Collecting Birds' Eggs

— If it be true that the child, in his individual life from the cradle up, is a fair representative of the various stages in the advance of the race, then at some particular period every boy must be a young savage. One peculiarity of the savage is his recklessness of life, and it is therefore important that the boy should be educated out of that stage as fast as possible. It is sometimes hard to do this, and at the same time develop a taste for natural history. But the two can go hand in hand, if there be wise instructors. Is it wise, however, as has been suggested, to advise the robbing of birds’ nests as one step in this development in street boys ? Even those who should know better destroy many rare birds by taking the eggs. The rarer the birds, indeed, the more diligently does the professional collector seek for their eggs.

Mr. Eldridge E. Fish, the author of that charming book The Blessed Birds, says with reference to this : “The Agassiz Association, itself a worthy organization, with laudable aims, soon had thousands in its ranks who degenerated into mere specimen-gatherers. The egg-collecting craze infected boys alike in cities, villages, and rural districts. The country was scoured far and near for nests and eggs. Lawns, hedges, orchards, fields, and highways were mercilessly ransacked, and every nest, common or rare, despoiled ; even cemeteries, always favorite resorts for the birds, were not exempt from the destroyer. Within the last few years millions of eggs have thus been destroyed, and little scientific knowledge gained by this manner of study. ... I have had thousands brought to me by boys for identification. . . . The boys had little or no knowledge of the subject, often not knowing what species they had robbed. These eggs were to them as so many marbles, or other toys, — trophies, valuable only as objects of barter ; but the effects on the bird population wore none the less injurious. . . . Our birds have all been identified and described, and a further persecution of them in that direction is selfishly barbarous, and ought not longer to be tolerated.”

By all means let the boys learn to know the birds. Mr. H. E. Parkhurst, in The Birds’ Calendar, tells how that can be done without killing a bird or robbing a nest. And if boys wish to know more about the eggs of the different species, any city lad can have the privilege of studying eggs at the various natural history museums, and can exercise his skill in other directions by making wax imitations of them. A complete description of the way to do this is given in The Extermination of Birds, by Edith Carrington.

An egg seems a trifle, but if it is the cradle from which might have sprung a wood thrush or a bobolink, it is a serious loss to crush it.

One of the surest ways of acquiring an influence over rough boys is to instill into their hearts a love of nature, or rather to develop that love which is dormant in most of us. But is it not better, along with such an education, to give also lessons in selfcontrol ; to teach them to find nests, study them, and even examine the eggs, without touching them ; to gather for botanical purposes only as many flowers as are really necessary, leaving some to beautify the earth and to multiply their kind ; to study trees without girdling the trunks ; and to hunt for frog spawn without stoning the frogs ? A genuine love of nature means such sympathy with all nature’s children, animal and vegetable, that the lover learns to exercise a jealous care lest they suffer at his hands. With this proviso, let the street boys go into the fields and woods ; the more of them, the better.