16 OUR BIRD ALLIES. 
offenders, may come to repent of their deed, years 
must pass before its consequences can be considered 
as finally at an end. 
It may be urged that this terrible and baleful waste 
of life is, after all, due more to thoughtlessness than 
to set design, that women originate and follow the 
fashion in question without considering all that it in- 
volves, and that, therefore, they are less to blame than 
would at first sight appear. Perhaps. But thought- 
lessness carried beyond a certain point becomes a 
sin; and when it involves, not only a destruction of 
living and beneficial beings frightful in its almost 
illimitable extent, but also an irreparable and con- 
stantly-increasing injury to the entire world, no words 
can be too strong, no condemnation too severe, with 
which to judge and visit it. 
Let it be remembered that this world of ours is 
but an entailed inheritance, and that we are morally 
bound to hand it to our successors in a condition 
better, if possible, than that in which we found it. 
Can we do so if we upset all Nature’s laws? Can 
we exterminate a large and highly-influential class of 
beings without entirely altering the natural balance? 
Can we justify our conduct in depriving both our- 
selves and those who will follow us of the most 
useful ailies which could possibly have been provided 
for us? And can we afford, for a purpose so alto- 
gether trivial as personal adornment, to incur the 
annual expenditure of it may be millions of pounds, 
in performing work which would otherwise {have 
been taken off our hands? 
