1 Birp KILLING IN ORNITHOLOGY. 
disappears with any undue multiplication of types‘ in pretence of 
appropriate chronicle. 
Finally, for the benefit of those who might laugh at my bugbear 
of the logically complete chronicle, I wish to point out that in the 
restricted or tempered working of the collecting habit, where the 
“unattainable goal” is agnostically (i. e. unscientifically) foregone, 
the acme of acquisition is no longer the “typical” or common- 
place, “perfect” or humdrum specimen, one of the rank and file, 
from whom little of bird-genius could be expected ; but, on the con- 
trary, it is more and more the leader of birds, the innovator in every 
mode of life, the genius and saving hope of the bird-world which is 
of importance to the chronicle. In the vast, sudden, and, for the 
birds, deplorable transformation of our continent during the pres- 
ent times, the only hope for a permanent continuance, a develop- 
ment, of the metabolic subject-matter of ornithology lies not in the 
conservatives of the bird-world, who come to the same old spots 
at the same old times and do the same old things till they starve, 
freeze, die of disease or cats with stoic blindness to the necessities 
of the case. These dullards, commonplace in plume and form, 
in voice and brain, were once and are still for typical or peda- 
gogic ornithology the objects of collection. But what are now 
those objects for the progressive and enterprising student ? — 
read in the pages of the Auk. Let a bird be “never here or 
at this time seen before,” let him display “a surprising plum- 
age”; feed on “astonishing things”; sing an “original song ” ; 
build a “unique nest”; bring out “an unusual brood”; be, in 
fact a chance of salvation to his race—and he is a dead bird 
at sight. His corpse will chronicle a new event; his identity 
will be “scientifically verified” —by proof that he is nothing 
before known! And his death may have cost the world the life 
of a billion feathered migrants, feeders, singers, builders and 
breeders in the new conditions; his continued life being the only 
chance for just such guidance and posterity. Speaking with strict 
scientific meaning, this sort of killing, encouraged as I know by 
1 For a brief statement of what constitutes a reasonable number of types 
see F. M. C. in Bird Lore, Feb., 1901. This reasonable number of course 
tends to increase; but should never be pushed to keep pace with contempo- 
rary discoveries of variation in life. 
