The camera may also supply us with graphic records of the few large colonies of birds yet existing in this country, thereby preserving for all time definite impressions of conditions which are rapidly becoming things of the past. What an invaluable addition to the history of the Great Auk would be a series of photographs from Funk Island, taken during the period of its existence there! Of what surpassing interest would be photographs of the former flights of Wild Pigeons, which the younger generations of to-day can with difficulty believe occurred! _The Charm of Bird Photography._—As a onetime sportsman, who yielded to none in his enjoyment of the chase, I can affirm that there is a fascination about the hunting of wild animals with a camera as far ahead of the pleasure to be derived from their pursuit with shotgun or rifle as the sport found in shooting Quail is beyond that of breaking clay “Pigeons”. Continuing the comparison, from a sportsman’s standpoint, hunting with a camera is the highest development of man’s inherent love of the chase. The killing of a bird with a gun seems little short of murder after one has attempted to capture its image with a lens. The demands on the skill and patience of the bird photographer are endless, and his pleasure is intensified in proportion to the nature of the difficulties to be overcome, and in the event of success it is perpetuated by the infinitely more satisfactory results obtained. He does not rejoice over a bag of mutilated flesh and feathers, but in the possession of a trophy—an eloquent token of his prowess as a hunter, a talisman which holds the power of revivifying the circumstances attending its acquisition. What mental vision of falling birds can be as potent as the actual picture of living birds in their homes? And how immeasurably one’s memories are brightened by the fact that this is not a picture of what has been but of what is! The camera thus opens the door to a field of sport previously closed to those who love birds too much to find pleasure in killing them; to whom Bob-White’s ringing whistle does not give rise to murderous speculations as to the number in his family, but to an echo of the season’s joy which his note voices. They therefore have a new incentive to take them out of doors; for however much we love Nature for Nature’s sake, there are few of us whose pleasure in an outing is not intensified by securing some definite, lasting result. We are not all poets and seers, finding sufficient reward for a hard day’s tramp in a sunset glow or the song of a bird. Enjoy these things as we may, who would not like to perpetuate the one or the other in some tangible form?