Page:Condor9(2).djvu/32

62  are not wanted, and are charged $25 per year." (Signed) W. L. Pinney, Fish and Game Commissioner of Arizona Territory.

We don't propose to make these editorial columns a table of contents of the issue, as is often the custom of magazines. Yet we cannot help calling particular attention to the last pelican photo with Finley's article, page 41 of this number. Aren't the purely artistic merits of this picture to say the least exceptional?

Mr. and Mrs Frank Stephens and Mr. Joseph Dixon are leaving the first of April for a season's collecting in southeastern Alaska. Their work is in the interests of a private party, and will pertain mostly to mammals. Yet birds will not be altogether neglected.

An effort was recently made in Oregon by the fruit growers in the southern part of the State to amend the Model Bird Law to such an extent that the legislation for song birds was practically annulled. They introduced a bill in the House to the effect that farmers, gardeners and orchardists could shoot any bird providing that it was considered detrimental to crops. The bill passed the House and also the Senate on February 21 by a narrow margin. But thru the Oregon Audubon Society, such a sentiment was raised in favor of the birds that Governor Chamberlain vetoed the bill on February 25.

The Portland, Oregon, Public Library has been presented by Mrs. W. S. Ladd with an original set of the four-volume elephant folio edition of Audubon. It is thought this is now the only complete set on the Pacific Coast. The set was purchased somewhere in the East in 1879 by Mr. William Ladd for $1800. Mr. W. L. Finley has examined the work and finds these volumes of the "Birds of America" to belong to the same edition as those in the Library of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, as described by Stone in The Auk for July, 1906.

Mr. C. B. Linton, of the Southern Division has been visiting in turn this spring the various islands along the southern California coast. He reports many new records for San Clemente and San Nicolas.

We are informed that it is now the intention of the California Academy of Sciences to locate their new building, to cost about $250,000, in Golden Gate Park. This will be a vast improvement over their former location in the dark and grimy business section of San Francisco.

Mr. Bradford Torrey of Boston is again spending the spring in southern California watching ouzels, solitaires and condors thru his 12-power Busch binocular.

The Cooper Club, both Divisions, has voted an increase in the subscription price of. This was a warranted move for several reasons. The dollar rate did not meet the cost of publication. Even at the increased rate, $1.50 per year, ours is yet the lowest priced of ornithological magazines. We believe that our subscribers appreciate the value received in, and will continue their support, the result of which will be an extension in its size and number of illustrations. Whether or not our expectations are well founded remains to be proven. It must be remembered, however, that receives considerable of its support from the dues of the Cooper Club (which includes subscription), and these remain unchanged.

 

 

Editor :

A double-column display header in a Sacramento paper lately published announced, "Killing of Jays, the Destroyer of Quail Nests." This charge conjoined with the detailed reading matter, which was written with an intensity which curdled one's blood, foretold that "there will be an awful slaughter of blue jays during the early spring months." Subjoined was a subscription list wherein was donated various sums from $1.50 to $10 concluding with a very noble determination on the part of the individual who distinguished himself last year by killing the greatest number of jays "to strain every muscle and exercise every effort to uphold his reputation and win first prize this year."

Mr. Editor, rightly or wrongly the reading of this sent a creepy reflex thru my sympathetic, and I wondered if this slaughter was either intelligent or justifiable.

I remember as a boy in my native land the bad name the common magpie (Pica caudata) had as a destroyer of chickens, and a robber of nests. Indeed I even recollect seeing "sucked eggs," but never did I know of a pre-arranged slaughter, and yet the farmers of that region were careful of their own interests. But to return to the "Jays", I wrote up to the district where the campaign was being organized. I received some information which convinced me that in some cases at least, the execution was wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart. One of the subscribers honestly admits that "he had never given the matter of blue jays any personal attention, but was guided solely by the report of others." The heavy donation was from a dealer in sporting goods—a sportsman, and of course a close observer of nature! A third gentleman, who has the local reputation of being the best authority on birds said "that the jay is no good, he destroys eggs all the time," and that he "had actually seen a jay robbing a dove's nest, and flying away with the egg in his beak." The sportsman with the ambition for perennial premiership "is a farmer, an old gentleman" who had one thousand scalps to his credit for last season. One could, Mr. Editor, be a Christian and yet wish that the right hand of the "old gentleman" might at least soon lose its cunning, and not