I 'jQ Cincinnati Society of Natural History. 



the week ending July 26, 1884, over $300 worth of birds. The 

 same man sent, during the season of four months, not far from 

 seventy thousand birds. 



Charles Dudley Warner, in a. note to the Forest and Stream, 

 writes : 



"Your note about the Audubon Society followed me to 

 Mexico and here. After this long delay, if it is of any service to 

 you, I should be glad to be quoted as in entire sympathy with 

 its object. A dead bird does not help the appearance of an ugly 

 woman, and a pretty woman needs no such adornment. If you 

 can get the woman to recognize these two things, a great deal will 

 be done for the protection of our song-birds." 



A writer in the Evening Post, of April 7, says: " My visit to 

 the National Academy was spoiled yesterday. Not by viewing 

 bad pictures, either. It was by a young lady's hat. There was 

 nothing in her face to denote excessive cruelty. Indeed, she was 

 very pretty, and the attention she paid to the best pictures seemed 

 to indicate that her artistic taste was not uncultivated. But her 

 hat ! The front rim of this was decorated with the heads of over 

 twenty little birds. I counted them at a risk of seeming to stare 

 rudely. These heads were simply sewed on side by side as closely 

 as possible." 



Celia Thaxter writes to the Boston Transcript : " But women 

 do not know what they are doing when they buy and wear birds 

 and feathers, or they would never do it. How should people 

 brought up in cities know anything of the sacred lives of birds? 

 What woman whose head is bristling with their feathers knows, for 

 instance, the hymn of the song sparrows, the sweet jargon of the 

 black-birds, the fairy fluting of the oriole, the lonely, lovely wooing 

 call of the sandpiper, the cheerful challenge of the chickadee, the 

 wild, clear whisde of the curlew, the twittering of the swallows as 

 they go careering in wide curves through the summer air, filling 

 earth and heaven with tones of pure gladness, each bird a marvel 

 of grace, beauty and joy ? God gave us these excpiisite creatures 

 for delight and solace, and we suffer them to be slain by thousands 

 for our ' adornment.' When I take note of the headgear of my 

 sex a kind of despair overwhelms me. I go mourning at heart in 

 an endless funeral procession of slaughtered birds, many of whom 

 are like dear friends to me. From infancy I have lived among 

 them, have watched them with the most profound reverence and love, 

 respected their rights, adored their beauty and song, and I could 



