48 Bird - Lore 



devised to promote the work. As the result of the appeal to Congress, an 

 appropriation of $5,000 in aid of the work was secured through the United 

 States Department of Agriculture. In recognition of the action taken by 

 the American Ornithologists' Union in securing the appropriation, the 

 Department of Agriculture invited the Council of the A. O. U. to select 

 a superintendent to carry on the work. The Council at a meeting held 

 April 21, 1885, in Washington, unanimously appointed Dr. C. Hart 

 Merriam, who secured as his assistant Dr. A. K. Fisher, both among the 

 founders of the American Ornithologists' Union. From this humble 

 beginning has grown the present Biological Survey, a Division of the 

 United States Department of Agriculture, which still has at its head 

 Dr. Merriam, the original superintendent, who has gathered about him 

 a staff of well-known ornithologists. 



The great value of the work of this important division of the Govern- 

 ment is becoming more and more apparent every year, especially in the 

 great mass of educational material that is being published, and in the active 

 part it is taking in the work of protecting both game and non-game birds. 

 The Audubon Societies work in close touch with the Biological Survey, in 

 fact being practically auxiliary to it. All important movements and plans 

 of the National Association are adopted after consultation with the Biologi- 

 cal Survey, which furnishes a large part of the food data which is embraced 

 in the Educational Leaflets published by this Society. 



Early Legislation. — To continue our review, early in 1885 the Legisla- 

 ture of New Jersey passed a bill, introduced by Senator Griggs, forbidding 

 the killing of any Nighthawk, Whippoorwill, Tern, Gull, or any insectivo- 

 rous or song bird not generally known as a game bird. This was probably 

 the first comprehensive bird law passed, in that it protected all the birds 

 that could not strictly be considered game birds. 



Song Birds as Food. — During the same year Mr. Sennett, of the first 

 A. O. U. Protection Committee, published in 'Forest and Stream' an 

 article entitled ' The Lesson of a Market,' in which he gave a list of the 

 non-game birds that he found exposed for sale in the Norfolk, Virginia, 

 market. It consisted of twenty-six species, among them the Robin, Cat- 

 bird, Brown Thrasher, Bluebird, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Waxwing, 

 Red -eyed Vireo, eight species of Sparrows, Dove, and included even the 

 Crow and Screech Owl. Twelve or fifteen stands had the birds for sale, 

 some having as many as three or four hundred. Contrast that condition 

 with the conditions today. The markets at the present time are bare of 

 song birds and in some states even game birds are not sold. During the 

 present year even the New Orleans markets were closed for song birds, 

 where they had been sold in large quantities ever since the days of the 

 French occupancy. This last gain was the direct result of the effective 

 work of th3 Louisiana Audubon Society. 



