Birp KILLING IN ORNITHOLOGY. 13 
almost all leading ornithologists,! even those most active in avowed 
bird-protection, is scientifically intolerable. Barring the slight 
chance that the innovating bird is by his own eccentricity imme- 
diately doomed (and this consideration almost never enters into the 
causes of killing) the killing of any such bird is a suicide of orni- 
thology. ‘The scientific spirit cannot speak too strongly in protest. 
Thus far it does not seem to have spoken to this point at all. 
Thus we see that any killing of birds, except for the exemplifi- 
cation of an obsolete or pedagogical type-schema, operates, if tem- 
pered, to the destruction of all bird-genius and kindred valuable 
originalities ; and is in any case a flat failure unless exhausting all 
birds in the world; the better our discrimination, the worse being 
the failure. And this ‘unattainable goal” would itself be infini- 
tesimal in its relation to the subject-matter for which it would be 
substituted. Any bird-killing at all (except for pedagogy to a very 
limited extent) is destructive of ornithological science as a compre- 
hension or appreciation of an actual metabolism. 
The chronicle system, then, works badly on the subject-matter 
which it chronicles, either to its incalculable and cumulative crip- 
pling, or even to the entire destruction thereof. Is it per se a 
reliable chronicle? Not if any other source of information is 
obtainable. For in themselves bones, horny substances and 
feathers, by no means permanent for any purpose, are merely the 
least susceptible, least plastic or least impressible of chronicles 
and thus the least reliable. What bones record is a long general 
sweep of customary or habitual and slightly varying ancestral per- 
formances. Their influence on living activity is that of the “dead 
hand” almost entirely. They are, except in so far as every new 
individual slightly modifies them every moment, the presence of 
generality or type-character; and are therefore, except as slightly 
plastic, not the actual bird at all. Bones are the closest possible 
approach to complete irrelevance and incapacity as chronicle of 
1 All who themseives secure or require of others for verification such speci- 
mens; or editorially accept without explicit protest and publish without ex- 
pressed disapproval record of such killing; actively encourage this preposterous 
method. ‘The example to the general public with regard to popular offences 
against bird-life is the worst possible; and the tu quoque of those who earn 
bread and butter in bird slaughter is unanswerable. 
