Page:Bird-lore Vol 08.djvu/128

 98 Bird -Lore cal learning. They see the egg-shell, but what do they know of the egg ? The oologist keeps the calcareous test simply because it is colored and "easily preserved; he blows out the living contents to save this husk. How the oologist hates the "badly incubated egg !" But that embryo is a bird in process, while the shell is little more than salts of lime. A museum of infinite value to the anatomist and evolutionist would have resulted, had oologists collected embryos instead of empty shells. The subject of oology today is neither a science nor does it bid fair to become one, until its followers become trained embryologists with an enthusiasm not for collecting but for interpreting. He will achieve results who leaves his desert of empty shells, his cabinets strewn with chalky skeletons, and strives to compare and correlate the differences in architecture, nesting sites, communalism, the feeding of the young and that most complex pro- cess, their education. I wish to have it plainly understood that I take no stand against the few oologists who honestly try to interpret, but an uncompromising one against the multitude who blindly collect without any scientific results. The latter are effecting an enormous destruction of bird life, much greater than those who collect the birds themselves, and altogether out of the idle love of pos- session. Much is called science that does not merit the name. They kill not only through the collecting of the eggs, but usually also by killing one or other of the parents for purposes of identification. All this destruction is the more effective in that it must needs be carried out during the breeding season, at the very time when it most securely tends to exile birds from their home areas. The argument that the taking of the nests and eggs is necessary to establish breeding records will not hold, for the sight of the nest or as frequently the behavior of the old birds demonstrates whether they are breeding in a particular locality or not. Oologists are verily anni- hilating both the goose and its goiden eggs, and they deceive themselves when they consider it scientific work. The World -Problem By S. S. TOWLES The bees hum it over and over' To the nodding heads of the clover, And every sweet -throated rover Calls it aloud from the trees. It sounds in man's ears forever, And he hears — but listens to it, never — For he is far, far too clever To be taught by the birds and the bees.