BIRDS AND THE COLLECTOR.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—Your Ambleside correspondents touch upon a subject on which I have felt very strongly for many years, viz., the sale of eggs and other natural history pecimens. As with sport, the bringing-in of the money element carries with it a host of evils—in fact, nearly all the existing troubles are due to this cause. The ordinary collector visiting a place, perhaps for the only time in his life, takes a clutch of eggs, a plant, or butterfly, and the effect is negligible ; but it is far otherwise with the collector for sale. It is on record that a collector took all he could get of a rare blue butterfly in Cornwall, and then tried to exterminate the colony to increase the value of his specimens. Less vile, but almost equally mis- chievous, are cases such as that of two young Swedes met in the Dovrefeld who boasted that they had paid the expenses of their holiday by collecting and selling rare plants. Several of these, such as Popover nudicaule, are too scarce to stand more than two or three years of such work without extermi- nation. The cases of the Kite in Wales, and Phalarope in Scotland, are too well known to ornithologists to need detailing. To talk of money values in connexion with natural history is a degradation, and as a business man I for one want to get away from " filthy lucre " for a while in the scanty leisure I can spare for my hobbies. Cannot pressure be brought to bear on all our societies to make it " taboo " to buy or sell eggs, birds, butterflies or plants, and to create such a strong feeling that any decent person would be ashamed of the practice ? The sale of collections at the owner's death is perhaps unavoidable, but this scarcely affects the main question.—I am, Sir, &c., CHAS. E. PEARSON, F.L.S., M.B.O.V., F.R.H.S.
Previous page
