THE DESTRUCTION OF WILD BIRDS' EGGS.
WHAT shall a poor bird do ? Already she is put to great pains to bring up her youthful brood in the country of her choice—for a British bird should breed in the islands of Great Britain—and is obliged to wing her yearly way to the rocky fastnesses of the Orkneys or the sea-girt Shetlands, where alone she can enjoy a mild, unchanging .climate, freedom from intrusion, and that measure of peace and quietness that a wilderness affords. But what will it avail her to flee into the wilderness to build her nest, when the oologist is on her track P When he follows her even across the stormy sea, invades the wild shores where in careless security the eggs of gull and tern lie unprotected, or scales with rope-ladders the face of the inaccessible cliffs, and extracts from their deepest recesses the treasure of his feathered victims P Of all her enemies, the two-legged oologist is the most deadly, because he is the most cunning ; for being human, he has the wits of a man, though apparently not the humanity, and against those wits the poor bird sets her own in vain. From the net of the fowler she may escape, but how can she save her helpless eggs from the clutch of the • oologist, or fail to betray to him their hiding-place P There may be people, however, who do not know what kind of thing an oologist is : so for their benefit it will be well to describe it. An ornithologist, as we all know, is a person who devotes himself to the study of birds, and although he too is rather prone to shoot and stuff them because they happen to be rare- -a proceeding which is not calculated to make that particular species more common—yet, on the whole, he does good service by increasing our knowledge of their ways and habits, and by not unfrequently defending them from the destruction dealt out to them by the more ignorant of his fellow- creatures. An oologist, on the other hand, is one of the most destructive beasts of prey that is known,—the most greedily, insatiably rapacious. He calla himself by a Greek name, and comes from Birmingham. He pursues the sport of a schoolboy with the brains and resources of a man; and in the course of two short months will ruth- lessly destroy some twenty thousand pleasant lives in order to obtain the same number of blown and empty egg-shells. That is one kind of oologist, the one who combines a small amount of doubtful sport with a large and indubitable profit. The other kind of oologist sits at home, at Birmingham perhaps, does not know a hawk from a. heron, or one nest from another, and yet takes a strange pleasure in buying these same empty shells and storing them in mahogany cabinets, rejoicing and gloating over them according to their comparative rarity, and the value of the life that they once contained. As a rule, he knows nothing of the birds from which they were robbed, and cares nothing for them : he simply collects eggs in the same way As he would collect postal marks or postage-stamps ; the eggs, in his mind, have no more connection with birds than the postage-stamps have with letters. And yet, somewhere in the depths of his clouded intelligence, there exists a dim idea that he is aiding the cause of science, and that the money that be pays to poachers for rifling birds'-nests is not ill-expended in that sacred name. In the same way another monomaniac, the collector of old snuff-boxes, sometimes fancies that he is encouraging the Fine Arts. And our egg-collector calls him- self an oologist. Well, it is not a pretty name, but it enjoys a. Greek derivation, and a scientific sound. Does not the gentleman who cuts corns call himself a chiropodist P The protests that Lord Lilford and Mr. Wilson Noble addressed to the public through the pages of the Times this week, and the scheme which they have exposed in such a timely manner, may well give us reason for sad re- flection. What has been the use of the three Acts that have been passed since- 1872 for the protection of wild fowl during their breeding season, if the eggs, which it is as
necessary to protect as the birds themselves, are to be at the mercy of such wholesale and organised robberies P The scheme in question seems to have been set on foot by "the enterprising Naturalists' Publishing Company of Birmingham," and by it it is proposed that a company of egg-collectors should be formed for the purpose of paying the expenses of a regular raid to be made upon the breeding-ground of the Shetland Islands. A list is given of some sixty kinds of birds that breed there, of all degrees of rarity, from the white- tailed eagle and the great skua to the common gull and the projectors of this precious scheme cheerfully add : "If the season is a pretty fair one, a haul of at least twenty thousand eggs (including many beautiful and rare varieties) may be expected." We have not a doubt of it; with proper appliances, nothing can be more simple and easy. And for every twenty thousand eggs that are blown and packed and find their way to Birmingham, at least another hundred thousand will be deserted by the birds who are to be disturbed. The experiment has only to be repeated a few years in succession, and carried out in the same systematic fashion in our English fields, in order to effect a visible diminution in our native songsters, and banish from our coasts the sea-birds who are the sailor's only companions across the dreary waste of waters. The sailor shall lose his constant friends, song shall be silenced in field and covert, warm nests shall be left cold and deserted, all that a Bir- mingham oologist may fill his foolish cabinets and enhance their value in the mind of folly. 0 oologist ! is this well considered P The man, it is true, has given himself a detestable name, but surely his nature cannot be so detestable that he will embark upon this enterprise of futile destruction, of senseless and useless cruelty, without some pang of com- punction for the life that he ruthlessly proposes to destroy. Alas ! the gentleman of Birmingham reeks not of such things : birds sing in the woods, but he hears them not, for the nightingale builds no nest in Birmingham : the sea-gulls flash white between sea-foam and sunlight, but he sees them not, for their haunts are by the white cliffs, far from the black and smoky city: the curlews cry in passionate lament, but he does not heed them,—what does he know of curlews P The oologist has no love for feathered fowls, nor any understanding of their life and beauty ; but he has a mahogany cabinet, and wants to fill it with birds' eggs. He is making a collection.
Birds'-nesting is the sport of schoolboys, and as a sport of schoolboys we would not condemn it. Indeed, we would go so far as to confess that we cannot understand a boy who has never climbed a tree in search of birds' eggs. But let us mark the difference between the methods of the oologist and the boy. The former buys his eggs from some wholesale poacher, for the sole purpose of forming an unique collection more perfect than that of his neighbours. The boy's delight is in the chase, and not in the collection ; he would not waste his precious pocket-money in buying stolen goods, the Whole pleasure of whose possession lies in the stealing. The young barbarian finds in the pursuit an exercise both for his mind and body : he studies the habits of the birds, and knows where they build their nests ; he barks his shins and risks his neck in climbing the lofty pine where the kestrel has his home ; he plunges up to his waist in water to plunder the reed- built arks of moor-hens and dabchicks ; and he braves the wrath of the farmer by breaking through his quick-set hedges in search of finches' eggs. Moreover, he has estab- lished a rough code of honour with regard to the birds them- selves, which he religiously observes. The bird, having had the good fortune to escape school and whipping, is supposed by him to be unable to master the simplest rules of arithmetic, even in the matter of counting eggs ; therefore, he only robs her of a small proportion of her store, and is confident that the ignorant mother never detects the theft. At all times he is careful not to disturb the nest when the mother-bird is sitting there. Whether his honourable intentions and pre- cautionary measures are always attended with success, it would be difficult to say ; but at least the damage that is done to the feathered creation in his case is so small, and the benefit that the boy himself receives is so great, that we should indeed be loth to discountenance the practice of birds'-nesting at school.
The Birmingham collector can hardly claim the same con- sideration. For what possible purpose can he wish to collect eggs P The mere possession of a few hundred birds' eggs no
more makes their owner an ornithologist, than the stock-in- trade of a furrier makes him a sportsman. A bird's egg is a very beautiful thing, but there is nothing to be learnt from it. Fortunately, in the present instance, there is every prospect of this silly and childish mania for collecting useless objects being baulked. The Shetland Islands are not altogether common property, and their owners are hardly likely to regard this most mischievous form of trespass with equanimity. We earnestly hope that they will be moved to defend their rights against these would-be trespassers, and protect the harmless guests who have so long enjoyed their hospitality.
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