Honorable Mention.
Mr. Paul L. Smith, President of Chapter 653, of La Porte, Ind., goes fifty-nine miles, on the first Saturday of every month, to preside at the meetings of his Chapter. And yet some doubt whether Natural History can awaken the interest of the young!
The A. A. by the Sea.
Miss Florence May Lyon and two associate teachers of the Detroit High School, members of Chapter 743, are making arrangements to take a bevy of a dozen or twenty young ladies for a summer vacation of six weeks, to the charming town of Annisquam, Mass. They propose to teach them in as "unbookish and delightful a way as possible about sea-side plants and animals." These ladies have had abundant experience, and we wish them the greatest success.
Birds' Eggs.
The destruction of the singing birds of America is a growing and a very serious evil. Many ladies wear on their bonnets enough birds to flood a grove with melody—if only the birds were not dead and in pieces.
We may make an appeal on this subject to the girls and women of the A. A., at a later date, but just now it is a question of robbing birds' nests. This association strictly maintains the scientific ground that when birds' eggs are actually needed by a young naturalist, as a means of identification or of practical knowledge, it is justifiable to take them, when the law allows. But the collection of eggs as curiosities, and the wholesale robbery of nests for purposes of sale or exchange, is a wanton destruction wholly unworthy of any earnest student of nature.
In view of the impossibility of discriminating between the two classes of collectors, we shall hereafter decline to publish in St. Nicholas, any requests for the sale, purchase, or exchange of the eggs of singing or game birds.