272 Bird -Lore 



REPORTS OF FIELD AGENTS 



REPORT OF EDWARD HOWE FORBUSH 



Your agent for New England finds the work in this region continually- 

 growing and increasing, demanding more and more time and strength. 



EDUCATIONAL WORK 



The educational work of the year has consisted (i) in a series of newspaper 

 articles, continued from last year, which have been published in about one 

 hundred New England newspapers. For the past eight months, most of these 

 articles have been devoted to the protection of game in New England. This 

 series will be finished within the next three months. (2) A large correspondence 

 has been maintained with teachers who are interested in introducing bird 

 work in the schools. The building of bird-houses by children in the manual- 

 training schools is growing more popular. (3) The demand for lectures is 

 greater than ever, and, if this demand were fully supplied, it would require 

 the entire time of one man in Massachusetts alone. Your agent has been 

 able to give forty lectures during the year before schools, farmers' and sports- 

 men's organizations, Audubon Societies, and Women's clubs mainly, in Massa- 

 chusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Jersey. The audiences 

 aggregated altogether about 14,000 people. These lectures were all illus- 

 trated by lantern slides or charts. 



LAW ENFORCEMENT 



There have been many complaints, particularly in Massachusetts, in 

 regard to the non-enforcement of the laws protecting game and birds. Your 

 agent has called the attention of the law^ officers to many such complaints, 

 and has done a good deal of educational work among the law-breaking gun- 

 ners. 



The hunters' Ucense law, which went into effect a year ago, has greatly 

 reduced the number of foreigners who hunt openly with guns, for very few of 

 them have taken out licenses. Probably this law kept about twenty thousand 

 such hunters out of the woods during the first year. Now, however, complaints 

 are coming in that many foreigners, particularly Italians, are using bird-lime 

 or snares, and hunting birds with cane guns and other weapons which they 

 can conceal about their persons. Game wardens are too few in number, and 

 sometimes too inactive. What is needed now is effective enforcement of the 

 laws. 



