26o 



Bird - Lore 



presided. He announced that there haP 

 been one hundred and eighty applications 

 for sustaining membership received during 

 the past year; these persons were then 

 elected. 



All of the officers were re-elected, and 

 the following were elected to the Board 

 ■of Directors to fill the places of members 

 whose terms had expired: T. Gilbert 

 Pearson, F. A. Lucas, and W. W. Grant. 



The members of the Advisory Board 

 of Directors were re-elected, in addition 

 to the following: Frank Bond, Gifford 

 Pinchot, Clinton G. Abbott. 



The Secretary and the Treasurer read 

 their annual reports, which will be found 

 elsewhere in this issue of Bird-Lore. 

 The reports of Field Agents E. H. Forbush 

 and William L. Finley were also pre- 

 sented. 



At 8. GO o'clock P.M., Prof. John B. 

 Watson, of Johns Hopkins University, 

 gave an illustrated lecture on 'The 

 Facilities Offered for the Study of Birds 

 on the Dry Tortugas." 



New Audubon Societies 



Mr. W. Scott Way, whose activity in 

 the Audubon Work in California is well 

 remembered, has recently changed his 

 residence to Maryland. Here he has 

 again gone to work for the wild birds. 

 On October 3, 1910, he, with others 

 whom he had interested in the subject, 

 organized the Audubon Society of Talbot 

 county, Maryland. They launched the 

 Society with seventy adult members, and 

 we shall expect to have good reports of 

 the increase in size and usefulness of the 

 new Society. 



On November 5, 1910, there was 

 organized at Memphis the East Tennessee 

 Audubon Society, with Dr. R. B. Maury 

 as President, and Miss Bessie Wilkinson 

 as Secretary. Thirty-six teachers in the 

 Memphis schools are enrolled among the 

 members. The new Society has the 

 active support of the Goodwyn Institute, 

 as well as of the Superintendent of the 

 Citv schools. It has alrcadv begun work, 



and, with the aid of the President of the 

 Park Commission, has undertaken to 

 have bird-boxes built and systematically 

 placed in the city parks. — T. G. P. 



A Word of Warning 



The coming winter will see legislatures 

 assemble in forty states on the Union. 

 Probably more than ever before, the subject 

 of game laws will come up for consider- 

 ation. Attempts in a number of places 

 will doubtless be made to repeal the pres- 

 ent anti-spring shooting laws. It has 

 often been the case that measures intended 

 to protect migratory game birds have 

 been enacted by bird protectionists with- 

 out any great degree of opposition; but, 

 when laws have become operative, many 

 hunters, seeming to realize for the first 

 time the extent to which their sport or 

 marketing opportunities are curtailed, 

 naturally denounce the new restrictions 

 roundly, and begin earnest efforts to have 

 the objectionable laws removed from the 

 statute books. Then it is that believers 

 in real game protection must be on their 

 guard. 



We are informed that already plans 

 are being made by certain interested 

 persons to have the New York Legislature 

 repeal the Shea-White Plumage Law 

 enacted last spring. Something of the 

 extent to which this law is already affect- 

 ing the miUinery traffic in the plumage of 

 wild birds may be gathered from a state- 

 ment made to the writer by a representa- 

 tive of some of the wholesale millinery 

 firms of Paris. During a recent conver- 

 sation, he declared that the sales to 

 American firms by the Paris fancy feather 

 dealers had been virtually ruined by the 

 New York law, not more than one-fourth 

 the business being done the past year 

 which had formerly existed. Every 

 friend of the birds in the state of New 

 York should be wide awake to the pos- 

 sibiUty of an attack on the plumage law, 

 and should let their Assemblymen and 

 Senators know where they stand on the 

 matter.— T. G. P. 



