2 
In moving that the annual report be adopted and circulated, 
the Chairman expressed his pleasure in complying with the request 
of the President of the Society (the Duchess of Portland), who was 
absent in India, that he should preside on the occasion, and the 
satisfaction with which he found the considerable activities of the 
Society reflected in the report, which was full of interest. From the 
very first page of that report he was glad to learn that their President 
would be able to congratulate Lord Curzon upon the fact that the 
Governor-General in Council in India had prohibited, with certain 
exceptions, the exportation of birds’ skins and feathers, by sea or 
land, out of British India. It was, of course, the fashion for what 
had been happily characterized as “murderous millinery,” which 
created the demand that the plume and feather trade existed to 
supply. The only way in which they could hope to create a better 
feeling in this matter was by the force of example, and he was very 
hopeful that the taste would fall into discredit, since many dis¬ 
tinguished ladies, like their President, were setting the fashion of 
not wearing feathers in their headdresses and did not hesitate to let 
it be known that they regarded the wearing of the bodies and 
feathers of birds with great disfavour. 
He looked, too, with satisfaction to the considerable changes 
which were now taking place in consequence of County Councils, 
in whom was already vested the power of adopting measures for the 
preservation of birds, having been made by Parliament the educa¬ 
tional authorities. He hoped these Councils would take care that 
in the schools under their direction the rules and regulations on the 
subject of bird protection should be so explained to the children 
that they would understand that by disobedience to those rules 
they were breaking the law of the land. He trusted also that by the 
attention now given to Nature Study in schools, and more especially 
by the institution of Bird and Tree Day, children would learn how 
much higher was the gain to be derived from watching and protect¬ 
ing the works of Nature than in their destruction. He had recently 
in his park a beautiful Amherst pheasant, whose movements and 
habits it was most fascinating to observe; this bird roamed about at 
will, and eventually frequented the neighbourhood of a public foot¬ 
path ; and one day there came along a small boy with a catapult, 
who took no pleasure in the beauty of the pheasant, with the result 
that the bird was killed. Although it was, perhaps, too much to 
hope that ordinary education would wholly restrain the destruc¬ 
tive instinct of the human boy, he trusted that Nature Study and 
Bird and Tree Day would do something in that direction and 
that a feeling might be created in favour of the protection of birds 
and other works of Nature in place of their sometimes brutal and 
senseless destruction. 
In the matter of finance, the Society, like other societies with 
which he was acquainted, was urgently in want of funds, particularly 
