14 



Bird Notes and News 



a member of the first Council in 1901 and a Vice- 

 President in 1912. Passionately opposed to 

 the traffic in birds' plumage, he wrote an 

 effective poem on the subject, " My Feathered 

 Lady," and spoke vigorously in support of the 

 present Plumage Bill at the Society's Annual 

 Meeting in March last. He was also particu- 

 larly sympathetic with the Bird and Tree 



Movement, and presented the beautiful Cum- 

 berland Challenge Shield, which was designed 

 by Mrs. Rawnsley. Canon Rawnsley, who was 

 born in 1851, died on May 28th. 



Miss Broughton became a Member of the 

 Society in 1895, and continued her interest in 

 its work throughout the 25 years between that 

 time and her death in June, 1920. 



Notes. 



In reply to the Duke of Rutland, in the 

 House of Lords on April 28th, the Earl of 

 Onslow stated that the Government accepted 

 in general the proposals made by the Home 

 Office Committee on the Wild Birds Protection 

 Acts, and though unable to promise a Bill this 

 Session, hoped to set up a central ornithological 

 advisory committee as recommended in the 

 Report. The matter, it will be remembered, 

 was mentioned at the Annual Meeting of the 

 R.S.P.B., and it is to be hoped that the central 

 body, on whom further progress hangs, will 

 shortly be an established fact. 



The reader imagines this to imply that large 

 supplies of " osprey " feathers come from 

 " domesticated " birds in Sind or elsewhere. 

 Not at all. The adroit use of " obtainable " 

 and " available " reduces it to a mere expression 

 of trade opinion that the thing might be done. 

 As a matter of fact, Mr. Bridgeman, speaking 

 for the Board of Trade in the House of Commons 

 on June 7th, said that no Egret plumage was 

 among the .£100 worth of feathers imported 

 from India in 1919. If any did come in it was, 

 of course, smuggled. 



The plumage-trade " demonstration " of 

 workers against the Plumage Bill was something 

 of a fiasco. In spite of the obvious ease with 

 which firms can bid their emq)loyes trot round 

 the town to the music of a band, even the trade 

 journals have to acknowledge that the pro- 

 cession " was hardly such as to inspire the un- 

 prejudiced beholder with the sense that if the 

 Bill passes it will inflict irremediable hardship 

 upon the workers." The many thousands of 

 whom so much is heard were, in fact, repre- 

 sented mainly by young girls, " some of them 

 the veriest children, who," continues TAe Draper, 

 " it would be absurd to suggest could not find 

 employment elsewhere." 



Among the many dubious and misleading 

 statements in the memorandum " prepared 

 by the plumage committee of the textile section 

 of the London Chamber of Commerce " (a 

 memorandum replied to, at the request of the 

 R.S.P.B. in an analysis drawn up by Mr. 

 W. P. Pycraft, F.Z.S.) appears the following 

 characteristic paragraph : 



" Lesser White Egret. The largest supply of these 

 beautiful short curved plumes is obtainable from India, 

 which in 1902 passed laws prohibiting exports of all 

 kinds of feathers other than those of domesticated 

 birds. . . . Supplies now available are even of greater 

 value than those obtainable from Venezuela." 



Still more recently, however, the trade's 

 apologists have sidled away from India, as 

 being uncomfortably open to inspection and 

 inquiry, and returned to their old love, Vene- 

 zuela. Their latest leaflet is issued without 

 name and address for reasons best known to 

 its author, but easily conjectured. It gives a 

 truly humorous account of gentle peons guiding 

 their boats softly along the rivers " so as not to 

 alarm the birds," while they gather the snowfall 

 of dirty and worn old feathers which have 

 dropped from the moulting Egrets. It would 

 be hard to picture anything more ludicrously 

 unlike the business methods of plumage- 

 hunters in a half-savage land, where only 

 " live " feathers from breeding birds are in such 

 a condition as to yield profitable returns either 

 to trade or to Government revenue. The 

 genius who composed it certainly did so with 

 his tongue in his cheek. " The promoters of 

 the agitation," he glibly observes, 



" do not tell the public that for twenty years now 

 Venezuelan law has prohibited the hunting of these 

 birds with firearms or their maltreatment in any shape 

 or form, and that heavy punishment, now rigidly 

 enforced, awaits the offender." 



No, the promoters of the Bill leave the 

 composition of such nonsense to other hands. 

 The law was not even placed on paper until 



