DIRECTORY OF STATE AUDUBON SOCIETIES
With names and addresses of their Secretaries.
| New Hampshire | Mrs. F. W. 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. Lockwood, 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, 1314 Chapline street, Wheeling. |
| Ohio | Miss Clara Russell, 903 Paradrome street, Cincinnati. |
| Indiana | Amos W. Butler, State House, Indianapolis. |
| Illinois | Miss Mary Drummond, Wheaton. |
| Iowa | Miss Nellie S. Board, Keokuk. |
| Wisconsin | Mrs. George W. Peckham, 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. |
The Responsibility of the Audubon Society
Now that the Audubon Society is recognized as a factor in the higher civilization of the day, it may be well to ask how far it realizes its responsibility as a public educator.
"For the Protection of Birds," is a most reasonable and tangible declaration of motive, but what next?
The male and female public is straightway asked to give up certain habits that it has regarded as inherent rights,—in the cause of humanity and agricultural economy.
So far so good; but should not these would-be teachers of good will to animals, themselves be educated in consistent humanity, in order to keep their doctrines above the ridicule level?
Upon the discrimination of its humanity depends the future of the Audubon Society. A discrimination that shall render its workings logical, and make it able to see that it must at least give as much as it takes. A breadth of knowledge to realize that if the Society restricts the hat trimmings of women, the egg-collecting habits of boys, and the "just to see if I can hit it" proclivities of both boys and men, it is bound to give them something beside "the consciousness of rectitude" in return. The very least it can do is to help them to become as intimately acquainted with "the bird in the bush" as they were with the egg in the pocket and the feather on the hat.
It is here that the educational responsibility of the Audubon Society lies. Instead of issuing tracts simply to decry feather-wearing, and to say that something should be done, I would have each Society send out one or more illustrated bird lectures to the remoter corners of its range, where people do not have the privilege of hearing professional ornithologists. Also to the groups of remote country schools whose scholars have no "key to the fields" that lie so close at hand. I would have the Societies send small circulating libraries of bird books in the same way. To introduce people to the bird in the bush is the way to create a public sentiment to keep it there, and to make it possible to obtain legislative authority for the enactment and keeping of good bird laws, which are the backbone of protection.