The Audubon Societies 



173 



stand with outstretched hands beckoning 

 to the inhabitants of the southern swamps 

 to send on the snowy product, and the 

 man with the gun, catching the glint of 

 gold in the eager fingers of the northern 

 merchant, starts for the haunts of the 

 Egret with renewed eagerness. Few of the 

 states which the birds inhabit today have 

 adequate warden forces and so the plume 

 hunter goes unrestrained. Then, too, the 

 milliners are busy in other directions. 

 Recently they have been distributing with 

 great energy cunningly worded articles to 

 the effect that aigrettes are not taken 

 from shot birds but are picked up on the 

 ground in Venezuela beneath the Herons' 

 nests. In support of this, they bring for- 

 ward a statement purported to have been 

 written by "Mayeul Grisol, Naturalist 

 and Explorer of the Honorary Mission of 

 the Museum of Natural History in Paris," 

 in which the author verifies this story. 

 So incredible does this seem "to many 

 American naturalists that Prof. Henry 

 Fairfield Osborne, President of the Amer- 

 ican Museum of Natural History, New 

 York City, sent the following cablegram 

 on April 20, 191 1, to the Museum of Nat- 

 ural History, in Paris: "Is Mayeul Grisol 

 of scientific standing? Has he been an 

 accredited explorer for your museum to 

 South America?" The answer was re- 

 ceived two days later: "Mayeul Grisol 

 inconnu." (Mayeul Grisol unknown.) 



Reference to the European catalogues 

 of scientific men show that there is a man 

 by this name who is an entomologist, but 

 who apparently has never done any work 

 in ornithology and, therefore, can hardly 

 be considered authority on birds and their 

 habits. 



In New York City there is today a man 

 named A. H. Meyer, who for nine years 

 was a collector of Heron plumes and alli- 

 gator skins in Venezuela. 



Here is a quotation from a sworn affi- 

 davit given the writer of this article, April 

 19, 1911. 



Meyer's Affidavit. "I wish to state 

 that I have personally engaged in the 

 work of collecting the plumes of these 



birds in Venezuela. This was my business 

 for the years 1896 to 1905, inclusive. I am 

 thoroughly conversant with the methods 

 employed in gathering Egret and SnoWy 

 Heron plumes in Venezuela, and I wish to 

 give the following statement regarding the 

 practices employed in procuring these 

 feathers: It is the custom in Venezuela to 

 shoot the birds while the young are in the 

 nests. A few feathers of the Large White 

 Heron (American Egret), known as the 

 garza blanca, can be picked up of a morn- 

 ing about their breeding -places (gar- 

 zeros), hut these are of small value and are 

 known as 'dead feathers.' They are worth 

 locally not over three dollars an ounce, 

 while the feathers taken from the bird, 

 known as live feathers, are worth fifteen 

 dollars an ounce. 



"My work led me into every part of 

 Venezuela and Colombia where these birds 

 are to be found, and I have never yet 

 found or heard tell of any garzeros that 

 were guarded for the purpose of simp y 

 gathering the feathers from the ground. 

 No such a condition exists in Venezuela, 

 The story is absolutely without foundation 

 in my opinion, and has simply been put 

 forward for commercial purposes. The 

 natives of the country, who do virtually 

 all of the hunting for feathers, are not 

 provident in their nature, and their prac- 

 tices are of a most cruel and brutal nature. 

 I have seen them frequently pull the 

 plumes from wounded birds, leaving the 

 crippled birds to die of starvation, unable 

 to respond to the cries of their young in 

 the nests above, which were calling for 

 food. I have known these people to tie 

 and prop up wounded egrets on the marsh 

 where they would attract the attention of 

 other birds flying by. These decoys they 

 keep in this position until they die of their 

 wounds or from the attacks of insects. I 

 have seen the terrible red ants of that 

 country actually eating out the eyes of 

 these wounded, helpless birds that were 

 tied up by the plume hunters. I could 

 write you many pages of the horrors prac- 

 ticed in gathering aigrette feathers in 

 Venezuela by the natives for the millinery 

 trade of Paris and New York. 



