112 DuTCHER, Report of Committee on Bird Protection. \'^^ 



annual report, an effort was made for a new law ; a bill was care- 

 fully prepared, and was introduced and favorably reported by the 

 Senate P'ish and Game Committee. Owing to opposition from an 

 entirely unexpected quarter, one in fact that should have given 

 support rather than opposition to the bill, it was not pushed. It 

 was thought better not to have any legislation rather than an 

 unsatisfactory law. 



Audubon work. — While no society has been formally organized, 

 a great amount of very valuable bird protection work is being done 

 by interested citizens. California is deeply indebted to Mrs. 

 Josephine Clifford McCrackin of Wrights, for her noble and praise- 

 worthy efforts to preserve the birds and trees of her State. One 

 of her friends writes: "This good woman, one of our earliest lit- 

 erary workers and a former associate of Bret Harte on the old 

 'Overland Monthly,'' despite her age, has done our State more 

 good than a thousand prominent citizens. After having saved 

 several of our noblest groves of redwoods {Sequoia giganted) by 

 having bills passed for their purchase by the State is now turning 

 her attention to the preservation of our beautiful song birds. Her 

 energy is tremendous and she carries through all she proposes to 

 do." 



Mrs. McCrackin's story of the ' Ladies Forest and Song Bird 

 Protective Association of Santa Cruz County ' is of so much inter- 

 est that it is given in some detail: 



"This Association was organized in December, 1901, through 

 the efforts of Walter R. Welch, Deputy State Game Warden. His 

 successor, C. A. Reed, felt the same interest in the preservation of 

 song birds, and used his influence with the supervisors of this 

 county to make the ordinance protecting birds of some effect, and 

 as each member of our Association became at once an active 

 worker in the cause, the song birds soon returned to their former 

 haunts in the vicinity of Santa Cruz City. It is different in the 

 country, I am sorry to say, though a number of our members live 

 in my immediate neighborhood, in a grape and fruit-growing sec- 

 tion, and like myself are convinced that the cherry crop, for which 

 many song birds suffer death, is not in any measure made less by 

 the alleged depredations of the birds that are with us at the time 

 when cherries are ripe, yet the rancher, to his own detriment, with 



