Audubon Society, an association for the protection of birds. The persistence with which many birds have been hunted for their plumage has alarmed American bird lovers. Local Audubon societies exist in nearly every state of the Union. Forest and Stream has done excellent service in arousing public interest. Under the presidency of William Dutcher, a national association of Audubon societies has been formed with a paying membership of 1,000 members. National aid has been enlisted. Under authority of law President Roosevelt set aside a number of tracts for bird preserves. Each reserve is in charge of a government warden. He receives but one dollar a year from the government, but the position clothes him with authority. The expense is defrayed by the Audubon Association. In these reservations it is an offense against the law to kill a bird, to take an egg, or even to gather a feather. The reserves are scattered widely. They include swamps, forests, mud islands, and oceanic rocks. The movement is thus summarized by Mr. Roy Crandall writing in The Technical Magazine for April, 1909: "President Roosevelt's first reservation was formed on August 8, 1907, when he signed the order making the Tern Islands Reservation a breeding ground and a national preserve. This reserve embraced a large number of small islands in or near the mouth of the Mississippi commonly called 'mud lumps,' but embracing thousands of acres of mud and marsh land and being for ages the nesting places of thousands of ducks and royal terns. The Shell Keys Reserve in the Gulf of Mexico was signed for a week later, and a few months later protection was given to other birds which made their home on the small mangrove and salt grass islets, shoals, and sandbars in Mosquito Inlet at the mouths of Halifax and Hillsboro rivers in Florida. "At the present time these various national reserves are at Duck Lake, off the coast of Maine, whereon eider and less valuable ducks are breeding; Stump Lake in North Dakota, wherein ducks and cormorants are swarming; Huron Island in Lake Huron; Pelican Island in Indian River, Florida, where there are thousands of brown pelicans; Passage and Indian keys in the Tampa Bay; Breton Island, off the Louisiana coast, which was formerly a famous duck slaughtering ground for Northern tourists; the Shell Key Reserve, off the Louisiana coast; Tern Island, before referred to; Three Arch Rocks, off the coast of Oregon; the Key West Reservation, off the coast of Florida; the Tortugas Keys Reservation, embracing the islands within the Dry Tortugas in the Gulf of Mexico, and six others but recently organized. Among these are the Klamath Lake Reserve, the Matlacha Pass Reservation in Florida; the Palma Sola Reservation, which embraces an island in Palma Sola Bay in Florida; the Pine Island Reservation, near the northern end of Pine Island Sound on the west coast of Florida; the Chase Lake Reservation in Northern Dakota, and the Lake Malheur Reservation in Oregon; this and the Lake Klamath Reserve being the two largest ever set aside and embracing in land, water, and marsh territory about 615,680 acres, or 942 square miles. "What the actual practical results have been no man can say--how many birds are actually within these preserves it is impossible to tell, but it is known that since the Federal government spread the protecting folds of the starry banner over the threatened wings and doomed breasts of the breathing hat ornaments, a number of species have been saved from entire extinction while others have increased ten fold. It is a certainty that the birds numbered some scores of thousands when the task of saving them was taken up and that they now number some millions; while for the purpose of exciting millinery wrath the statement is here set down that at prevailing plumage prices the feathers these myriads wear would appraise at $50,000,000." See AUK; HERON; BIRD.