170 BIRD FRIENDS 



of Virginia, to fill a foreign order for forty thousand 

 bird-skins. Men were hired to kill the terns and 

 gulls found here and were paid ten cents for each 

 bird killed. 



Tragedy on Laysan Island. Six years ago a bird 

 tragedy was enacted on Laysan Island, an American 

 island in the Hawaiian group, in order to get 

 plumes for the milliners' trade. Water-birds bred on 

 this island in enormous numbers. A plume-hunter, 

 accompanied by twenty-three Japanese laborers, 

 sailed from Honolulu and made a raid on the island 

 to kill the birds found there, for their feathers. For 

 several months they remained here slaughtering the 

 birds, when the United States Government learned 

 of what was happening and sent a revenue cutter 

 to stop them. When the captain arrived, he found 

 that they had already killed about three hundred 

 thousand birds and had about three carloads of 

 wings, feathers, and skins. Nearly every bird on the 

 island had been killed, and doubtless the remainder 

 would have been had not the hunters been stopped 

 in their butchery. Hundreds of birds were impris- 

 oned in a dry cistern and allowed slowly to starve 

 to death, because the skins from these birds were 

 easier to prepare than those from birds killed while 

 they were fat. There now comes another report 

 that during the year 1915 another raid was made 

 on Laysan Island, almost as destructive as the one 

 mentioned above. 



