State Reports 329 



tion; women's clubs are cooperating with the State Society in efforts to save the 

 birds, and are declaring emphatically against the wearing of feathers other 

 than those of the Ostrich; the press, almost without an exception, is giving 

 splendid support to the cause. Heads of educational institutions, county and 

 city school boards, superintendents and teachers, are alive to the importance 

 of the movement, and are helping- on the good work in every possible way. The 

 evil of egg-collecting is greatly diminished, and a more healthy sentiment among 

 bird students, and better respect for the law, has practically put an end to the 

 advertising of eggs and skins for sale or exchange in periodicals published in 

 the state. 



In the interest of the game and bird protection a great many thousand acres 

 of both wild and cultivated lands are now closed to hunters, and under the pro- 

 visions of the law providing for state game-preserves, enacted at the last session 

 of the legislature, many of these holdings, and thousands of additional acres, 

 will be entered under state protection for a term of years. In one locality in Los 

 Angeles county, application has been made for the entry of adjoining tracts 

 of foot-hill land aggregating more than two thousand acres. 



The Society has distributed more than 20,000 copies of circulars, leaflets, 

 warning-signs and digests of the bird laws, while several secretaries of affiliating 

 organizations have made large additional distribution of the Educational Leaf- 

 lets of the National Association. It is probable that we shall double this distri- 

 bution of printed matter during the present year. Five new Leaflets are already 

 in preparation, including 'The Western Mockingbird,' 'The Passing of the 

 Mourning Dove, ' a Leaflet on feather-wearing, and another on the care of avi- 

 ary birds. 



The Society is adding to its series of slides, and will soon have about one 

 hundred pictures, many of them made from photographs of living birds. A 

 good lantern is already assured, and within a few weeks we shall be prepared 

 to give increased impetus to the bird -protective movement by an illustrated 

 talk on western birds, for which there have been many requests during the 

 past year. 



The work of the Audubon Society of California during the next twelve 

 months will be largely along educational lines. Efforts will be made to push the 

 work into counties that have as yet hardly been reached. The newspapers and 

 the school teachers are our great and usually faithful missionaries. When other 

 friends have sometimes failed us, the school teacher has always '' made good. " 



While we have accomplished only a little of the work that lay plainly before 

 us at the organization of the State Society less than eighteen months ago, we 

 have good and sufficient reason to rejoice at that which has been done, as well 

 as in the growth of interest in nature-study and bird protection, and especially 

 in the steadily increasing number of splendid friends of the birds that this Society 

 has brought together in an effective organization for a worthy and humane pur- 

 pose. — W. Scott Way, Secretary. 



