ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 53 
A VICTORY FOR AVICULTURE 
Tue Pencuins oF Maceguari£ IsLanp 
From the Avicultural Magazine 
E HAVE received the following from 
\) \) the London correspondent of the 
North Queensland Register :— 
“At the Brisbane congress of the Royal Aus- 
tralian Ornithologists’ Union, Mr. C. Lord (‘Tas- 
mania) emphasized the necessity for Mac- 
quarie Island being made a sanctuary for the 
preservation of the Penguin. Captain White 
(South Australia) moved that this Union is of 
the opinion that Macquarie Island should be de- 
clared a sanctuary for the perpetuation of the 
fauna of the Antarctic. He said that the Fed- 
eral Government proposed to buy the island 
from Tasmania, which asked £15,000 for it. 
This was rather high, seeing that the island was 
leased for forty a year for private exploitation. - 
Dr. Mawson had said there would very soon be 
a dash into Antarctica to secure its furs and 
oils, and it was very desirable that the Federal 
Government should step in and make a sanctu- 
ary on Macquarie Island. Mr. Lord seconded 
the motion, which was carried, and the Council 
was empowered to take action even to the ex- 
penditure of funds to secure the object of the 
motion.” 
Our sister association, the Royal Society for 
the Protection of Birds, now reports as follows 
in Bird Notes and News :— 
“The long-continued efforts of the Society on 
behalf of the persecuted Penguins of Macquarie 
Island have at last borne the fruit desired. It is 
announced that the Government of Tasmania 
has refused to renew the lease of the island to 
Mr. Joseph Hatch and his oil company, which 
for years has been massacring the birds at the 
rate of a million and a half a year for the sole 
purpose of boiling them down for their oil. It 
may be remembered that as long ago as 1905 a 
resolution, carried at the International Ornith- 
ological Congress at the instigation of the 
Society, was cabled to the Tasmanian Govern- 
ment protesting against the business; but un- 
happily the lease was later on renewed. Letters 
of remonstrance and appeal have since been 
addressed by the R. S. P. B. to the New Zealand 
and Tasmanian Governments, and to the Prime 
Minister of the Commonwealth. The subject 
was again brought forward last March at the 
Annual Meeting of the R. S. P. B.; Mr. Mat- 
tingley, the Society's representative in Aus- 
tralia, offered to go over and investigate the 
facts; Mr. Pycraft ventilated the matter in the 
press; Mr. H. G. Wells made it the subject of a 
powerful passage in “The Undying Fire’; Sir 
Douglas Mawson spoke strongly upon it before 
the Zoological Society of London; Mr. Cherry- 
Gerrard roused public opinion through the 
Times and the Spectator. At last the hideous 
slaughter is brought to an end. 
““We venture to hope, says the Times 
(December 29, 1919), ‘that a further step will 
be taken, and that means will be found to make 
Macquarie Island an inviolable sanctuary for 
Antarctic life. ” 
EXTERMINATING THE AMERICAN 
EAGLE 
Editorial, New York Sun-Herald 
Are the American people to exterminate the 
American eagle? The bald eagle, national em- 
blem of the United States since June 20, 1782, 
is in such danger that it may have a fate like 
that of the passenger pigeon. There are men 
who recall the great nestings of these pigeons, in 
which the birds gathered in numbers which broke 
limbs from trees. The pigeons were so plenti- 
ful they sold at the killing place for half a 
cent each. To-day not a single passenger pigeon 
remains alive. 
One way to exterminate a species is to put a 
price on the heads of its members. That is what 
Alaska is doing to-day with the golden eagle 
and the bald eagle, the latter so called from its 
white head, which at a distance gives the im- 
pression of baldness. The Legislature of Alaska 
in 1917 passed a law which authorized the kill- 
ing of eagles and fixed a bounty of 50 cents 
a head on them. The figures from April, 1917, 
to April, 1920, are not in yet, but the record 
for two years shows that 5,600 eagles were 
killed in that period. 
The bounty was offered for the eagle on the 
ground that it destroyed fish and game. Whether 
eagles are eating more fish and game now than 
they did a century ago or two centuries ago 
has not been considered. Perhaps the reason for 
the enactment of the law may be found in the 
commercial fox farming on the islands off the 
Alaskan coast. Surely from no other source 
until 1917 was there complaint of the destruc- 
tion eagles do by eating d-ad fish they find along 
the shore or the fish they take through their 
own efforts. 
Eagles are long lived birds, sometimes reach- 
ing the century mark. They live singly or in 
pairs in the wilder places. The bird of freedom 
appealed to the Indians of North America, who 
held it in superstitious and appreciative regard. 
Should not the Americans of to-day have suf- 
ficient respect for the bird they have dignified as 
