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Cl)e ^uDubon Societies " }'ou caiitiui 7vith a scalpel find the poet's soul, Nor yet the wild bird's song." Edited by Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright (President of tlie Audubon Society of the State of Connecticut), Fairfield, Conn., to whojii all communications relating to the work of the Audubon and other Bird Protective Societies should be addressed. Reports, etc., designed for this depart- ment should be sent at least one month prior to the date of publication. DIRECTORY OF STATE AUDUBON SOCIETIES With names and addressesiof, their Secretaries. New Hampshire Mrs. F. V. Batchelder, Manchester. Massachusetts Miss Harriet E. Richards, care Boston Society of Natural History, Boston. Rhode Island. Mrs. H. T. Grant, Jr., 187 Bowen street. Providence. Connecticut Mrs. William Brown Glover, Fairfield. New York Miss Emma H. Lock wood, 243 West Seventy-fifth street. New York City. New Jersey Miss Anna Haviland, 53 Sandford Ave., Plainfield, N. J. Pennsylvania Mrs. Edward Robins, 114 South Twenty-first street, Philadelphia. District of Columbia. Mrs. John Dewhurst Patten, 3033 P street, Washington. Wheeling, W. Va. (branch of Pa. Society) Elizabeth I. Cummins, 13 14 Chapline street. Wheeling. Ohio Miss Clara Russell, 903 Paradrome street, Cincinnati. Indiana .mos W. Butler, State House, Indianapolis. Illinois Miss Mary Drummond, Wheaton. Iowa Miss Nellie S. Board, Keokuk. W^isconsin Mrs. George W. Prckham, 646 Marshall street, Milwaukee. Minnesota Mrs. J. P. Elmer, 314 West Third street, St. Paul. Tennessee Mrs. C. C. Conner, Ripley. Texas Miss Cecile Seixas, 2008 Thirty-ninth street, Galveston. California Mrs. George S. Gay, Redlands. Consistency. Audubonites may be divided into two classes as regards their attitude toward the wearing of feathers, — the moderates and the total abstainers. The moderates hold that they violate none of the interests of bird protection in its fullest sense by wearing the plumes of game or food birds, or those of the Ostrich, which is as legitimately raised for its feathers as a sheep for its wool. In short, they see the necessity of keep- ing feather-wearing within conservative bounds, and elect to take the individual responsibility of so doing. The total abstainers say : " Let us break ourselves altogether of the feather wear- ing habit. We shall be more conspicuously consistent as bird protectionists, and we shall not be called upon to settle fine points and follow difficult boundaries. We need not know anything about plumage, and never have to decide whether the wings used by milliners are really those of food birds, or the pinions -of song birds disguised with dye. Or (I if the fearfully manufactured confections are the heads of real Owls and Parrots twisted out of all semblance to nature, or merely compounds of Chicken feath- ers and celluloid." Both of these atti- tudes are equally useful to the cause if they are maintained consistently, but inevitably the way of the total abstain- ers is the easier of the two. The total abstainers need not, to quote Hamlet, " know a hawk from a handsaw. " While, in order to be consistent, the moderates must be bird students of no mean in- tellige.ice if they would keep safely on the exceedingly narrow pathway that di- vides the feathers that may be, from those that must )iot be worn, not alone by Audubonites, but by any woman who has either sense or sensibility. A path- way ? A slack wire is the better simile, so treacherous is the footing. What is it that causes the downfall of many of the moderates, who know the common birds fairly well, and could not be hoodwinked into buying Egret's plumes or dyed swallow wings ? 70)