Birp KILLING IN ORNITHOLOGY. 9 
that many birds are closely related to an abstracted and well-known 
bird. In this meaning it is a means of pedagogy, dissemination, 
etc., not an assertion of one’s individual belief, or credible experi- 
ence in birds. 
What we credibly know of birds, is, then, that each as an object 
of experience or subject-matter of strict science is a unique quali- 
tative self-identity whose defining relationships constitute a system. 
What is the effect of this definition on the scientific killing of birds? 
1. Is it indifferent whether the bird studied is living or dead? 
2. If not, do the pedagogic advantages of exemplifying a fixedly 
definable classification as an ellipse for subtlety of distinction within 
a group outweigh the practical falsity of such a teaching as a gen- 
eral scientific dogma, solely with regard to its evil effects upon scien- 
tific bird-life? 1. Are birds scientifically the same birds, whether 
living or dead? Only on the supposition that characters of identi- 
fication are conceptually fixed, and hence, biologically speaking, 
approximately osseous or perhaps dermal. But if, as above. 
proved, the type-character, because actually of necessity referable 
to instances, is not fixed, then, a fortiori, no character whatever 
of any bird or group of birds' whose instances are identifiable is 
fixed fora moment. Biologically speaking, then, we must insist 
on a physiological metabolism through and through in our scien- 
tific subject-matter. But physiologically metabolism ceases at 
death. We then have certain bacterial and fermentative or chemi- 
cal metabolisms of decomposition with which no ornithologist has 
any special concern. At death is his opportunity, to be sure, to 
examine the record of what has very recently gone on in the bird’s 
viscera, especially with relation to food-supply and mating. ‘These 
examinations however are perhaps points in the criminology of 
curiosity, and are open, as a special subdivision of collecting, to 
all the objections below detailed in comparison with observation 
‘Obsolete birds are not identifiable except in the very small degree (as 
explained below) in which skeleton by its slight plasticity in mature life 
chronicles its own contemporary individual. By the skeleton as a fixity or 
“dead hand ” in life, the only chronicle is of a generalized series of ancestry, 
none of whose instances are identifiable as individual birds, unless by other 
sources of information. 
