^°'igls^' 1 Great Forward Movement in. Bird Protection. 8q 



work done by our beautiful feathered friends inevitably becomes an 

 enthusiast for their protection. Great credit is due to the members of the 

 Australasian Ornithologists' Union, to Colonel Legge, Colonel Ryan, Mr. 

 Dudley Le Souef, Mr. A.J. Campbell, Mr. Mattingley, and the rest, for their 

 persistent endeavours to bring the importance of the work done by the birds 

 home to the Governments and people of the Commonwealth. 



" Colonel Ryan and Mr. Campbell have in successive addresses to the 

 Ornithologists' Union shown what measures have been adopted in America 

 and Europe for the protection of birds. 



" To what extent importance is attached to bird protection in Europe is 

 seen from the fact that the great countries of the Continent have combined 

 to adopt international legislation on the subject. Mainly through the efforts 

 of the Austrian and Hungarian Governments, all of the Continental nations, 

 except Italy, Russia, and Turkey, in 1902, accepted through their pleni- 

 potentiaries a model bird bill to be incorporated in the laws of the several 

 countries. The necessity for common action arises because the land- 

 frontiers of the countries are no barriers for the birds. For the same reason 

 it is eminently desirable that the whole of the Australian State Govern- 

 ments should adopt the same legislation in the matter. It is obviously 

 more effective to protect the birds in all the States than in a few, and it is 

 eminently desirable that destroyers of protected birds in one State should 

 find no refuge against prosecution in an adjoining one. They have found 

 this out in Europe ; they have found this out in the United States. We 

 may well follow suit in Australia. 



" It is generally best to attain one's ends by persuasion rather than by 

 compulsion, and while it may be necessary to restrain the larrikins of the 

 town, it is eminently desirable that the rural population should have the 

 facts brought home to them, and should heartily co-operate with the 

 Government in a work which so nearly concerns themselves. The larger 

 useful birds of the interior are being destroyed wholesale by the poison laid 

 for pests, and the country thus denuded of its native police is being opened 

 up for the awful plagues of caterpillar and locust. We must try and win the 

 farmer and his household, the squatter and his riders, to the side of their 

 truest friends and best allies, the birds. 



"The adoption of an Arbor and Bird Day in the country schools has met 

 with success in the United States, and is well worth a trial here. For the 

 sake of the land we love we need to train the children to love the tree and 

 the bird. To quote the Secretary for Agriculture, Mr. Sterling Morton 

 (1904) — 'Public sentiment, if properly fostered in the schools, would gain 

 force with the growth and development of our boys and girls, and would 

 become a hundredfold more potent than any law enacted by the State or 

 Congress. I believe such a sentiment can be developed, so strong and so 

 universal that a respectable woman will be ashamed to be seen with the 

 wing of a wild bird on her bonnet, and an honest boy will be ashamed to 

 own that he ever robbed a nest or wantonly took the life of a bird.' So may 

 it be." 



At a subsequent meeting of tlie Linnean Society of New South 

 Wales, held on the 26th August, 1908. the president (Mr. A. H. S. 

 Lucas) invited general discussion upon the question of the welfare 

 of the indigenous fauna and flora and the best means of safeguard- 

 ing it. 



