Oology Oology Oology (or oölogy) is a branch of ornithology studying bird eggs, nests and breeding behaviour. The word is derived from the Greek "oion", meaning egg. Oology can also refer to the hobby of collecting wild birds' eggs, sometimes called egg collecting, birdnesting or egging, which is now illegal in many jurisdictions. Oology became increasingly popular in Britain and the United States during the 1800s. Observing birds from afar was difficult because high quality binoculars were not readily available. Thus it was often more practical to shoot the birds, or collect their eggs. While the collection of the eggs of
What Is the Third Estate? What Is the Third Estate? What Is the Third Estate? () is a political pamphlet written in January 1789, shortly before the outbreak of the French Revolution, by the French thinker and clergyman Abbé Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836). The pamphlet was Sieyès' response to finance minister Jacques Necker's invitation for writers to state how they thought the Estates-General should be organized. In the pamphlet, Sieyès argues that the third estate – the common people of France – constituted a complete nation within itself and had no need of the "dead weight" of the two other orders, the first and second