BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



19 



Lemon, Mr. Ogilvie-Granfc, Mr. St. Quintin, Captain 

 Tailby. 



The Chairman, Hon. Treasurer, and Hon. Secre- 

 tary ex-officio on all Committees. 



General Business. — Various questions 

 arising out of the operation and enforcement 

 of the Bird Protection Acts were discussed 

 by the Council, inckiding tlie difficulty of 

 obtaining protection for sea-birds under 

 County Council Orders ; at present there 

 are three different definitions of the limit 

 seawards of the coast-line, according as to 

 whether protection is obtained under the 

 Act of 1880, by a County Council area Order, 

 or for a particular parish. It was resolved 

 that the Home Office be asked to nominate 

 a Departmental Committee to consider the 

 amendment and codification of the present 

 Acts. The illegal destruction of Owls by 

 gamekeepers was also brought to the notice 

 of the Council. 



The Watchers Committee met subsequently 

 to receive reports from Watchers and approve 

 the Instructions to Watchers printed for their 

 use. A detailed report was presented of the 

 work of the Society's Inspector (see page 20). 



OBITUARY. 



The Society's losses through death have 

 been heavy of late, including as they do 

 old and generous friends of the cause 

 whose places it will be difficult to fill. 



The Earl of Stamford, who died on May 

 24th at the age of sixty, had been a Vice- 

 President since 1896, and became a Life 

 Fellow on the incorporation of the Society 

 in 1904. His love for and interest in bird- 

 life was that of the sincere and humane lover 

 of all natural life, and while keenly interested 

 in the suppression of feathered millinery and 

 the humane education of children, perhaps his 

 deepest sympathies were with the victims 

 of birdcatching and caging, " the democracy 

 of bird-life," as he described them. On 



behalf of the Society Lord Stamford intro- 

 duced a Bill into the House of Lords in 1896 

 for checking the depredations of catchers in 

 the Metropolitan area, but when this Bill 

 was incorporated in tliat of 1896 some of its 

 details were dropped for lack of public 

 support. Lord Stamford presided at the 

 Annual Meetings of the Society in 1897 and 

 1908, and his constant and earnest support 

 will be greatly missed. His portrait appeared 

 in the Spring Number of Bird Notes and 

 News, 1908. Lord Stamford married, in 

 1895, Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. C. 

 Theobald, and Lady Stamford has been a 

 Vice-President of the Society since 1898. 



Mr. John Colam, whose name will always be 

 identified with the history of the R.S.P.C.A., 

 of which he was Secretary from May, 1861, 

 to August, 1905, was also a Vice-President 

 and Fellow of the R.S.P.B., and one of its 

 earliest friends. Of the yeoman service he 

 rendered the cause of humanity by his 

 devoted work at Jermyn Street, there is no 

 need to speak here. In 1893, \\hen the 

 Society for the Protection of Birds was first 

 organised on a properly constituted basis, 

 it was he who brought the matter before the 

 Council of the R.S.P.C.A., with the resultant 

 decision of that body that an energetic 

 independent Society in the interests of wild 

 birds was not only highly desirable but was 

 indeed necessary in view of the fact that 

 much important work of the kind was outside 

 the scope of the older Society. Mr. Colam 

 also helped to get together a working com- 

 mittee, and its meetings were held at the 

 board-room of the R.S.P.C.A. until 1898. 

 He was always in cordial sympathy with the 

 work, and spoke on various occasions at its 

 meetings, when his zealous humanitarianism 

 and vigorous common sense never failed to 

 make themselves felt. Mr. Colam died on 

 May 25th, at the age of eighty-three. 



