PREFACE MR. BAYNES has written not only a very interesting book but one that is really of capital importance. We Americans have recklessly wasted our national assets in the past. But now there has come a change. We are trying to preserve our forests and utilize our water supply and care for the soil instead of merely exhausting it. One of the pleasantest features of the new movement is the constantly growing interest in wild life, and especially in bird life. The Meriden Bird Club has furnished a model for all similar experiments in preserving bird life, and Mr. Baynes writes in advocacy of a cause which by practical achievement he has shown to be entitled to the support of every sensible man, woman, and child in the country. I say child advisedly, for boys and girls have a peculiar part to play in the crusade for the better protection of our birds. There is sound economic reason for protecting the birds and in addition there is ample reason for protecting them simply be cause they add immeasurably to the joy of life, v vi Preface and of all those fit really to enjoy life outside of our great cities or even in the parks and suburbs of our great cities. I speak as one who has in his own person benefited by the result of Mr. Bayness missionary work, for in consequence of this work we who live on Long Island have now organized a Bird Club for the Island. Our endeavor is to do for Long Island some small part of what has been done by the Meriden Bird Club and kindred organizations in New Hampshire and elsewhere. THEODO R R O E O SEVELT. FOREWORD Kind hearts need no compulsion to be kind. MACKAYE. FOR a long time it has been the writers belief that the final solution of the problem of wild bird conservation lay, not in the enacting of more or better laws, necessary as those laws are, but in the creation of such an interest in, and love for birds, that a very large majority of people will have not only no desire to destroy them, but will actually fight to prevent their destruction and that the birds themselves will become as safe as valuable private property. This, it seems, would be a fundamental solution. Most bird protection laws are in the nature of artificial restraints upon people who desire to kill. Restraints are often necessary but seldom popular. People do not like to be told not to do things which they very much desire to do consequently such laws are often hard to obtain and harder to enforce. Now, if we could create the interest and love referred to, we might ac vii viii Foreword complish a double purpose viz., first, a great reduction in the number of people who desire to destroy the birds for any purpose, and thus, second, make it much easier to enforce existing laws in the case of those who still persist in the desire to destroy. In other words, every person in whom we succeed in implanting this interest and love would be a recruit for the army of bird defenders directly from the ranks of either the bird destroyers or the indifferent, who are often quite as dangerous as the destroyers themselves... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.