630 THE BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON. 



of year, as a lin'de is j^ranit'il Ikt l)est rolies fur the- wc-cldinj^^ ila_\- and the 

 honevninon ; and if llic bulchers, whom the featlier-nierchanls jiire, were 

 lo wait unlil the young' birds were raised, tlie wedding garments of the 

 parents would either he W(jrn threadbare in ser\iee, or else cast aside. 

 Therefore, since it must be done, as oin- gentle ladies have decreed, the 

 onlv wa\' is to \ isit a colon}' during the breeding season, shoot all the old 

 birds (\\lio will not of course desert their }'oungi, snatch out their nuptial 

 plumes, and lea\-e their carcasses to putrify, while the starving children call 

 down from the tree-tops to the ears that hear not. Thus a single plume- 

 hunter has killed hundreds of Egrets in a day, and in the i>alni\' davs of 

 the "industry,'' certain gangs were able to kill tens of thousands in a single 

 season. 



Of course this slaughter is prohibited bv law in the L'nited States, 

 but the mischief is nearly all accoiuplished so far as our own Itgrets are 

 concerned. Besides that, the inducements held out to the plume-hunters 

 by the criminal dealers are \'ery large. It is estimated that a \illain naiued 

 Cuthbert cleaned up thirty-fi\e hundred dollars as the result of three days' 

 successful law-l)reaking in a Florida swamp. And this sort of thing will 

 continue just as long as thoughtless cjr spiritless woiuen will suljmit U> l)eing 

 imposed u])r)n bv unscrupulous dealers, in the name of a false and man-iuade 

 god, called Fashion. 



If this were a dead issue we could let the ]"lg"ret go: but there is no 

 appeasing this lustful god, whose belly is a Jew's purse. South America, 

 Africa, the islands of the sea, are l)eing ransacked and ravished by the 

 emissaries of the feather-merchants. The Egrets are done for: but iiow. 

 forsooth, "paradise aigrettes" are deiuanded. and that these may be sup- 

 plied, out-of-the-way jilaces. which ci\ilizatioii will (ine day require tor the 

 highest uses, are being desolated for all time. It is not merely that incal- 

 culable suffering is being caused to innocent life, but that we are spending 

 the birth-right of our own and our children's future, which makes this 

 slaughter for millinery purposes rm economic criiiw. 



No. 251. 



BLACK-CROWNED NIGHT HERON. 



.A. O. U. No. 202. Nycticorax nycticorax naevius (llodd. ). 



Synonym.s. — Ot'A-iURi). Ou.vWK. NiGHT Sof.xWK. 



Description. — Adult in breeding phimage: Extreme forehead and line over 

 eye white: entire underparts white, — pure on chin and throat, elsewhere delicately 

 tinged with light ashy gray or lilaccous : cnnvn, nape, and scapular-mantle (in- 



