Winter Meetins'. 343 



'.s 



Really our greatest drawback is the lack of teachers who have 

 learned science in the laboratory, the only place where it can be learned 

 so as to be thereafter serviceable. Unscholarly and unscientific novices 

 can not do the needed work. We want teachers who have not only 

 science but scholarly attainments in language, literature, history and art, 

 indeed in all things. And above all we want teachers who will teach the 

 children rather than the text-books, who think more about the children 

 than about the mechanical curriculum, who realize that the school is for 

 the children and not the children for the school. 



THE MISSOURI AUDUBON SOCIETY. 



A SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS. 



(By O. Widmann, Old Orchard, Mo.) 



After twenty-two states of the Union had established their Audubon 

 Societies during the last five years, a few St. Louis men came together in 

 June of the present year to organize such a society for our State. On 

 November i8 the first annual meeting was held at St. Louis, in which 

 it was stated by the Secretary, Mr, A. Reese, that forty-five members, 

 ten life members and two patrons. Miss Julietta A. Owen of St. Joseph 

 and Mrs. Wm. S. Haven of St. Louis, had been enrolled. This is a fair- 

 ly good start, but considering the importance of the scope for our State, 

 we must have ten times that number to do some good. 



What is the aim of the society and how can it be attained ? The aim 

 is the protection of birds from unnecessary slaughter by hunters and 

 shootists, many of whom think birds are created for them to give them 

 the pleasure of killing. It is unfortunate enough that at this epoch of 

 so-called advanced civilization there are still so many who find pleasure 

 in taking life. The advocates of the hunt say that it is manly sport ; that 

 it makes man strong in body and mind and quick with the eye and hand. 

 It was much more of such manly sport when the redskins whom we call 

 savages went after their prey with bow and arrow, but with our modern 

 weapons it is in most cases murder, pure and simple ; and as for the 

 strengthening qualities of a hunting trip I am sure that a man will get 

 more health out of a stroll through fields and woods when he leaves his 

 gun at home ; and if he will only try, he wall also get much more pleasure 

 and instruction out of it, because his attention will not be absorbed by 

 his eagerness to find something to kill, he will have leisure to enjoy the 

 beauties of nature and will as an observer and friend become much more 

 intimately acquainted with animal life than as a disturber and destroyer. 



