The Necessity for Bird Protection 
The Audubon Societies protect the birds because they 
are economically useful. Many who have judged themselves 
as practical and as opposed to sentiment have belittled the 
work of the Audubon Societies as an uncalled for sentimental 
enthusiasm. These so-called practical persons are, as a rule, 
ignorant of conditions and are generally unwilling to study 
them. This applies with equal force to those ornithologists 
who study but one side of their subject. 
The bird protection idea grew out of the work of a com- 
mittee selected by the American Ornithologists’ Union, a 
national organization. This committee was chosen for the 
purpose of studying the conditions of bird destruction and 
devising methods of protection. This committee found that 
the conditions called for early action, and as a result of its 
work, the Audubon movement was born. Consequently 
the Audubon Society grew out of a practical organization, a 
national representative society, fostered by the leading orni- 
thologists of the country, for the purpose of the scientific 
study of birds and bird life, and was not born of the imagina- 
tive brains of a few philanthropic sentimentalists, as has occa- 
sionally been asserted. These practical men, who gave their time 
and energy gratuitously for the preservation of bird life, had 
good, common-sense reasons for so doing. There are those 
who seem to think that the Audubonists’ objection to the 
killing of birds is akin to that of those vegetarians who pro- 
test against the killing of animals for the table, on account 
of the cruelyv of the practice. This is undoubtedly true in 
cases where the birds are destroyed for no useful purpose, 
where they are killed wantonly for no other reason than to 
satisfy our inheritance from the savage. On the other hand, 
they not only do not object to but encourage the taking of 
birds by scientific men for scientific purposes, because they 
realize that the studies of such men serve to enlighten the 
public and eventually present the strongest arguments for 
bird protection. 
The Biological Survey of the United States Department 
