ore of these bird highwaymen, and every nest in the country round about
that the wretches can lay hands on is harried. Their professional term
for a nest of eggs is "a clutch," a word that well expresses the work of
their grasping, murderous fingers. They clutch and destroy in the germ
the life and music of the woodlands. Certain of our natural history
journals are mainly organs of communication between these human weasels.
They record their exploits at nest-robbing and bird-slaying in their
columns. One collector tells with gusto how he "worked his way" through
an orchard, ransacking every tree, and leaving, as he believed, not one
nest behind him. He had better not be caught working his way through my
orchard. Another gloats over the number of Connecticut warblers--a rare
bird--he killed in one season in Massachusetts. Another tells how a
mocking-bird appeared in southern New England and was hunted down by
himself and friend, its eggs "clutched," and the bird killed. Who knows
how much the bird lovers of New England lost by that foul deed? The
progeny of the birds would probably have returned to Connecticut to
breed, and their progeny, or a part of them, the same, till in time the
famous songster would have become a regular visitant to New England.
In the same journal still another collector describes minutely how he
outwitted three humming birds and captured their nests and eggs,--a
clutch he was very proud of. A Massachusetts bird harrier boasts of his
clutch of the egg's of that dainty little warbler, the blue yellow-back.
One season he took two sets, the next five sets, the next four sets,
besides some single eggs, and the next season four sets, and says he
might have found more had he had more time. One season he took, in
about twenty days, three from one tree. I have heard of a collector who
boasted of having taken one hundred sets of the eggs of the marsh wren,
in a single day; of another, who took in the same time, thirty nests
of the yellow-breasted chat; and of still another, who claimed to have
taken one thousand sets of eggs of different birds in one season. A
large business has grown up under the influence of this collecting
craze. One dealer in eggs has those of over five hundred species. He
says that his business in 1883 was twice that of 1882; in 1884 it was
twice that of 1883, and so on. Collectors vie with each other in the
extent and variety of their cabinets. They not only obtain eggs in sets,
but ai