Papers on the Destruction of Native Birds. 197 



In 1885 Mr. Klepper, in talking to the shippers of Cuban 

 parrots, asked them what causd them to be so late in getting into 

 port with their birds, and why the prices had gone from twenty- 

 one dollars to thirty-three dollars per dozen. They informed 

 him that the cause of delay and the higher price was due 

 to exterminiation of the birds in their old haunts, and that they 

 were obliged to go many miles into the interior to find any, and in 

 speaking of the destruction of the mocking birds in the South he 

 said: "When at New Orleans last season I went out to a suburb 

 where I used to go to see and listen to the mocking bird. To 

 my dismay when I got there I did not see a bird. On inquiring 

 I was informed that the bird catchers had cleaned them out in that 

 locality." Mr. Klepper also said of the cardinal grosbeak: "For- 

 merly I used to receive these birds in large lots of from fifty to one 

 hundred, but now I never see over two or three in a lot, so few, in 

 fact, it does not pay to ship them. In the case of the nonpareils 

 above mentioned, nearly all were -males caught with a call bird 

 when the birds were full of song and fight, just previous to the 

 breeding season. I^oes any reasonable person pretend to say that 

 ro,ooo male nonpareils handled at such a time by one person, (to 

 say nothing of the thousands handled by other dealers), would 

 make no appreciable difference in the numbers of this bird? Mr. 

 ' Alex Starbuck, of this city, was in Los Angeles, Cal., last winter, 

 and while there he visited a taxdermist, Mr. Whately, who showed 

 him an order he was trying to fill for a lady, (one of the angels of 

 the place I presume.) This order was for enough small owl heads 

 to trim a dress, with a row up each side and a row around the bot- 

 tom. It took over sixty to do the job, Whately had got stuck, as 

 the supply of owls in that locality had given out. 



I presume when Flora McFlimsey saw this unique dress she 

 would mentally resolve, if there were owls enough left, she would 

 beat that dress or bankrupt herself. I have had orders for owl's 

 heads to be worn on bonnets. I sold a lady an owl's head for her 

 bonnet, she paid me the price of the entire bird for its head and I 

 had the body left to sell to somebody else. When fashion gets 

 after the poor owls may the Lord help them. 



Mr. Starbuck speaks of the great scarcity of small birds through 

 the South (in localities visited by him) as compared with former 

 years, he says since guns have become so cheap and easy to 

 obtain, the birds have rapidly lessened in numbers, and the Super- 

 intendent of the Sportsman's Shot works of this city informed him 



