earnest hope that those words may be graciously spoken before it be 
too late, I pray the insertion of this letter in your columns, and 
I remain, Sir, your obedient servant, 
Cambridge, Feb. 23, 1899. ALFRED NEWTON. 
{From, The Auk, January , 1899.) 
Extracts from the Report of the American Ornithological Union Committee 
on the Protection of North American Birds. Signed by the Chairman, 
Mr. Witmer Stone. 
“ In Florida the slaughter of the remaining Egrets seems to go on 
in spite of laws and all that has been written against the practice. Mr. 
George W. Kinnison, of Lake City, Florida, writes: This last season 
more plumes were shipped than usual, as, owing to the very dry season 
hunters penetrated the everglades farther to find the rookeries than 
usual. Our laws are such that a heavy penalty is provided for any 
one engaged in buying, shipping, or dealing in any way in plumes, but 
the bulk of the Egret plumes being so small, men will collect them 
with a couple of hand satchels, go North, and dispose of them. When 
your northern dealers are punished to the fullest extent of the law for 
buying them, then, and only then, will the killing of plume birds stop 
in Florida.” 
Miss Florence A. Merriam writes of the slaughter of birds when 
migrating south:—“ During one week in the spring of 1897, 2600 
Robins shot in North Carolina, were exposed for sale in one market 
stall in Washington, and in Summerville, S.C., the shooting was so 
constant that I came to feel that no northern bird could ever reach 
home alive.” . . . . “As regards laws, nearly every state has laws 
intended to protect the birds, though many are so badly framed as to 
be absolutely useless; but even good laws are usually dead letters 
unless there is someone whose business it is to enforce them. In only 
a few States do the game wardens make it their business to arrest 
violators of the bird laws, and the greatest need in bird-protective 
legislation is the provision of salaried game wardens to enforce the 
• laws.” 
“ The milliners in many of our large cities have joined gladly with 
the Audubon Societies in exhibiting “birdless hats,” and some, 
notably Gimbel Bros., of Milwaukee and Philadelphia, have 
advocated in circulars and advertisements the abandonment of wild 
birds, while they made a special department of Audubon millinery in 
their stores, but the present generation of fashionable women, as a 
class, seems not to be open to argument on this subject.” 
Mr. T. W. Talley writes from Tallahussee of the non-enforcement 
of bird-protecting laws and the destruction of birds by small boys 
who shoot “ every small, beneficial bird they can see.” 
Copies of this Leaflet, 2d. per doz., or Is. per 100, may be obtained from Mrs. 
E. E. Lemon, the Hon. Sec. of the Society for the Protection of Birds, 3, Hanover 
Square, London, W., or from Knoivledge Office, 326, High Holborn, W.C. 
