When this place was described to President Roosevelt, he immediately declared that the birds must not be killed there without the consent of the Secretary of Agriculture. With one stroke of his pen he brought this desirable condition into existence, and Mrs. Asa Pillsbury was duly appointed to protect the island. She is one of the few women bird wardens in America. These things happened in the early days of Government work for the protection of water birds. The Audubon Society had found a new field for endeavour, highly prolific in results. With the limited means at its command the work of ornithological exploration was carried forward. Every island, mud flat, and sand bar along the coast of the Mexican {196} Gulf, from Texas to Key West, was visited by trained ornithologists who reported their findings to the New York office. These were forwarded to Washington for the approval of Dr. T. S. Palmer of the Biological Survey, and Frank Bond, of the General Land Office, where executive orders were prepared for the President's signature. The Breton Island Reservation off the coast of Louisiana, including scores of islands and bars, was established in 1904. Six additional reservations were soon created along the west coast of Florida, thus extending a perpetual guardianship over the colonies of sea and coastwise birds in that territory--the pitiful remnants of vast rookeries despoiled to add to the profits of the millinery trade. The work was early started in the West resulting in the Malheur Lake and Klamath Lake reservations of Oregon. The latter is to-day the summer home of myriads of Ducks, Geese, Grebes, White Pelicans, and other wild waterfowl, and never a week passes that the waters of the lake are not fretted with the {197} prow of the Audubon patrol boat, as the watchful warden extends his vigil over the feathered wards of our Government. Federal bird reservations have been formed not only of lakes with reedy margins and lonely islands in the sea, they have been made to include numerous Government reservoirs built in the arid regions of the West.