8 M o n th I y B u I I e t i n 



ENGLAND'S STEP FORWARD 



An act for prohibiting the importation of plumage into Great Britain 

 went into operation on April 1st of this year. Of it a special correspondent 

 to the London "Observer" says: 



From the first stages of the feather-trade, its operations were com- 

 bated by men of science and humanity. Morris and Newton were among 

 the first in England, W. E. D. Scott, Sennett, and Dutcher in the United 

 States. Then came the formation of the Audubon Societies of America, 

 the Society for the Protection of Birds in England, both with the same 

 starting-point of opposition to the killing of birds for millinery. The 

 discontinuance of "osprey" plumes in the Army, at the instance of Lord 

 Wolseley, came in 1889, the investigation and Ordinance in British India 

 in 1902, the support of Queen Alexandra to the crusade in 1906. The first 

 Plumage Bill in the English Parliament was that drafted by Mr. Montagu 

 Sharpe ( now Sir Montagu Sharpe, K. C. ) , Chairman of the Royal Society 

 for the Protection of Birds, and introduced by Lord Avebury in 1908, 

 followed by the appointment of a Select Committee. It was passed by 

 the Lords, too late for its consideration in the Commons, where it was 

 introduced by Lord Robert Cecil. During the next five or six years Bills 

 were brought in by Sir William Anson, Mr. Ramsay Macdonald, Mr. Percy 

 Alden, and Colonel Page-Croft. 



When the Government, through Mr. Hobhouse, brought in a measure 

 in 1914 the ultimate end was in view, but the trade and the Germans 

 together succeeded in delaying matters for yet another seven years; and 

 it is thanks to private members and private societies that the Act is at last 

 on the Statute-book, though it has had the support of the Board of Trade. 



The Act of 1921 is not so stringent and simple as the Bill of 1908, 

 for it places no embargo on the sale of plumage, thereby laying a heavy 

 task on the Customs ofiicers. Moreover, it is hampered by a clause, known 

 as the "agreed" clause, which gives permission to the trade (or other 

 persons) to appeal to an Advisory Committee set up by the Board of 

 Trade, for the addition of birds whose plumage may be imported. The 

 committee includes three feather-trade experts, two scientific experts, and 

 four other persons, who may or may not, at the option of the Board, be 

 bird protectors. There is no doubt that the trade, which, on its own 

 statements, let the Bill through because of this clause and crowed very 

 considerably over what il deemed its victory, expected to turn the Act 

 upside down by its means. The Schedule to the Bill named only two 

 birds as exceptions to the rule — the African ostrich and the eider-duck. 

 In more or less private conclaves with scientific bodies and persons, rep- 

 resentatives of the trade made various propositions for altering this. They 

 proposed, for instance, to place all the birds they want on the schedule, 

 make the Bill a permissive instead of a repressive one, and leave it to a 

 Committee to remove those which it was necessary, or "agreed," to protect. 

 They also presented a long list of birds "essential to the plumage trade," 

 which they suggested might be placed on the schedule, with the naive 

 premiss that as these had been regularly imported in large quantities they 

 could not be rare, and therefore need not be protected. 



It 'has yet to be seen what additions (if any) to the schedule will 

 be made by the Board of Trade on the recommendation of the Advisory 

 Committee when the Act comes into force. But the trade have already 



