BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



61 



explorer, speaks with an authority no one 

 can dispute, of the Birds-of-Paradise of 

 New Guinea. 



With regard to the Birds-of-Paradise, it 

 is instructive to know that the opium traffic 

 goes hand-in-hand with the slaughter of 

 bird-life ; the drug being introduced by the 

 hunters in payment for skins, with the result 

 that many of the unfortunate natives, thus 

 made acquainted with the " blessings " of 

 civilization, are betrayed into the clutches 

 of the opium habit. 



In " The Feather Trade " defence, httle is 

 said of the quantities of bird-skins and A\'ings 

 which come into the market, but very much 

 of the Egrets of Venezuela and their 

 supposititious " moulted plumes." The effect 

 to be conveyed to the reader's mind is that 

 the feather-trade is principally a matter of 

 " ospreys," that practicall}'^ all " ospreys " 

 come from Venezuela, that throughout Vene- 

 zuela, and indeed all over South America, 

 the Egret is protected " by law and custom " ; 

 that the bu'ds dwell in a species of game- 

 preserve known as a "garcero" or in luxurious 

 first-class and second-class " dormitories," 

 guarded by regulations compared with M'hich 

 English County Council Orders are feeble. 

 It needs, perhaps, a traveller who knows 

 something of South America to appreciate 

 fully the humour of such a preposterous 

 description. 



An analysis of facts, disentangled from 

 their settmg, changes the picture very con- 

 siderably, even in the eyes of those who 

 cannot ^\•hoUy reahse the difference between 

 closely-populated, long-cultivated, and Avell- 

 policed httle England, and the vast jungles 

 and swamps of tropical America, where 

 laws are few and means of enforcing them 

 in the " back behind," away from the small 

 towns and settlements, are nil. 



The assertion of the trade that Egrets are 

 protected over trackless miles of South 



America, and that the shooting of Egrets 

 is an indictable offence " in Venezuela " — with 

 the inference that all feathers from thence 

 must therefore be " moulted " plumes — 

 resolves itself into this small nucleus : In 

 one small sub-state or district of Venezuela 

 a decree was issued by the governor last year 

 forbidding the shooting of the birds in 

 consequence of the destruction carried on 

 by plume-hunters. That sub-state consists 

 of a single town, San Fernando de Apure, 

 and of sparsely-inhabited, half-unexplored 

 hinterland. " You may guess something 

 of the character of the country," says Mr. 

 Albert Pam, a member of the Council of the 

 Zoological Society, who knows Venezuela 

 from the experience both of the traveller 

 and the man of business, " when I tell you 

 that a man whom I sent from Caracas to San 

 Fernando w^as twenty-three days on the way, 

 travelling overland." (The distance is about 

 two hundred miles as the crow flies, or the 

 distance between London and Scarborough.) 

 " Who is to enforce laws in a district like 

 that ? This book on ' The Feather Trade ' 

 talks about ' costly Government machinery ' : 

 there is no such thing. The government of 

 the place is not a power with officials and a 

 police force behind it, like, let us say, the 

 Essex County Council. It consists of a 

 governor living in the town, who has no 

 executive to carry out laws in bog and jungle. 

 He will make decrees if he is asked to do so, 

 but if he goes on making decrees till he is 

 black in the face, there will be no one to 

 enforce them in the kmd of land that is 

 worked by the plume-hunter. 



" No doubt am' feathers picked up are 

 made the best of, but they are relegated to 

 the packets of dirty and inferior plumes 

 which fetch a very different price from that 

 given for the better-class ' osprej's ' — those 

 obtained by shooting the birds in the nesting- 

 time. ^Moreover, the feathers are shed singly 



