k {247} $25,000 more
than the children's fees amount to. Of this amount Mrs. Sage continues
to contribute one-fifth, the remaining four-fifths being given by an
anonymous friend of children and birds. In supplying these pupils and
their teachers with the necessary pictures, leaflets, and outline
drawings of birds for colouring, over thirty-one million pages of
printed information have been distributed. Pupils have taken hold of
this bird study with great zest. Many a dull or inattentive boy, who
had been a despair to his teacher and parents, responded to this real
nature teaching which took him from his ordinarily uninteresting
studies into the wide out of doors. Thousands of teachers have written
letters filled with expressions of thankfulness for this opportunity
which has come to them and reciting details of the variety of ways in
which they have been able to make use of this plan and material for
bird study.

_What One Teacher Did._--Here, for example, is one from Miss Beth
Merritt, who teaches in a little school at Fountain City, Tennessee: "I
am very glad to {248} write to you about the Junior Audubon Class we
had at school this year. We all enjoyed it exceedingly, and I am sure
it did good in the hearts and lives of the little people who were
members and in the bird world, too. A year ago I invited the children
of some of the other grades to join our Audubon Class and we had over
forty members. We had our meetings on Friday afternoons after school.
The class was quite successful and we saw some direct results of its
success. Several nest-robbing boys gave up that 'sport' altogether.
One boy was instrumental in bringing about the arrest of some men who
had been shooting song birds. This year I had the class only in my own
grade--the second. Almost every child in the room joined, making
twenty members. I had daily periods for nature study and language, and
every other Friday we used these two periods for the Audubon Class.
The children were always anxious for the Audubon Fridays to come. They
used often to ask, 'Is to-morrow Bird Day, Miss Beth?' and if I
answered in the affirmative, I heard 'Oh, goody,' [248] and 'I won't
forget to wear my button,' and 'I wonder what bird it will be,' from
every side. Rarely ever did we have an absent mark on Bird Day.

"After we had used all ten of the leaflets you sent us, we had lessons
on some of the other birds, or, instead of a regular lesson, we went
for a b