Bird Notes & News 



ISSUED QUARTERLY BY THE ROYAL SOCIETY 

 :: FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS :: 



Vol V. ] 



DECEMBER, 1912. 



[No. 4. 



The Plume Question in a Nut-shell. 



1. Hundreds of thousands of Wild 

 Birds, constituting the most beautiful of 

 created beings, are destroyed wantonl}' 

 every year to supply an article of trade 

 which contributes nothing whatever to 

 benefit human Hfe, health, comfort, or 

 happiness. There is no question as to 

 the extent of the destruction. It is 

 knowTi to naturalists throughout the world 

 and denounced by them as appalling and 

 iniquitous. It is witnessed to in the 

 records of ever}^ independent investigator, 

 in the huddled remains bartered at the 

 London Plume Sales, in the masses of 

 feathers to be seen in shops. 



2. The destruction is accompanied by 

 cruelty which has made the trade a 

 by-word in civihzed countries. In 

 England, fifty years ago, the barbarities 

 perpetrated on sea-birds when their 

 wings were wrenched off to supply the 

 market, led an eminent man of science to 

 declare that women wearing wings in 

 their hats wore the murderer's brand on 

 their foreheads ; and the Sea-birds 

 Preservation Act was passed to put a 

 stop to the business. To-day hundreds 

 of thousands of Terns and Gulls are 

 slaughtered for the same purpose in 

 coimtries and islands where there is no 

 control over the deeds of the hunters. 



3. The fate of the White Egret is a 

 sample case because the " osprey " plume 

 does not exist at any other time than the 

 breeding season, and the birds have been 

 brought to the verge of extermination in 



breeding-grounds where they once existed 

 in miUions. But all plumage is most 

 brilliant at the nesting time ; it is then 

 that the hunters seek out the birds and 

 ravage nesting colonies. 



4. The birds killed are not only a 

 heritage of beauty, but are of inestimable 

 importance to man by destroying pests 

 which attack crops of every kind and 

 pests which, hke the tsetse fly, carry the 

 germs of disease and death. 



5. The firms involved respond with 

 varjdng assertions as to " artificial " 

 feathers, and " moulted " feathers, and 

 " made-up " feathers, assertions which 

 have again and again been proved untrue. 

 If the use of poultry-wings and game- 

 tails, and hog's-bristle ospreys suffices, 

 importation of wild birds' plumage is 

 unnecessary. But there is no cessation 

 in the destruction of wild birds wherever 

 they can be got at ; no cessation in the 

 importation of their plumage ; no cessa- 

 tion in the desperate opposition offered 

 by the dealers to prohibition of im- 

 portation. 



6. The trade which, in addition to 

 butchering the birds, is threatening the 

 food-crops and the lives of men, is 

 controlled by a few firms mostly foreign 

 in origin. It is profitable because the 

 material is obtained without any price 

 except the price of slaughter and oi 

 freightage, and because less is paid in 

 wages than for other species of decoration. 

 It necessarily employs a minimum of 



