To be fair I think that I am linking the need of that time to collect everything, not just songs, for the sake of having the biggest, best or rarest collection and to possess what others did not. It may be a little unfair but it is at least worth looking at song collecting in the context of this period and that of collecting in general.

Huge collections of dead butterflies in glass cases, may have enabled us to understand a little more about their structure and to classify them but was little benefit to the individual butterfly or the species. Research then moved on to the study of them and their natural environment.

Even more damaging then and more so now was egg-collecting, for it still continues, for no scientific purpose at all, just for the personal glory of the collector.

The rarest birds were the ones most prized by collectors. The end result was to make them even rarer or even the complete extinction of those birds.

The analogy of the egg with the song is a good one. The creators of the egg pass on all their experiences in the form of genetic material in much the same way as the creators of songs do.

Every egg that was collected failed in it's primary purpose.

In fact do not all of the egg collections contain only empty shells?