260 
presided. He announced that there haP 
been one hundred.and eighty applications 
for sustaining membership received during 
the past year; these persons were then 
elected. 
All of the officers were re-elected, and 
the following were elected to the Board 
-of Directors to fill the places of members 
whose terms had expired: T. Gilbert 
Pearson, F. A. Lucas, and W. W. Grant. 
The members of the Advisory Board 
of Directors were re-elected, in addition 
to the following: Frank Bond, Gifford 
Pinchot, Clinton G. Abbott. 
The Secretary and the Treasurer read 
their annual reports, which will be found 
elsewhere in this issue of Brrp—LoRE. 
The reports of Field Agents E. H. Forbush 
and William L. Finley were also pre- 
sented. 
At 8.00 o’clock p.m., Prof. John B. 
Watson, of Johns Hopkins University, 
gave an illustrated lecture on “The 
Facilities Offered for the Study of Birds 
on the Dry Tortugas.’ 
New Audubon Societies 
Mr. W. Scott Way, whose activity in 
the Audubon Work in California is well 
remembered, has recently changed his 
residence to Maryland. Here he has 
again gone to work for the wild birds. 
On October 3, ro1o, he, with others 
whom he had interested in the subject, 
organized the Audubon Society of Talbot 
county, Maryland. They launched the 
Society with seventy adult members, and 
we shall expect to have good reports of 
the increase in size and usefulness of the 
new Society. 
On November 5, i910, there was 
organized at Memphis the East Tennessee 
Audubon Society, with Dr. R. B. Maury 
as President, and Miss Bessie Wilkinson 
as Secretary. Thirty-six teachers in the 
Memphis schools are enrolled among the 
members. The new Society has the 
active support of the Goodwyn Institute, 
as*well as of the Superintendent of the 
City schools. It has already begun work, 
Bird - 
Lore 
and, with the aid of the President of the 
Park Commission, has undertaken to 
have bird-boxes built and systematically 
placed in the city parks.—T. G. P. 
A Word of Warning 
The coming winter will see legislatures 
assemble in forty states on the Union. 
Probably more than ever before, the subject 
of game laws will come up for consider- 
ation. Attempts in a number of places 
will doubtless be made to repeal the pres- 
ent anti-spring shooting laws. It has 
often been the case that measures intended 
to protect migratory game birds have 
been enacted by bird protectionists with- 
out any great degree of opposition; but, 
when laws have become operative, many 
hunters, seeming to realize for the first 
time the extent to which their sport or 
marketing opportunities are curtailed, 
naturally denounce the new restrictions 
roundly, and begin earnest efforts to have 
the objectionable laws removed from the 
statute books. Then it is that believers 
in real game protection must be on their 
guard. 
We are informed that already plans 
are being made by certain interested 
persons to have the New York Legislature 
repeal the Shea-White Plumage Law 
enacted last spring. Something of the 
extent to which this law is already affect- 
ing the millinery traffic in the plumage of 
wild birds may be gathered from a state- 
ment made to the writer by a representa- 
tive of some of the wholesale millinery 
firms of Paris. During a recent conver- 
sation, he declared that the sales to 
American firms by the Paris fancy feather 
dealers had been virtually ruined by the 
New York law, not more than one-fourth 
the business being done the past year 
which had formerly existed. Every 
friend of the birds in the state of New 
York should be wide awake to the pos- 
sibility of an attack on the plumage law, 
and should let their Assemblymen and 
Senators know where they stand on the 
matter.—T. G. P. 
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