10 



Bird Notes and News 



Cuckoos, Magpies, etc. The Committee has 

 further been informed that often the best way 

 to preserve and multiply birds is to kill them, 

 the British Grouse and Kook being brought 

 forward as parallel cases to the Bird of Paradise, 

 the Quetzal, or the Impey? i Pheasant! 



If such speakers will bu proceed to the 

 further logic that killing in the breeding-time 

 is the best preservative of all (as so successfully 

 practised with Egrets, Spoonbills, and Ibises in 

 Florida, and Grebes in Oregon), further trouble 

 about "moulted" plumes might be saved. 



Lieut. -Commander Williams, assuming the 

 character of the ingenuous friend, proposed to 

 include live birds within the Bill ; it was surely 

 more cruel to import live Quail than dead 

 plumage, but the Committee were not led away, 

 Mr. Montagu observing that though abominable 

 cruelty of this kind exists, it cannot be dealt 

 with in a Plumage Bill. Brooks's soap will not 

 wash clothes. It is characteristic of the whole 

 opposition that although Commander Williams 

 has occupied perhaps more time than any one on 

 foolish talk, and regularly votes with the trade, 

 a trade journal pretends to regard him as an 

 advocate of the Bill whose suggestions prove 

 the folly of its supporters ! 



There is no need to consider a single one of 

 the propositions made. The plain fact stands 

 out that a Bill cut to suit the trade would be — 

 naturally — wholly useless for its purpose. As 

 in 1914, so in 1920, they " would propose regu- 

 lations that obviously could not be carried out, 

 and dictate terms that would leave them 

 laughing in their sleeves over a dust-blinded 

 public." 



DEBATE ON SECOND READING. 



The Second Reading in the House of Commons 

 of the BiU to Prohibit Importation of Plumage 

 was down for April 30th, but owing to the 

 lengthy discussion of a preceding Bill, it was 

 3.30 p.m. before Colonel Yate could bring 

 forward his motion. In doing so he said that 

 until the Bill of 1914 was debated he had no 

 conception — and probably many other Members 

 had none — of the enormous ramifications of 

 this trade, and the consequent terrible des- 

 truction of bird life in various parts of the 

 world. His attention was first directed to the 

 matter by the reports in Indian newspapers of 

 prosecutions for smuggling of feathers, and it 

 then came vividly to his mind that until the 

 British Government passed such a Bill as this 

 they were conniving at the importation of 

 smuggled goods, and that the feather merchants 



who imported plumage, the export of which 

 was prohibited, were practically nothing more 

 than the receivers of stolen goods. He had 

 before him a list of 258 species of birds, the 

 export of whose plumage had been prohibited 

 in British Colonies, British Dominions, and 

 Crown Colonies. The only opposition to the Bill 

 came from the plumage section of the textile 

 trade in the London Chamber of Commerce. 



Proceeding to deal with the statements made 

 in regard to " farms " for Egrets in Venezuela, 

 Colonel Yate quoted the accounts given of 

 alleged farms in Sind, with the statement that 

 these birds moulted four times a year — a thing 

 no knowTi bird in the world did — and that the 

 moulted feathers, dropped on the floor of the 

 l^ens, surpassed in quality those taken when in 

 prime condition from the wild birds. Probably 

 birds were caught and kept to act as decoys ; 

 but was it credible that birds in reed huts, with 

 nothing but the floor to nest on, would produce 

 four or five broods a year, and that sixty birds, 

 of a species whose nest was nearly two feet 

 square, would breed in a space 30 ft. by 8 ft. ? 

 A suggestion had been made that the birds to 

 be prohibited should be placed on a schedule. 

 How could a schedule contain a list of the 

 innumerable species which should be protected ? 

 Such a thing was absolutely impossible, as the 

 authorities of the Natural History Museum 

 agreed, while it would be equally impossible 

 to call upon the Customs Authorities to 

 examine them. He believed that the Bill 

 would lead to a development of the artificial 

 flower trade and of the ostrich feather and 

 poultry feather industry, thus increasing em- 

 ployment for British labour, and that the 

 intelligent members of the drapery interest 

 welcomed it. 



Lieut. -Colonel Murray, in seconding, said he 

 would have preferred to see the women of this 

 country rise up in a body and affirm their de- 

 termination not to wear skins and feathers of 

 birds that were being ruthlessly destroyed to 

 pander to their vanity. What he had seen, 

 however, that morning at the private view of 

 the Royal Academy proved conclusively the 

 necessity for the Bill, which would put an end, 

 so far at any rate as this country was concerned, 

 to the cruel, uneconomic, and unscientific 

 slaughter of beautiful and beneficent creatures, 

 and to a wasteful and barbaric traffic which 

 throve on the vanity of a type of being whose 

 selfishness nothing but legislation could repress. 

 The Bill took up the story where Sir Charles 

 Hobhouse's Bill left off, and it was for the House 



