who never existed. Yet the authors of that fraud are aggrieved when, finding this 

 story will suffice no longer and therefore bringing forward new ones, they discover 

 that their word is doubted. They wish to forget all the falsehoods, all the barbarous 

 cruelties, all the destruction of the past, and to be accepted at their own valuation of 

 their own whitewash. 



Yesterday aad To-day. 



Evil things were done, they acknowledge, yesterday, but all has been changed, 

 and no longer, they avow, do they destroy or exterminate birds : they preserve them. 

 They have said the same thing for 20 years. In 1908 witnesses for the Trade 

 said that the hunters had not exterminated the Egrets of Florida ; that the birds 

 were never numerous in Florida ; that they had " only migrated " because Florida 

 had become too suburban. Every naturalist knows the truth about this. Dr. 

 Herbert K. Job, who knows the State from end to end, wrote : — 



" The traffic has almost exterminated the two plume-bearing species of 

 White Herons in the United States. In Florida years ago these beautiful 

 species were to be seen nearly everywhere. In 1 903 I had hard work to find a 

 few scattered colonies. Mr. F. M. Chapman went there in 1904 and found 

 them practically annihilated. The same is becoming true even in Southern 

 Brazil. No rookery of these Herons can long exist unless it be guarded by 

 force of arms day and night." 



Does the trade assertion of 1908 inspire confidence in trade assertions of 1921 ? 



We are told to-day that nearly all the Egret (" Heron," " Osprey ") feathers 

 come from India, where the birds are " farmed " (and whence the feathers can be 

 exported only by smuggling), or from Venezuela, where the birds are said to be 

 protected rigidly by a law enacted in 1917, and the feathers picked up in privately- 

 owned garceros. Whatever portion of truth may be contained in these statements 

 the reasoning man asks for proofs. If and when these are forthcoming it will be 

 found practicable to place such plumage in the schedule of any Act. But in 1 908 the 

 Trade also stated that the birds were fully protected " by law and custom " in South 

 America, and that the feathers were all moulted feathers. This was utterly disproved 

 by Consular investigations and by naturalists in every part of South America ; and it 

 is certain that no law then existed. It was further stated that high class feathers were 

 obtained from the lining of nests ; and when it was shown that Egrets' nests were 

 not lined, a second trade spokesman said it was another bird which picked up the 

 feathers and used them ! 



Do these statements of 1908 and 1911 inspire confidence in the statements 

 of 1921 with regard to a vast, half-savage, un-policed country, where Egrets build 

 in trackless swamps and where the revenue benefits from the feather business ? 



