100 



Bird Notes and News 



Notes. 



Two changes in the personnel of the Council 

 of the R.S.P.B. were effected at the July 

 meeting. The resignation of Miss C. V. Hall 

 will be regretted by the older workers 

 particularly, as she has been associated with 

 the society almost from the time of the 

 transference of its headquarters from Man- 

 chester to London, when it consisted only of 

 a band of ladies united by a common pledge 

 not to wear the plumage of wild birds, and 

 was without officers, constitution, or office. 

 In June, 1891, when the Duchess of Portland 

 became president and the late Mrs. Phillips 

 vice-president. Miss Hall took the hon. 

 treasurership, which she held until 1895 ; 

 and she has been continuously a member of 

 its governing body, of the committee which 

 existed from 1893 to 1904, and of the Council 

 formed on the incorporation of the society 

 in the latter year. Miss Hall remains a vice- 

 president, to which office she was elected in 

 1895, and is thus entitled ex officio to attend 

 the meetings at which she has been so regular 

 and welcome an attendant for twenty-four 

 years. 



Brigadier-General Page Croft, M.P., the 

 new member, is no stranger to the work of 

 Bird Protection or to the members of the 

 society. Consistently and eloquently he has 

 supported efforts in the House of Commons 

 to bring the hideous plumage-trade to an end. 

 In 1912 he introduced a Bill to prohibit the 

 sale of plumage of any species of bird having 

 its habitat at any time of the year in any part 

 of His Majesty's Overseas Dominions ; a 

 Bill heartily supported by the R.S.P.B. In 

 the following year he was the most vigorous 

 speaker on the Second Reading of the 

 Prohibition of Importation Bill which the 

 Government introduced (and let slip through 

 their fingers) ; and few of those interested 

 will have forgotten his speeches at the 

 society's Annual Meeting and at the Public 

 Meeting that year. His forcible words on 

 the utility of birdlife both then and to the 

 society's members last March further demon- 

 strated the nature of the help which Bird 

 Protectors may look for from General Page 

 Croft. 



It is pleasant to know that one of the most 

 ardent and active defenders of wild life in 

 the United States, Dr. W. T. Hornaday, has 

 received special honour from Yale University, 

 which on June 20th bestowed upon him, as 

 " leader in movements for the protection of 

 wild life in America," the honorarj^ degree 

 of Master of Arts. Dr. Hornadaj^ like all 

 reformers, has no doubt made enemies in the 

 course of his campaign (among the feather- 

 traders, for instance, and the makers and 

 users of automatic guns), so that this en- 

 dorsement of his vigorous methods will be 

 encouraging to sympathisers and followers in 

 his own and other countries. His biennial 

 report on the Permanent Wild Life Protection 

 Fund, started through his efforts in 1913 

 to constitute a permanent endowment, and 

 supported by men and women of wealth and 

 humanity, forms a valuable record of the 

 crusade in the States ; and it also constitutes 

 no small testimony to the part he himself 

 has taken in that fighting without "w^hich no 

 serious reform was ever achieved. 



The Centenary, on July 12th, of H. D. 

 Thoreau, the Naturalist-philosopher of Con- 

 cord, was hardly an event in the ornithologi- 

 cal world, but no bird -lover can omit him 

 from the calendar of priests and prophets, 

 even though his notes on birds are com- 

 paratively few, and scientific investigation 

 wholly lacking. He compiled no work on 

 " Walden-killed species " and formed no 

 collection of " Walden-taken eggs." The 

 birds were simply among the neighbours and 

 friends with whom he lived in peace. He has 

 even a good word for the sportsman and 

 hunter, as sport and hunting were understood 

 by the New Englander in the wilds, but at 

 the same time considers that " if he has the 

 seeds of a better life in him " the hunt«r 

 should develop mto something higher. He 

 inclined to a " finer way of studying 

 ornithology " than with the gun's aid. In 

 his intimate references to partridge, owl, 

 woodcock, loon, jay, robin, or chickadee, it 

 is the little mind or soul of the bird he 

 recognizes, not its outward seeming. Their 

 voices spoke to the poet in him, and their 



