382 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



take up the new work. If every State would establish the office 

 of State Ornithologist the pressure on the few might be some- 

 what relieved. The answering of questions is an important part 

 of the educational work of any State Ornithologist. One could 

 hardly refuse to reply to a question merely because the ques- 

 tioner did not happen to be a citizen of his State. Migratory 

 birds do not stop at State lines. Such birds are '' here to-day 

 and there to-morrow," and any information that one can im- 

 part to citizens of other States is given freely always, as it may 

 benefit the birds of our own State during their migrations; but 

 the correspondence does not stop even at the limits of our own 

 country. The two volumes published by the State Board of 

 Agriculture, "Useful Birds and Their Protection," and ' A 

 History of the Game Birds, Wild Fowl and Shore Birds of 

 Massachusetts and Adjacent States," have gone to other coun- 

 tries Our work in bird protection here has interested those m 

 other lands, and inquiries have come from Europe, India, China, 

 Australia, Africa and South America. All letters have been 



answered in full. . 



This correspondence might form the basis sometime lor a 

 book on " what people want to know about birds." 



Among the most difficult queries to answer satisfactorily are 

 those requiring the identity of birds from partial or imperfect 

 descriptions of birds seen briefly in the field. Occasionally 

 even when considerable care is taken to note the shape, color and 

 size of a bird, its identity still remains a conundrum.^ 



The following, with its accompanying illustration, is ap- 

 pended to show a good method of description, and to illustrate 

 the possible difficulties of identifying species even when a good 

 rouffh description and drawing are given : — 



Miss Amelia M. Symmes of Winchester, Massachusetts 

 writes that three unusual birds were seen in her neighborhood 

 on January 23, 1914, by one of her neighbors. She asked him 

 to write a description of the birds, and he brought her a descrip- 

 tive drawing of which the cut is a facsimile. He said that the 

 tails were narrow and long, not fan-shaped, and that the crest 

 was verv hi^h ; also that the birds were about the size of blue 

 iavs and did not look so much "like a duck as the drawing. 



