176 



Our SiJiith College Audubon Society. 



We said that our work must have two dis- 

 tinct phases from the outset: 



First — Proselyting. 



Second — Field work. 



But we said it tentatively, for the Audu- 

 bon Society, now numbering over thirty 

 thousand members, had be'en founded only 

 a week or so then; and of our three hun- 

 dred college girls, hardly half a dozen had 

 heard of it, or had acknowledged to them- 

 selves any especial interest in birds. 



With the instinct of agriculturists we 

 began by preparing the ground. We but- 

 tonholed our intimate friends, and got 

 them to buttonhole theirs. We cut from 

 newspapers the slips that were begin- 

 ning to appear on bird destruction, and 

 distributed them with telling effect; we had 

 the question brought up in our Science 

 Association meetings, and discussed in the 

 biological laboratory. Gradually our list 

 of friends increased. Two of the faculty 

 took up our cause; little groups of students 

 would meet to read each other the startling 

 statistics; and one of the chief movers 

 found one day a discarded plume in her let- 

 ter box. The time was ripe. Something 

 must be done to feed the interest. Too 

 many questions were pending to allow of 

 formal organization, and so a mass meeting 

 was decided upon. Notices were posted, 

 inviting all the college, but our hopes were 

 more than realized when our tellers re- 

 ported seventy girls and "five Faculty." To 

 our freshman friends that mass meeting 

 must have seemed a marvel of spontaneity, 

 but junior year has shown them the neces- 

 sity of wire-pulling, and the exposure of our 

 schemes will be no shock to them now. 

 To let our first meeting drag would have 

 been fatal. So the subjects we wanted 

 discussed were arranged in their proper 

 order, popular girls and the best speakers 

 being selected to talk on them. Extracts 

 and statistics were given them to illustrate 

 their topics, and they were impressed with 

 their cues, to avoid delay. We even went 



so far as to select the chairman, and those 

 who should move her appointment. The 

 result was that everything went off without 

 a hitch or a pause. A usually shrinking 

 senior took the chair with business-like self- 

 pos-session; another senior who had never 

 been known to speak in a meeting, rose be- 

 fore her friend was fairly seated, and elabor- 

 ated the " Need of Bird Protection " with 

 a calmness that amazed her intimates; a 

 popular leader of Germans and picnic par- 

 ties captured the society element by the 

 rare display of her earnestness in discussing 

 the "Moral Side of the Question," while 

 another college favorite won over the tender- 

 hearted by showing the "Cruelties of the 

 Fashion;" the one ornithologist among the 

 students told us of the many forms of in- 

 terest coming from the study of birds; the 

 delights of field work were pointed out by 

 one of the professors; and after a sugges- 

 tive talk by a member of the Faculty on the 

 position birds occupy in literature, and the 

 pleasure their study brings in that direc- 

 tion, the meeting was adjourned amid a 

 burst of enthusiasm. 



That day a city milliner inquired anx- 

 iously if the college authorities had forbid- 

 den the use of birds, so many hats had 

 been brought to her to be retrimmed. 

 After this we were sure of support, and the 

 business of organization was an easy mat- 

 ter. Committees were appointed to draw 

 up the constitution, report on a name for 

 the Society, and so on. It seemed more 

 for the interest of the main Society that all 

 branches should be known by the same 

 name throughout the country, so when Dr. 

 Grinnell assured us that we could be a 

 perfectly independent branch, we rejected 

 the more individual titles of "Merle and 

 Mavis Club," " The Pterodactyl " and others, 

 in favor of " Smith College Audubon So- 

 ciety." The election of officers involved 

 more wire-pulling, and "eel skins" were 

 distributed among our friends, who brought 

 the candidates into notice. On March 17, 



