Birp KILLING IN ORNITHOLOGY. 15 
so metabolic as to be a chronicle of short life-periods only ; at most 
and in the rough, the chronicle of a season, but on close examina- 
tion hardly of a day. And their intense suggestion, by wear and 
tear, weathering, etc., of out-door activities, domestic economy, 
moults, whatnot psychologic of which they afford on/y the most 
meagre temporary chronicle, refers one at once to the necessity of a 
continual observation of the living bird! (barring comparison of 
innumerable specimens already condemned!) if one would under- 
stand the feather in the least. Which in turn shows us that it is 
by the living bird, his psychology, affections, matings, feedings, 
buildings, locomotions and whatnot that we even at all understand 
the bills, feet, wing-bones and general skeleton, which otherwise 
serve mechanics or geometry, not ornithology. So that the living 
bird is the thing, even for the wretchedly inadequate chronicle ; 
which is better as a chronicle the less it refers to the actual killed 
bird at all! 
To sum up, I have shown that the dead bird diifers from the 
live bird as an object of science by being a chronicle which is the 
more pitifully insufficient, the more precise is its reference to the 
bird killed —of which it is always ostensibly the record; that it 
fails the worse as a record, the more precisely it refers to its fact. 
That any attempt at all to secure dead specimens of importance 
and interest to metabolic (non-generic or non-specific) ornithology 
involves the destruction of just those birds whose existence 1s 
important to the continued actuality of bird-life or the development 
of ornithologic subject-matter. That the attempt to secure ade- 
quate collections of such chronicles is self-defeating so long as a 
single bird remains alive. And would be, when complete, infini- 
tesimal in accomplishment just in proportion as its records refer 
precisely to the birds killed, i. e. to an infinite (infinitesimally ana- 
lyzable) bird-life at the instant of death only; and are otherwise 
increasingly generalized or dubious. I proved also that these 
conclusions all follow from the rejection of the theory that a bird 
flying out of doors is scientifically purely a sort-of-bird, and not a 
1A pioneer in any general field, like Dr. Dwight in Moulting, must needs 
have special license to kill, to which subsequent workers should never pretend. 
And the admission of any exception to the rule of life-study is liable to great 
abuse. 
