14 Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



TuKSDAY Evening, May 25, 1886. 



A special meeting was held under the direction of the Lecture 

 Committee to receive reports of the Committee on " Destruction 

 of Native and Song Birds." Messrs. Chas. Dury, R. H. Warder 

 and Wni. Hubbell Fisher read papers on the subject.* 



Tuesday, y//;/^ I, 1886. 



President Dun in the chair. Twenty members present. 



The minutes of the preceding meeting for May were read and 

 approved. 



Dr. F. W. Langdon read a paper on " The Destruction of 

 our Native Birds." 



Mr. Chas. Dury exhibited a specimen of a hybrid duck — a 

 cross between the Mallard and Pin-tail. 



Mr. Dury also read several notes upon the disa])pearance and 

 growing variety of wild pigeons, cormorants, (piail and birds gen- 

 erally. He did not agree with Dr. Langdon's conclusions, and 

 thought that the Doctor had underestimated the destruction of 

 birds for millinery purposes. The disappearance of the wild 

 pigeon was directly due to man and not to the scarcity of food or 

 the destruction of forests. 



Dr. Langdon said that his paper was chiefly written to 

 protest against what seemed to him an undue exaggeration of the 

 influence of man in destroying song birds. The growth of cities 

 drives birds away from only small localities. That the United 

 States will ever be without song birds -is too much to say. Man is 

 not the principal factor in nature. Species have appeared and 

 disappeared long before he appeared upon the field of action. 

 The work of the paleontologist shows that many have become 

 extinct through wholly natural causes. These causes still operate, 

 and man can change them but little, if at all. The ivory-bill wood 

 pecker, cited by Mr. Dury, was always a rare bird. It had dis- 

 appeared from our locality, but man was not directly responsible 

 for its extinction. A law higher than man governs the destruction 

 of species. The offer of |ioo,ooo could not extirpate the English 

 sparrow in the State of Ohio. 



Prof. J. F. James said that the inhabitants of foreign countries 

 were deserving of consideration as in the matter of destruction of 



*Abstr:icls of these papers, and Uiat of Dr. Langdon, read June ist, will appear in 

 another place in the JoUKNAL. 



