6 
The establishment of “ Bird and Tree Day ” would do a great deal of 
good in educating children ; many of them were absolutely ignorant 
of the cruelty involved in many present practices, and unless they 
were taught to observe the beauties of nature they could think of 
nothing but to destroy the birds who helped to make life beautiful. 
In some countries where the slaughter of birds had gone on un¬ 
checked, not a note of song was to be heard, and the crops were 
devastated by insects. Then a terrible cry was raised in favour of 
the very birds that had been persecuted and destroyed. No doubt 
some birds were destructive to a certain extent to fruit and other 
crops, but against the small amount of damage they committed, 
must not be forgotten the services rendered in keeping within 
limits the countless number of insect enemies, nor the happiness 
and pleasure their loving ways and sweet singing gave to many. 
The Duchess concluded by expressing the pleasure it had given 
her to take part in the annual meeting of the Society, the first she 
had attended, and her satisfaction in seconding the resolution before 
them. 
The adoption of the report was then carried unanimously. 
The Hon. and Rev. Canon Lyttelton proposed the election 
of the Committee as named in the Report. The fact that he 
had been a member of the Society for ten years, and was one of 
its ardent well-wishers gave him, he thought, a right to speak on its 
behalf, and he had been asked to deal with its work from an 
educational point of view. In his own school—Haileybury—some 
boys were members, and among the most active of the 
Society’s workers was Mr. Kennedy, one of his assistant masters. 
He well remembered how Mr. Kennedy, when dining with him ten 
years ago, held forth upon the subject of bird protection with a 
vehemence natural to him, and he himself became a member of the 
Society from that time. Mr. Kennedy afterwards lectured at the 
school, with the result that sixty of the boys joined. These boys 
when they went home would descant on the subject to their sisters, 
and so the matter would be discussed and interest spread, and it 
was impossible to estimate the good that resulted. 
A great deal of good could be done in schools, and he had just 
been appealed to by the Hon. Secretary of the Society to take 
action in conjunction with his colleagues the various headmasters of 
public schools, in one particular way. Most of these schools were 
haunted by country boys from the neighbourhood offering for sale 
to young collectors the nests and eggs of birds. One of the diffi¬ 
culties in dealing with a matter like this was that their constituents 
were continually changing ; every year another hundred boys or so 
came into the school and the ground had to be gone over afresh. 
Every single spring he had to take the strongest measures on behalf 
