Soak breather in oil?

Well, yeah, if you have a ducted breather (hose to the air filter) there won't be holes on the bottom. In that case after you slosh solvent around in there and pour it out the hose hole to clean it, and let it dry, you drizzle some oil into the hose hole and leave the breather on its side a few minutes, hose hole up, to distribute the oil.
I just remembered the air coming to the oil breather cap through the ducted hose does not go through air filter material. Just plain old air. Wonder why?