Bird Notes and News 



21 



Prizes of the value of One Guinea will be 

 offered annually by a Member of the Council 

 of the R.S.P.B., for the best Essay or 

 Essays on " The British Owls : the necessity 

 for their better Protection, and the means 

 to be adopted for the Preservation of rare 

 and useful Birds of Prey." Special reference 

 should be made to the economic value of 

 Owls, and notes on Kestrel, Kite, Buzzards, 

 and other Raptors may be added at the 

 option of Competitors. 



Silver and Bronze Medals. — " Our Summer 

 Migrants, including Observations on the Food 

 and Song of twelve selected species, and 

 a comparison with members of the same or 

 allied Families which remain in Great Britain 

 throughout the year." 



Full particulars can be had from the 

 R.S.P.B., 23, Queen Anne's Gate, S.W. 



The Silver Medal Essay, 1913, will be 

 published in the Summer number of 

 B. N. <& N. 



PLUMAGE BILL FUND. 



The expenses of printing, postages 

 etc., in connexion with the Plumage 

 Bill campaign being exceedingly heavy, 

 a special fund has been opened to help 

 in meeting them. It is headed by the 

 Hon. Mrs. Drewitt, Mrs. Yorke Smith, 

 Captain Tailby, and the Rev. A. L. 

 Hussey, and further donations will be 

 gladly received. Cheques should be made 

 out to the Royal Society for the Protec- 

 tion of Birds. It may be mentioned 

 that some 20,000 of the Plumage Cards 

 and over 50,000 of the Campaign Leaf- 

 lets have been individually addressed by 

 post, in addition to the hundreds of 

 personal letters sent to influential and 

 interested persons. 



Notes. 



Where a cause is essentially bad, its 

 supporters and defenders are seldom logical 

 or consistent. One will try to prove that 

 black is white while another dwells upon 

 the inherent superiority of blackness. The 

 plume-merchants have taken as their primary 

 bed-rock argument the assurance that if 

 England deports the feather-trade it will 

 merely betake itself to France, that is waiting 

 eagerly to annex so profitable a business. 

 It was surely then bad tactics that a letter 

 from the French " Chambre Syndicale des 

 Fabricants de Plumes " should reach e very- 

 Member of the House of Commons on the 

 morning of the Second Reading of the Bill, 

 appealing for consideration for the trade 

 qua trade, and offering to send over a 

 deputation from Paris. The president of 

 the Syndicate, in the course of an interview 

 published in Le Journal, March 14th, gives 

 further and convincing proof of the truth 

 of the view held by the R.S.P.B. that it 



is and always has been the profits of the 

 trade, and not a patriotic devotion to 

 British interests, which the plume-dealers 



are anxious about. 



* * * 



It is true that the trade now place " the 



workers " in the place once occupied by 

 British interests. It is the " thousands and 

 thousands " of men, women, and children, 

 whose bread is going to be taken out of their 

 mouths, who are mustered in the foreground. 

 "It is heart-breaking," says the president 

 of the Syndicate, "and it is true. If 

 England follows the example of America, 

 what will be their misery ! For us, it is 



a cataclysm." 



* * * 



This obviously knocks the bottom out 

 of the one argument, repeated by every 

 speaker opposing the Bill, that the English 

 trade wiH merely go to France "without 

 saving a single bird." If the feather- 

 dressers are going to lose all their work 



