Bird Notes and News 



27 



The Plume-Trade. 



At a meeting of the Edinburgh Merchants' 

 Company on March 28 the Committee 

 recommended that the Company should 

 petition against Lord Avebury's Plumage 

 Bill, contending that is would destroy a 

 great industry in " the making of arti- 

 ficial birds," and drive the industry over 

 to France and Germany. Mr. Somerville 

 Grieve, in opposing the motion, said he 

 was appalled that any committee of a great 

 educational institution like the Merchant 

 Company should propose to petition 

 against a BiU which was meant to protect 

 the birds — the poets of the air and pilgrims 

 of the night — ^from slaughter. At that 

 moment there were swarms of birds flying 

 from Africa to their own homeland to help 

 the farmers of this country, but in other 

 lands birds were being done to death by 

 millions for the sake of their plumage, 

 and he hoped that something would be 

 done to stem the shocking sacrifice of 

 bird-Hfe. Mr. John Cowan, in seconding, 

 said that in his boyhood Jamaica was 

 the home of countless humming-birds ; 

 now they were gone — gone to trim 

 women's hats. In 1908 the Company 

 petitioned in favour of the Bill. The 

 recommendation was lost by 27 to 24. 



In the " NaturaHst Notes " in the Pall 

 Mall Gazette (May 18, 1912) Sir Herbert 

 Maxwell writes : — 



" Two conditions seem mainly to interfere 

 with bringing home to the minds of ladies 

 the reahties of the plume trade. First, the 

 scenes of massacre are veiy remote from 

 this country, and hearts that might be pain- 

 fully stirred by the barbarity of a British 

 birdcatcher may remain comparatively 

 indifferent to similar operations on a far 

 larger scale at the Antipodes. Secondly, 

 lady customers are constantly imposed upon 

 by the assurance that the plumes they buy 



are ingenious and innocent imitations, manu- 

 factured out of the feathers of domestic 

 fowls. Plume traders have been set on the 

 alert by recent manifestations of opinion, 

 and are diligently circulating reassuring 

 statements to this effect. Thus in June 

 last year it was a.nnounced in V Agricul- 

 ture Commerciale that ' almost all the 

 plumage of wild birds, such as marabou, 

 birds-of-paradise, and ospreys is imitated 

 with the feathers of farmyard birds,' and 

 this is the sort of warrant under which lady 

 customers now conduct their purchases mth 

 an easy conscience. Needless to say that 

 the only modification which has been wrought 

 recently in this form of commerce is the 

 addition of wholesale lying involved in 

 statements such as I have quoted." 



Sir Herbert Maxwell proceeds to appeal 

 once more to the humane feeh'ngs and the 

 intelhgence of the women of Great Britain ; 

 to cite the example of the States of New 

 York, New Jersey, Louisiana, Ohio, Mis- 

 souri, Massachusetts, Oregon, and Cali- 

 fornia, which have prohibited the sale 

 of " ospreys " altogether : and to regret 

 that the report of the Select Committeee 

 of 1908 on Lord Avebury's Bill has as 

 yet borne no fruit. 



The plume-trade boast at present that 

 since the Royal Society took up the matter 

 the demand for " ospreys " by EngHsh 

 women has been unexampled ; this being 

 the trade way of stating that it has been 

 pushing its wares to the uttermost, with 

 the help of the method cited by Sir Herbert 

 Maxwell. Government mills, it is true, 

 grind very slowly. It is to be hoped that 

 they wiU in the end " grind exceeding 

 smaU." 



A west- end firm which has made itself 

 conspicuous by a constant display of 

 osprey-trimmed headgear in its adver- 

 tisements, recently wrote to a lady in 

 Society to deplore that they had not for 

 some time been favoured with her custom, 



