Egg Collecting
The company of bird-lovers is being rent by a vehement controversy between the observers and the oologists. The leaders on either side are Mr. Eric Parker and Mr. Edgar Chance, who made fame as a discoverer of the cuckoo's secret. One of the more particular causes of offence is the exhibit at an oological foregathering of 40 complete clutches of pairs of red shrikes. Now egg collecting is not altogether a vicious hobby. Some of our best and fondest observers, and protectors, have made collections of eggs. It is, indeed, difficult to study birds without being something of an oologist. How many happy and perhaps profitable hours were spent by some of us in our early salad days in searching for nests and carrying off specimens of eggs. All the business of blowing the eggs and arranging them in a cabinet has pleasant memories. The pleasure was unqualified by any regret for the bird. We very faithfully held to the instruction that one egg only was to be taken ; and it was a very rare experience to find that a bird had deserted. So much on behalf of the young collector.
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