114 



Bird Notes and News 



The Traffic in Birds' Plumage. 



OPINION ON THE CONTINENT. 



Numerous letters received during the 

 last three months of 1913 from foreign 

 correspondents, and from articles which 

 have appeared in Continental news- 

 papers, are strong evidence of the 

 feeling which is quickly growing in 

 civihzed lands with regard to the traffic 

 in birds' skins and feathers. 



GERMANY. 



Professor C. G. SchiUings, the dis- 

 tinguished naturahst, author of " With 

 Flashlight and Rifle " and " In Darkest 

 Africa," says : 



" The United States has found the only 

 satisfactory solution of this question. Only 

 direct prohibition will reach the core of 

 the matter ; all other measures would be 

 an ineffective compromise. . . . We German 

 friends of nature and of the birds, convinced 

 too of the great economic importance of 

 the latter, only wait anxiously that Eng- 

 land, too, may get its Feather Importation 

 law. We certainly will follow. If Australia, 

 North America, England, and Germany 

 close the market, the trade vidll die out. 

 The movement is quite a young one in 

 Germany. England has had it for years 

 and years ; so you understand we cannot 

 lead. You cannot expect this. Please publish 

 that Germany follows. England ! Then 

 comes Germany ! My new little book deal- 

 ing strongly with the question is coming 

 out in a few weeks." 



Professor Schillings is not without 

 high authority in thus speaking. 



From the German Bund fiir Vogel- 

 schutz, Baroness Rotberg writes : — 



" We are much in favour of your Bill ; 

 it is more than probable that if it pass 

 we shall secure prohibition in Germany. 

 We are not going to make any concession 

 to the trade, thinking it better to have no 

 law at all than an insufficient one allowing 



the sale of many kinds of plumage to pro- 

 ceed as before. . . . Prohibition in England 

 will most assuredly not spread the trade to 

 the Continent. The fashion is sure to 

 change, because France simply cannot do 

 without the American and Enghsh markets." 



At the annual meeting of the Society 

 for Medical and Scientific Research (Ver- 

 sammlung Deutscher Aerzte und Natur- 

 forscher), the most important scientific 

 society of Germany, a resolution was 

 passed asking the government to bring 

 in a bill prohibiting the importation of 

 feathers of wild birds. 



More significant still, perhaps, is the 

 voice of the German trade papers. The 

 Kolnische Zeitung (Nov. 5) says : 



" We surmise that the fashion for aigrettes 

 has reached its end. Paris cannot hold 

 its own unaided by the American and 

 English markets. A change in the fashion 

 is therefore imminent. France has already 

 a new hat ready for the window, trimmed 

 with flowers or ostrich feathers only. The 

 wholesale hat and feather trade in Germany 

 is doing its level best to continue the fashion 

 for the Egret and is paying large sums 

 for these plumes. But if Paris decrees 

 their abolition, the feathers are bound to 

 go down in value, and a catastrophe is 

 inevitable." 



German Fashion (Oct. 26) says : 



" Thanks to the prohibition of import into 

 America and the coming Plumage Bill 

 in England, the end is at hand of the use 

 of the Egret in fashionable millinery. The 

 trade has taken notice of the change in a 

 remarkably rapid way. Prices for Egrets 

 and Birds-of-paradise, which a few weeks 

 ago were extraordinarily high, have sunk 

 as much as 25 per cent." 



Attention is also drawn by the German 

 papers to the fact that ostrich feathers are 

 not debarred by either the American law or 



