No. 4.] REPORT OF STATE ORNITHOLOGIST. 377 



culture submitted an estimate for an appropriation of $100,000 

 to be used in carrying out the provisions of this law. The 

 House reduced this to $50,000. On April 10, while in Wash- 

 ington at the Annual Congress of the American Ornithologists' 

 Union, I learned that the Senate committee on agriculture had 

 voted to strike the entire appropriation from the bill. The in- 

 fluence used to obtain this result was traced directly to the seat 

 of war in the west. The forces of protection were rallied, how- 

 ever, and $50,000, the sum voted by the House of Representa- 

 tives, was appropriated by the Senate. This sum manifestly is 

 so inadequate that it was impossible in 1914 to secure country- 

 wide enforcement of the regulations for the protection of migra- 

 tory birds. 



The inspectors of the Department of Agriculture are given 

 no powder to enforce these regulations or even to make arrests ; 

 they can only lay information before the district attorneys and 

 leave the enforcement of the law to the Department of Justice. 

 Nevertheless, the law has been respected in many sections of the 

 country, and is believed to have been responsible already for 

 some notable increases in the numbers of certain migratory 

 birds. It is imperative now that the State laws be made to con- 

 form to the Federal law as far as is practicable. 



Since the tariff prohibition of plumage importation went into 

 operation pressure has been brought to bear on the United States 

 customs authorities to raise the bars in various ways for the 

 admission of plumage from other countries. A ruling has been 

 made allowing women who wear feathers out of the country to 

 wear the same plumage on their return. The extent of the for- 

 mer trade in birds and plumage with the United States may be 

 gathered from an article in the July- August (1914) "Bird 

 Lore." Leo J. Miller, a member of the Roosevelt Brazilian ex- 

 pedition, asserts that in one place he saw piles of bales of rhea 

 feathers aggregating 60 tons in weight which had been gathered 

 for the trade with the United States, but which then could not 

 be legally imported into this country, and he learned that 34 

 tons of these feathers had been exported during the first six 

 months of 1913. The United States customs authorities finally 

 withdrew the embargo on rhea feathers, on the ground that they 



