8 
about the birds than anybody, wrote that all the birds of St. Kilda 
should be protected except those required for the support of the 
inhabitants, namely, fulmar petrel, gannet, razorbill, guillemot, and 
puffin. “ As much as J21 10s. has been paid for a wren’s nest with 
full clutch of eggs, while the eggs of the forked-tail petrel are sold 
in large quantities at a shilling each, and also those of the stormy 
petrel. The live birds are caught and kept in boxes until some 
steamer with tourists comes to the bay, and many of them die of 
starvation. It is the same with the Manx shear-water and wren. 
You only hear the w r ren occasionally about the village, and before 
long there will be none even on the islands.” He might remind 
them that the last place where the Great Auk was seen, was, he 
believed, the island of 8t. Kilda, and he had very little doubt that 
if there had been a Bird Protection Society in those days, they 
might have had the Great Auk still. It was not too late to save the 
wren and the charming little forked-tail petrel, which were getting 
rarer every year, but it was impossible to do so unless there was an 
alteration in the Act. As the owner of the island he should be 
extremely pleased to see St. Kilda brought under the Act, except 
with regard to those five birds required for the people’s livelihood, 
and would gladly co-operate for this purpose with the energetic 
officials of the Society. 
The Chairman asked Mr. Meade Waldo, whose knowledge as a 
field ornithologist was, he believed, second to that of nobody in 
the country, to second the resolution. 
Mr. Meade Waldo said he had alwavs taken immense interest 
%/ 
in the protection of birds, and from his own observation entirely 
agreed that the general feeling of pleasure in seeing our rarer birds 
had very largely increased. In his own part of the country 
(Penshurst, Kent) he found that during the last thirty years 
almost all the birds that used to be considered rare had become 
not rare at all. All the woodpeckers were very common ; all the 
owls were quite numerous, with the exception of the long-eared 
owl. They had great numbers of the little owd from Southern 
Europe—he had seen as many as sixteen on the telegraph wires 
between the stations—and they had also in the woods the Ural 
owl, one of the rarest owls in the world. 
He found now that the cottagers, although he had never asked 
them to do so, put up bird boxes. This was a most engaging 
custom, and it was extraordinary, even when there was an abundance 
of natural places for birds’ nests, to see the number of birds that 
came to build in the boxes. Their boxes were used by the tawny and 
barn owl, and especially by stock doves, and often by jackdaws, 
and the small ones by the tits and hole-breeding birds. If the 
boxes were placed low down, they were very seldom taken by house 
sparrows. 
The motion was carried unanimously. 
