SEVENTEENTH ANNUAL REPORT 69 



both on the streets and in the parks, undoubtedly has a very 

 bad influence on the criminal class, because it is a direct encour- 

 agement to lawlessness and crime. I have strongly appealed 

 to the North Side Board of Trade, that this exasperating and 

 disgraceful state of affairs be taken up by that body ; but, while 

 the Board listens sympathetically, and approves the idea, 

 nothing whatever has yet been done. The situation is most 

 unfair to the respectable, law-abiding people of New York. 



PROTECTION OF WILD LIFE. 



Circumstances which could not be ignored forced upon the 

 Zoological Society during 1912 a great amount of hard labor 

 in behalf of the better protection of wild life. The rage for the 

 slaughter of the most interesting and valuable birds and quad- 

 rupeds that now is being manifested in fire and blood, all over 

 the world, imposed upon this Society a burden that could not be 

 evaded. The victories won in behalf of wild life in 1910 and 

 1911 seemed to indicate unmistakably that a sufficient amount 

 of intelligent effort exerted now and in the near future in 

 arousing the people of America to the seriousness of existing 

 conditions might produce a genuine revolution in methods of 

 protection, and result in great benefit to wild life and to man- 

 kind. 



Accordingly the struggles that were waged in the legisla- 

 tures of Massachusetts, New Jersey and Louisiana for sweeping 

 changes in existing laws early enlisted the sympathy of the 

 Society, and when direct appeals for aid came to the Society, 

 they met with immediate and generous responses. It is no 

 exaggeration to state that the Society contributed very sub- 

 stantially to the sweeping victories that finally were won in the 

 three states mentioned. To Louisiana, the Society contributed 

 two campaign visits by Mr. James S. Whipple, ex-Game Com- 

 sioner of the State of New York. 



Early in the year the Director of the Zoological Park be- 

 came convinced that much good to the general cause might result 

 from the publication and general distribution to law-makers and 

 others of a book of protest, exhortation and appeal in behalf of 

 wild life. Accordingly, he wrote, entirely outside the hours of his 

 official duties, and as his own contribution to the cause, a work 

 entitled "Our Vanishing Wild Life ; Its Extermination and Pres- 

 ervation." This volume, of 428 pages with 94 illustrations and 

 10 maps, was completed in October, and immediately the Chair- 

 man of the Executive Committee volunteered to provide, by 



