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The reduction in the number of native birds’ feathers 
worn as millinery ornaments, and the falling off in the traf- 
fic and business of taxidermists, are among the visible re- 
sults of the change of sentiment which has been wrought 
largely through the influence of the Audubon Society. 
An increased interest in animated nature was aroused and 
fostered more than twenty-five years ago in the State by the 
Boston Society of Natural History and the Worcester Nat- 
ural History Society. Nature study has grown in popu- 
larity in many States ever since. Massachusetts has kept 
well on the crest of the great wave of interest in animated 
nature which has swept over the country. This movement 
will result in lamentable failure unless it protects from ex- 
tirpation those plants and animals the study of which is one 
of its chief reasons for existence. The bird-protection work 
of the American Ornithologists’ Union (now largely trans- 
ferred to the National Association of Audubon Societies) 
has accomplished more for the protection of sea birds and 
shore birds on their breeding grounds than that of any other 
organization. It is due to this work that gulls, terns, other 
sea birds and shore birds breeding along all the coasts of the 
United States have been saved from decimation or extirpa- 
tion at the hands of gunners, milliners, hunters and eggers. 
Every member of the State Board of Agriculture, every 
branch of the League of American Sportsmen, every nat- 
ural history club or society, every Agassiz chapter, every 
grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, every sportsmen’s 
organization, should give active support to all measures that 
will help to maintain or increase the numbers of useful in- 
sectivorous birds, game birds, shore birds and wild fowl; 
and all should hold up the hands of the United States Bio- 
logical Survey in securing consistent State laws to protect 
the birds during their migrations both north and south. 
The publication and distribution of literature regarding the 
usefulness of birds and the necessity for their protection 
should be undertaken by all such societies. The public press 
can help much by printing short articles on these subjects. 
