110 General Notes. 



Auk- 

 Jan. 



should not be entrusted to State legislatures liable to commit grave errors. 

 For instance, by substituting the word Chicken Hawk for Duck Hawk or 

 Peregrine Falcon the Missouri legislature has sealed the doom of our best 

 mice destroyers, the Marsh and Rough-legged Hawks and the different 

 Buteos, all of which are universally known by the name of chicken hawk. 



But while the making of the law is of importance, the enforcement of it 

 is still more important and should not be left to a State game warden who 

 may or may not be in sympathy with it, possibly being a very good fish 

 and game warden, but a very poor protector of birds generally. Even if 

 he should be an enthusiastic bird protectionist, the work itself must chiefly 

 rest in the hands of his deputies and of the local police as ex officio game 

 wardens, men who very often are not in sympathy with the law and would 

 not want to incur the enmity of their fellow citizens for the sake of a law 

 for which they generally care but little or not at all. 



We are all agreed to admit that wild birds do not belong to the owner of 

 the ground on which they temporarily alight or over which they chance to 

 fly, but we have not questioned the proprietorship of the State in which 

 the bird is found, though we know that with few exceptions birds travel 

 through a number of States in their migrations and generally spend the 

 winter in one State, the summer in another. It is plain to see that the 

 birds are the guests of the Nation, and that it is therefore the sacred duty 

 of the Nation to give them their protection while with us. As with the 

 landbirds so with the seabirds which come to our shores to breed or fly 

 along our coasts to feed, or in their migrations. They are certainly as 

 much the guests of the country as the landbirds and entitled to protection 

 by the Nation as a whole. Their fate should not be left to the benevolence 

 of private persons. A task so difficult and important should rest on the 

 shoulders of the National Government which alone is able to give the 

 needed protection in full measure. A Nation that spends hundreds of 

 millions to protect her citizens and their rights and interests should be 

 able to give full protection to its feathered wards, for as such must we 

 regard these defenseless creatures. We owe it to posterity to do every- 

 thing in our power to preserve the beautiful in creation, and not least 

 among that are the birds. It is not only their economic, but also, and 

 much more so, their esthetic value which has to be considered when we 

 form and give judgment on the relation of birds to man and on their right 

 to live. This esthetic worth may have played a small part in the past 

 among the poorly educated masses of our rural population, but it will be 

 of immensely more importance for the better educated and cultured popu- 

 lation of the future to which bird life will be a great relief of the monotony 

 of country life already threatening to become almost unbearable by the 

 disappearance of trees, shrubs, wild flowers, and everything else pertaining 

 to beauty and loveliness in Nature. — Otto Widmann, St. Louis, Mo. 



