Supplement to Mvb Botes an6 IRews. 



THE ROYAL SOCIETY FOE- THE 

 PROTECTION OF BIRDS. 



AUTUMN CONFERENCE. 



A very pleasant and useful gathering of friends 

 of Bird Protection was held on Friday, November 

 loth, when a Conference of Local Hon. Secretaries 

 and other members of the Royal Society for the 

 Protection of Birds took place at 26, George Street, 

 Hanover Square, London. Some little time pre- 

 viously leading workers for the Society had been 

 invited to contribute papers or to suggest subjects 

 they would wish to have discussed, and the invita- 

 tion was so well responded to that between thirty 

 and forty separate items appeared on the agenda 

 paper, affording proof of the interest taken in the 

 work by friends in very many parts of Great 

 Britain. It was, of course, impossible to deal with 

 all of these, or to consider any subject thoroughly ; 

 but the meeting certainly served, not only to bring 

 workers together for informal interchange of ideas, 

 but also to call forth a variety of valuable and 

 stimulating thoughts and suggestions, and, inci- 

 dentally, to indicate how wide is the field open to 

 the Society's efforts were workers and funds ade- 

 quate to the need. Several topics which could be 

 only lightly touched upon were referred to the 

 Council for further consideration. 



The Chairman of the Council, Mr. Montagu 

 Sharpe, presided, supported by Mr. Ernest Bell, 

 the Hon. Alfred Dobson, Hon. Mrs. Drewitt, Miss 

 C. V. Hall, Mr. Hastings Lees, Sir George Keke- 

 wich, Mr. Francis King, Miss L. Pollock, Mr. 

 Trevor-Battye, Mrs. Owen Visger, Mrs. Lemon, 

 and Mr. F. E. Lemon (Hon. Sec), members of 

 the Council. The Local Secretaries present were : 

 Miss Barne (N.E. Suffolk), Mrs. Bates (Harlesden), 

 Mr. R. B. Black (Dumbarton), Miss Butler (Roy- 

 ston), Mrs. Care (Cardiff), Miss Clifton (Romford), 

 Rev. Allan Ellison (Mid Herts), Rev. Dr. Finch 

 (Kensington), Mrs. W. B. Gerish (East Herts), 

 Mrs. Hocking (Highgate), Miss Holcombe (repre- 

 senting Miss Thomas, Llanigon), Mrs. C. W. Lane 

 (representing Miss H. Thorowgood, Kettering), 

 Mr. J. R. B." Masefield (North Staffs), the Hon. 

 F. S. O'Grady (Derbyshire), Mrs. A. G. Pollock 

 (Mickleham), Mrs. Richard Roscoe (Hampstead), 

 Miss M. E. Ruston (Lincoln), Mrs. Lawrence 

 Pike (Wareham), Miss Salisbury (Nantwich), Miss 

 A. C. Shipton (Retford), Mr. J. C. Stebbing 

 (Fulham), Mrs. J. Thornely (Esher), Mrs. T. H. 



Thornely (Birkenhead). Letters indicating sub- 

 jects they wished brought forward had been re- 

 ceived from nearly twenty others, who were unable 

 to attend. 



Among the company were also Miss Julia 

 Andrews, Miss Gray Allen, Mr. Arnold (Meopham 

 Court), Mr. Cosmo Blore, Miss Cameron, Madame 

 Starr-Canziani, Mrs. Baillie Guthrie, Mr. W. Hart- 

 mann, Mr. Herbert Helme, Mr. and Mrs. J. O. 

 Herdman, Miss A. C. Jeafifreson, Mrs. Francis 

 Knight, Mrs. Marshall, Mr. and Mrs. A. H. H. 

 Matthews, Miss C. E. Mordan, Mrs. Nelson, Mr. 

 Clement E. Pike, Hon. C. M. Powys, Mrs. Probart, 

 Mrs. W. E. Scott, Mrs. Trewby, Miss E. L. Turner, 

 Mrs. Fisher Unwin, Rev. S. E. Vardon, Mrs. 

 Warton, Mrs. Ellis Walton, Mr. T. F. Wells, Mr. 

 C. C. Whitworth, Mrs. Willis Bund, Lady Wyllie, 

 and many others. 



The guests were received by Julia, Marchioness 

 of Tweeddale, a Vice-President of the Society, who 

 in a few words of hearty welcome congratulated the 

 Society on the wonderful progress it had made, and 

 expressed her pleasure that so many were present, 

 in spite of the weather, to evince their interest in 

 the work and their desire to do more. She hoped 

 that every lady and gentleman connected with the 

 Society worked among their friends to secure new 

 members, as she herself always did, thus, as it were, 

 accumulating interest. She had personally enlisted 

 five new members during the short time she had 

 been associated with the Society, and trusted every- 

 body else had done a great deal more. She was 

 sorry that ladies were still so wicked about wearing 

 birds ; her milliners knew that it was no use show- 

 ing her bird-trimmed millinery, as she would not 

 on any account wear such things. 



Birds in Millinery. 

 Madame Canziani opened the discussions with a 

 paper on " Possible ways by which the Society 

 might extend its usefulness," in which she appealed 

 for special effort and concerted and energetic action 

 to put a check upon the enormous destruction of 

 birds for millinery. It was estimated that for trade 

 purposes between 200 and 300 millions of birds 

 were slaughtered annually, England alone import- 

 ing twenty-five to thirty millions. She advocated 

 an urgent protest to the editors of all papers pub- 

 lishing fashion articles, begging them to forbid" 

 mention and illustration of hats trimmed with birds 

 and aigrettes ; a similar protest to drapers ancT 

 milliners, pointing out that while the foreign trade 

 of the plume-hunter flourished our own home trades 



