o 
offender, who might escape with an inadequate penalty. (2) The 
uncertainty of a prosecutor’s powers owing to the great confusion 
which had arisen from the multiplicity of Orders issued by the Home 
Secretary appointing different close times in different Counties, or 
divisions of Counties, and protecting a particular bird in one locality 
and not in another. 
The question of the protection of wild birds would never be 
placed upon a satisfactory basis until the Acts and Orders now in 
force were repealed, and a simpler Statute substituted which should 
invert the present principle adopted, that is to say, instead of attempt¬ 
ing to schedule all the birds which require protection, and by 
omitting certain species, leave it to be inferred that the latter were 
not protected, it should enact that all birds and their eggs were to be 
protected between certain dates under certain penalties with the 
exception of a very small number admittedly destructive to crops, 
fruit, fowl, or fish, which might easily be enumerated in a schedule, 
providing, as in Lord Jersey’s Act, for the confiscation of all birds 
killed or taken during the close time. If this were done, the law 
would be much more deterrent in its effect than was the case at 
present, and would be more easily enforced. 
In conclusion, his Grace reminded the meeting that thanks were 
due to Lord Curzon for his action in prohibiting the export of 
feathers from India, and to Lord Jersey and Mr. Sydney Buxton for 
their successful efforts in obtaining the Royal Assent to the Bill of 
July, 1902. 
The Duchess of Somerset, in seconding the resolution, said 
she attended the meeting without any intention of speaking, but 
had been asked to say a few words on behalf of the birds, and 
willingly complied. She could not do better than refer those 
present to that portion of the report of the Society bearing 
upon the plume trade, which represented a hideous and criminal 
warfare against the most beautiful of all forms of life, and which 
was extremely difficult to repress on account of the large vested 
interests involved. It was also, difficult to enforce a social law 
bearing upon dress and millinery, but all who really loved birds 
would be prepared to work with the Society in its earnest 
endeavour to preserve and protect them, and a great increase of 
sympathy with the protest made against their wholesale destruction 
for decorative purposes was more and more manifest. If people 
would but listen to the appeal of the birds themselves, to their 
songs on a spring day, they could not resist such sweet singing, nor 
could she understand how anyone who watched a lark soaring to 
heaven, and singing as it soared, could make it an article of food. 
It was to be hoped that the Society would find some means of 
entrapping the birdcatcher as he trapped the birds, and that pro¬ 
tection would be extended to birds by all the County Councils. 
