82 



Bird Notes and News 



hosts of Uganda and elsewhere ; the Pre- 

 sident of the French Congo foresees the 

 reign of the insect over the whole Dark 

 Continent. 



Coming next to the actual hunters and 

 natives, fiu-ther fruits of the trade are 

 met with. The white hunter has to face 

 the miasma of the swamp, the danger 

 from hostile natives, the bites and stings 

 of poisonous creatures. There is no need 

 to quote ghastly instances of such things. 

 The natives employed are commonly men 

 of the lowest caste or class, and Mr. 

 Walter Goodfellow has recounted how the 

 plume-merchant's representati-ves have 

 paid them in drink and opium and disease. 



Nearer home the result or profit to man 

 is the most striking, the most deadly of 

 all. It is a blight of another kind than 

 that of the worm or the locust. Smug- 

 ghng is one expression of it; smuggUng 

 of contraband plumage as " cowhair " 

 or " sHppers " or " curios," or what 

 you will. The amazing device of the 

 " artificial osprey " is another phase. 

 During twenty years this stratagem was 

 employed to dispose of Egret plumes to 

 women who did not wish to wear them. 

 It was blazoned abroad in face of repeated 

 exposure from scientific men ; and hun- 

 dreds of young women in stores and shops 

 were bidden to utter the falsehood and 

 keep up the fraud. All manner of 

 materials were deHberately cited as com- 

 posing these indubitable feathers ; they 

 were flatly affirmed to be made in factories 

 that were never located, by workers who 

 never existed. The deception was such 

 as to discredit fatally any honest imita- 

 tion which might be put on the market. 



A further illustration of the same phase 

 is furnished by the story of imaginary 

 egret " farms," where birds were said to 

 be bred for plumage ; of " moulted 

 plumes " which whitened imaginary plains 

 and were avowed to supply the sale-room ; 



of imaginary egret nests woven with 

 feathers which the hunters were able to 

 extract for the market. Throughout the 

 Kterature of the trade-defence, statements 

 of this nature abound. Its readers are 

 informed that there were never many 

 Egrets in Florida (where one heronry 

 alone was estimated to contain three 

 miUion birds) ; that birds are killed for 

 food and their plumage merely utihzed 

 as a bye-product (birds such as Terns 

 and Kingfishers and Parrots, and the 

 Herons whose bodies have been found in 

 festering heaps !) ; that the trade does not 

 want rare birds : when Trogons, dis- 

 guised as " trojans," Rhea disguised as 

 " vulture," Rollers disguised as " jays," 

 Quetzals and Lyre-birds, and Birds-of- 

 paradise of the most hmited range are 

 included in its spoils ; that Humming- 

 birds are " not wanted " : when 40,000 

 were sold at the London auctions in 1911 ; 

 that the Egrets of " South America " are 

 protected, when no such thing as pro- 

 tection does or can exist in the vast 

 countries of that continent (even if a 

 landowner here and there tries to stop 

 the kiUing by roaming plume-hunters of 

 birds on his land) ; that the trade was 

 " not responsible " for the slaughter for 

 millinery purposes of three hundred 

 thousand Albatrosses, GuUs, and Terns 

 on Laysan Island in 1909 ; that it is 

 civiHzation, rubber, growth of cities, any- 

 thing but the desire of commercial gain, 

 which brings birds' feathers into the 

 sale-room ; that the most superb plumes 

 can be imitated in poultry-feathers, and 

 that infinitely more material is obtained 

 from the poulterer than from foreign 

 lands : and yet, that to stop the import 

 of foreign birds' plumage, mil throw 

 thousands of persons out of work. 

 Finally comes the claim that a trade 

 which has dealt in destruction all 

 its days — content to think that when 



