over strain its senility to win a "jay" reputation. My informant tells that the 'sport last season produced 6,000 counted scalps; many more unrecorded. The sport is stimulated by prizes—sportsman's sundries, guns, etc., etc., paid for out of the subscribed pool.
I was told "the first prize is a $50 gun and the farmer's boy" (who probably learns ornithology, by suggestion) is "after that gun," and "gives the jay no rest." Thus the story runs, and the moral which our friends advance is "that last season was the best for quail for a long time." I do not desire to sound one note of censure upon these determined men; but if the main object is to save quail eggs, one naturally asks what advantageth it the quail, whether he dies in embryo, or a few months later falls a "sacrifice" to his kindly protector, who had shielded him "in egg," and watched over him in infancy, so that he might "pot" him in early maturity!
I presume the species of jays which are killed are the ordinary Pacific Coast species, Aphelocoma californica and Cyanocitta stelleri, species which have been investigated by our esteemed member, Prof. F. E. L. Beal of the Biological Survey, and others, and the evidence obtained permits the conclusion, that while the blue jay is a marauder and guilty in degree, it is not so to the extent which those who know it only by "its bad name" accredit the unfortunate bird.
Prof. Beal tells us that in the stomachs of 141 California jays 35 per cent of the contents for the year consisted of animal matter and 65 per cent vegetable; traces of egg shells were found only in twenty-one stomachs; in another series of 300 stomachs only three contained egg shells and two, only, bones of birds."
I think it would be well within the scope of the C. O. C. if each member, and there are members in almost all parts of the State, would take the trouble of investigating scientifically the habits and foods of the blue jays as they were found in that especial district, and forwarding the results of such observations, to the secretary of the club. It is the duty of such a club as the C. O. C. to be able to state exactly the economic value or otherwise of any prominent species of bird. It does seem a questionable proceeding to slaughter in a single season over 8,000 individuals of a species, if there is no more valid reason for so doing than that the sportsman may form a nursery-preserve of some other species, whose economic value as an agricultural asset may actually be of a much lower value.
I have every confidence that when it can be shown that the blue jay, or any other black-listed species, has qualities which entitle it to an intelligent consideration, and which in equity mitigate its evil reputation, it will be found that the good sense of the sportsman, not forgetting the apt kindliness of the "farmer's boy" will find him a less ardent competitor for "the prize-gun" and still less ambitious to attain a doubtful heroism in the "awful slaughter" of a species "during the early spring months."
I submit this matter to the members of the C. O. C.—ask them to graciously aid in obtaining facts—and indeed in all cases of appeal to be an ever ready and competent court of equity in all matters pertaining to our local ornithology.
Respectfully yours,
Frederick W. D'Evelyn,
President, Cooper Ornithological Club.
APROPOS OF EGG-COLLECTING
Editor The Condor:
Some of those who read your pages have been both interested and amused at the trend of the controversies in the matter of egg-collecting. There is a broad streak of humor in the matter-of-factness with which the opponents of egg-collecting take themselves so seriously that their position would, if universally admitted, utterly obliterate every other domain of bird study than their own from the curricula of that great University in which all thoughtful men are students. But biological investigation is not all of knowledge; even as the esthetik which weaves its own poesy about the devious pursuits of the ultra-collector is not all of life. Those who fume and fulminate against the egg-collector would seem utterly to over-look the educative element in collecting.
To illustrate: Correspondence in which, with aims largely personal he has been engaged during the past two years, has brought the writer into contact with a large number of bird students. Many of these have been known, at least by name, to some of us for many years. As we remember them twenty years ago, they were just egg-collectors—nothing else. Today they are students of bird life. No more exact investigators than a few of them are to be found in all the ranks of the American Ornithologists' Union. If, then, the acquiring of scientific data be a summum bonum, surely the early and erratic and impulsive career of every one of these "bird-men" has been richly worth the while.
A generation ago there was many a boy who spent the bulk of his spare time in turning somersaults or in standing on his head. Thus he learned the ins and the outs of the wrong-side-ups and the right-side-downs of things. And today, with the putting away of childish things, these same amusing acrobats are building rail-roads, digging canals and tunnels—are strenuously "getting after" the sundry octopi that have so wondrously thriven of late in the troubled seas of American commerce.
If, then, the faddists who teach "nature-
