The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-10-14
RISKING- LIVES FOR
 RARE BIRDS EGGS Naturalist Attacked By VuItures
 in Sierra NevadaS SWING FROM HIGH CLIFF Men of Wealth Spend Thousands of Dollars in Expeditions to Find
 Rare Specimens-An Ex-
 pensiVe Hobby.
SWING FROM HIGH CLIFF

Portland, Ore.-Swinging 100 feet from the rim of a precipice more than 100 feet high, few days ago an enthusiastic nat uralist descended the sheer face of cliff in the Sierra Nevada mountains and obtained the single egg of California vulture, the rarest bird alive in the world today.
 Twice on that perilous journey of 100 feet between earth and sky he took ms life in his hands-once when he slipped down over the edge of the cliff and for the first time put his weight on the slender hempen thread, and a second time falling like twin thunderbolts out of a clear sky, the two giant birds. each spreading wings at least eight feet charged him in mdair Had the rope broken. new and untried as it was, he would have been hurled to an awful death on the jagged rocks below Had he for once loosened his grip on the rope while the great black wings beat about his head he would have been food for the vultures ere he could have drawn one more breath. He could not loosen his hold long enough to draw his pistol and fire a shot to frighten away the birds as they struck at him with huge talons and buffeted him with their wings.
 When he returned to solid earth once more he held in his hand a small black box containing the treasure he had risked his life to get grey green egg, larger than that of a goose or even a swan, pitted and marked over it's entire surface with tinya holes like those scattered over the shell of an ostrich egg For 1t he received, when he had shipped it back to an eastern museum, s100 On the same trip he climbed dozens of towering pine trees in search of the rare eggs of many of the smaller birds that inhabit these regions of great altitude. and the eggs of some of these he sold but none for such a price as this.
 Killed by Fright.
 In the same week a collector clinging to a twisted vine in the heart of the Mexican jungle, put his hand upon pois- onous tree snake, shrank back in sudden fright and fell to the bed of a rocky ra- vine near by, dying instantly. The prize he had climbed so high to obtain was the nest of tiny hummingbird, scarce larger than a big thimble, yet with it's two pearly white eggs it would have paid him $25 or more.
 Every year. with the beginning of the breeding season of the birds, men are sent out from all public museums and many from the private collections of wealthy men, to add to the store of the worlds knowledge of the collection and the study of rare birds in unexplored quarters of the earth. Baron Rothschild sent a party to the head waters of the Yang tse- Kiang river, in China, a few months ago, in search of the eggs of a rare snipe. The expedition was gone several months, cost several thousand dollars and brought back three eggs of the snipe. absolutely lndis- tinguishable from the eggs of other spe- cies of similar birds which are well known, but which were undoubtedly the first eggs of this particular bird ever seen by white men. Very possibly they will be the last. for these particular waders are becoming more scarce with every summer, and the time is, no doubt, near when if scientists visit their homes at all, It will require a trip to the arctic crcle to do so.
 This Egg Worth Money.
 The rarest egg the world is the egg of the Labrador duck, supposedly an tinct species, the last known bird of that species being one killed by Daniel Webster many years ago. What became of these large powerful birds, the strong est flyers of all the duck tribe, Is some thing of mystery. Certain 1t is that none of their eggs has ever been seen by white men, unless it be those mysterious Norsemen who are said to have been the real discoverers of the continent. Pre- sumably the egg of the Labrador duck is like the eggs of others of it's kind, a pale, plain. puffy colored shell, unmarked and not beautiful from the viewpoint of the dsinterested onlooker. No price has ever been put on this egg; none ever will be- and no collector will ever offer any for sale, unless some new country is