Bird-Lore
A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE
DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS
Official Organ of the Audubon Societies
| Vol. 1 | February, 1899 | No. 1 |
SUBSCRIPTION RATES
Price in the United States, Canada and Mexico, twenty cents a number, one dollar a year, postage paid.
Subscriptions may be sent to the Publishers, at Harrisburg, Pa. 66 Fifth avenue, New York City, or to the Editor, at Englewood, New Jersey.
Price in all countries in the International Postal Union, twenty-five cents a number, one dollar and a quarter a year, postage paid. Foreign agents, Macmillan and Company, Ltd. London.
Manuscripts for publication, books, etc., for review, should be sent to the Editor at Englewood, New Jersey.
Advertisements should be sent to the Publishers at 66 Fifth avenue, New York City.
COPYRIGHTED, 1899, BY FRANK M. CHAPMAN.
During the past six years New York and Boston publishers have sold over 70,000 text-books on birds, and the ranks of bird students are constantly growing. With this phenomenal and steadily increasing interest in bird-studies, there has arisen a widespread demand for a popular journal of ornithology which should be addressed to observers rather than to collectors of birds, or, in short, to those who study “birds through an opera-glass.”
The need of such a journal has also been felt by the Audubon societies, and in concluding his report for the year 1898, Mr. Witmer Stone, chairman of the American Ornithologists′ Union′s Committee on Bird Protection, remarks on the necessity of a “magazine devoted to popular ornithology which could serve as an organ for the various societies and keep the members in touch with their work. All societies which have reached a membership of several thousand realize that it is impossible to communicate with their members more than once or twice a year, owing to the cost of postage, and the success of the societies depends largely upon keeping in communication with their members.”
It is to supply this want of bird students and bird protectors that Bird-Lore has been established. On its behalf we promise to spare no effort to make it all that the most ardent bird student could desire, and, in the event of our success, we would appeal to all bird-lovers for such support as we may be deemed worthy to receive.
We have issued a ‘Prospectus,’ setting forth in part the aims of Bird-Lore, and as a matter of permanent record, we enter its substance here. It stated that Bird-Lore would attempt to fill a place in the journalistic world similar to that occupied by the works of Burroughs, Torrey, Dr. van Dyke, Mrs. Miller, and others in the domain of books. This is a high standard, but our belief that it will be reached will doubtless be shared when we announce that, with one or two exceptions, every prominent American writer on birds in nature has promised to contribute to Bird-Lore during the coming year. The list of contributors includes the authors just mentioned, Mabel Osgood Wright, Annie Trumbull Slosson, Florence A. Merriam, J. A. Allen, William Brewster, Henry Nehrling, Ernest Seton Thompson, Otto Widmann, and numerous other students of bird-life.
The Audubon Department, under Mrs. Wright’s care, will be a particularly attractive feature of the magazine, one which, we trust, is destined to exert a wide influence in advancing the cause of bird-protection.
The illustrations will consist of half-tone reproductions of birds and their nests from nature, and on the basis of material already in hand, we can assure our readers that, whether judged separately or as a whole, this volume of Bird-Lore will contain the best photographs of wild birds which have as yet been published in this country.
At present Bird-Lore will contain from thirty-two to forty pages, but should our efforts to produce a magazine on the lines indicated be appreciated, we trust that the near future will witness a material increase in the size of each number.
