The Audubon Societies 
SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 
Edited by MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 
Address all communications to the Editor of the School Department, Nationa 
Association of Audubon Societies, 141 Broadway, New York City 
BIRD-CITIES-OF-REFUGE 
HE Mary M. Emery Bird Reserve, as described beyond by Professor 
Benedict, opens a wide field of work not alone for those living in cities 
and the smaller towns, but even for the dwellers in remote country 
districts. 
Especially does it suggest work for the pupils of the country school, and 
the opportunity for the setting apart tracts of land by those who have it 
to spare, and desire to perpetuate the name of an individual or a family in 
connection with such work. 
A library is a good thing for any community, but quite as necessary, if 
not more so, is the spreading open to the young a permanent page of nature’s 
book, wherein they may read for themselves. 
Now is the time to act. Every day the cities and manufacturing towns 
are growing more solidly packed with human beings; the outlying brush 
lots and woodland being stripped for fuel, and the many other uses of wood 
while the land itself is taking on a prohibitory value. Now is the time to 
secure these oases in what may be called the desert of civilization. In many 
places it is now or never. 
There is only one point on which I should differ with Professor Benedict, — 
that of necessary size. He mentions a bit of ground twenty feet square, fenced 
with poultry-wire, as being large enough for a successful reserve. To my mind, 
this is too small. A half acre is little enough to give the inmates that sense of 
freedom and the possibility of at least the partial selfi-support that separate 
the wild bird from the inhabitant of the large aviaries of zodlogical parks. 
Also, birds of different species do not care to be too closely associated 
in nest-building, and need elbow-room, so to speak. Anything less than a 
half-acre becomes a bird-cage, and, to be of any real value, the city of refuge 
should be upward of an acre. 
One favored season, a number of years ago, before a fire caused by a rail- 
way locomotive, had destroyed much dense underbrush, I listed forty species 
of birds as nesting in my home bird city of eight acres. Since then, causes 
wholly outside of the preserve itself have reduced the number of species nesting 
by one half, although the number of individual birds remains about the same. 
Of this I am convinced, that, in spite of varied methods of feeding and pro- 
tection from cats and vermin, many desirable species of birds must have 
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