
and brutal slaughter takes place, answering no legitimate 
purpose whatever. 
The Bearded Tit, of quite different habits to the gulls, is 
fast becoming exterminated, entirely through the undue 
taking of the eggs. One marshman will take in the 
restricted area this species now occupies in Norfolk 200 eggs 
in one season, whereas I am certain from my own experience 
he would not be able to shoot 25 in a twelvemonth ; besides, 
it would not pay him to give so much time in obtaining 
them, as no bird is more difficult to put up from the thick 
reed beds to obtain a shot, and the chances are you cannot 
find the bird when down. 
The importance of taking eggs as a means of reducing 
the numerical strength of a species, relative to the time that 
species would cease to exist, is obvious, because, supposing a 
bird lays 100 eggs during its natural life, producing on an 
average five at a clutch, and if two broods were reared 
annually, the producing powers of the bird would last-ten 
years, but if compelled to lay three clutches per annum 
instead of two, by the taking of the eggs her period of 
reproduction would be reduced to about seven years; there- 
