2o6 Cincinnati Society of Nntin'al History. 



Who are the originators ot this movement? They are power- 

 ful thinkers, men who have devoted their Hves, some of them well 

 advanced in age, to the study of birds, tlieir habits, their haunts, 

 their food, the causes of their destruction, and to their jiresence or 

 absence in different localities. 



The American Ornithological Union comprises a large number 

 of the best ornithologists of the United States, and their committee 

 fully and heartily endorses this movement. 



So far as the foundation of the Society is concerned, therefore, • 

 we have a prima facie right to supjDose that there is a good and 

 sufficient cause for its beginning. 



Dr. Langdon attempts to palliate the acts of the small bad 

 boys in killing birds and robbing birds' nests of their eggs, and he 

 even goes so far as to instance the youths of Professors Baird and 

 Audubon as an excuse for the acts of these small bad boys. 



If the small boys were as good as Audubon they would never 

 have been mentioned by me. In my former remarks I stated 

 that a lady from St. Louis mentioned that during last month, a boy 

 about ID years old living in an adjacent house in the suburbs of St. 

 Louis, and who had a gun, was accustomed to get up early in the 

 morning and shoot at every bird he could'see. 



I also instanced that on Price Hill this season, a boy was seen 

 to shoot at various birds and kill them, and in one instance shot a 

 bird by its nest of eggs, that the man who accompanied the boy 

 apologized by saying that the boy was learning to shoot. 



I also mentioned a boy near where I live who had a stone 

 slinger and out of school hours had devoted parts of his time to 

 using his stone slinger. He hit ten birds, eight of which fell to 

 the ground wounded. ■• 



Up to the time of our last meeting, his playmates say he had 

 killed about fifty birds. Since then he had been at work, and 

 has been known to break a bird's leg tie a string around the leg 

 and let the bird go. Only a few days ago, he shot a sparrow in 

 the eye, and not only put out the eye, but he must have injured 

 the bird's brain, as the ])Oor little thing could no longer fly and 

 hopped about with its eye out, and a crowd of little boys about 

 it, who picked it up and examined its wound. 



Now such indiscriminate killing can not be justified in any 

 way. It cannot be just to the subject or to Audubon to cite him, 

 a lover of birds, in such connection. As well might we justify boys 

 who stone frogs, or throw stones at horses, on the ground that some 



