State of Xew York 

 Education Department 

 commissioner's room 



April 8, 1908 



The economic value of birds, the aid which they bring to common 

 culture, and the stimulus which they give to moral sense, constitute ample 

 warrant for supplying accurate and scientific information about birds 

 and bird life, at the expense of the State. Our State has already done 

 something to this end, and what it did was well done, for it devoted one 

 of the sumptuous volumes of the Natural History of New York to the 

 subject. But that was before most people now living were bom. It is 

 said, no doubt with truth, that that work has been the main reliance of 

 serious students of ornithology and the main inspiration of substantial 

 ]X)pular interest in birds, not only in New York but beyond our borders, 

 for more than sixty years. Certainly, popular interest in the subject has 

 both widened and deepened. The present needs were brought officially 

 to my attention by Dr John M. Clarke, the Director of the Science Division 

 of this Department, very soon after the organization of the present Depart- 

 ment, and he was authorized to go forward with the preparation of a work 

 that would meet these needs, with the assurance that it would be pub- 

 lished by the State if it proved to be widely comprehensive of the subject, 

 was given a form which would appeal to popular interest, and was marked 

 by scientific accuracy for which he would vouch. Even so much as this 

 appears to have been realized, and publication is approved. 



Commissioner of Education 



