216 BEAUTIFUL BIRDS 
Well, these poor White Egrets—these masterpieces 
that are always being destroyed—are birds that live, 
mostly, in America—in Mexico, and California, and 
Florida, and, I think, all over South and Central 
America. They live in the swamps and lagunes 
—as they are called—of the great forests, where 
trees grow all about in the water—such dark, 
gloomy, wonderful places—and the servants of the 
little demon, whose business it is to kill them, 
have to follow them to those places, and live there, 
too. Of course it is very unhealthy for them, and 
they often die there ; but the women with the frozen 
hearts do not mind that, any more than they mind | 
the Egrets being shot. They want the feathers, and 
when they pay for the feathers they pay for the lives 
as well—for they are honest, although their hearts 
have been frozen. 
Perhaps you will wonder how men can live at all, 
in such places as those. Of course, as it is all water, 
they have to live in boats or canoes, and as soon as 
they have found out a pool or creek, where the White 
Egrets come to catch fish, or some trees where they 
have built their nests, they cover their boats over 
with reeds or rushes or ferns or the branches of trees, 
so that, even though you were to come quite close to 
them, you would not think they were boats at all, 
but only part of the forest. That is what the poor 
