370 CITIZEN BIRD 



sometimes stray through the Middle and Northern States. 

 But in the Southern States, and Florida in particular, 

 they used to live in vast colonies. Now they are being 

 surely and quickly put out of the world by the cruelty 

 and thoughtlessness of House People — the particular 

 kind of House People who wear women's hats and 

 bonnets. 



" Once these Egrets covered the southern lowlands 

 like drifting snow — for they are beautifully white. 

 In the nesting season, when many birds are allowed 

 some special attraction in the way of plumage, bunches 

 of long, slender, graceful plumes grow on their backs 

 between the shoulders and curl up over the tail. 



" In an evil moment some woman, imitating the sav- 

 ages, used a bunch of these feathers to make a tuft upon 

 her headgear. From that day the spotless bird was 

 doomed to martyrdom. Egrets, as the plumes are called 

 like the birds themselves, became a fashionable trim- 

 ming for bonnets and have continued so to this day, in 

 spite of law and argument ; for many women seem to 

 be savages still, notwithstanding their fine clothes and 

 other signs of civilization. 



" These Herons only wear their beautiful plumes in 

 the nesting season, when it is the height of cruelty to 

 kill birds of any kind, and this is what happens: When 

 the nests, which are built of sticks in bushes and trees 

 above the lagoons, are filled with young, as yet too fee- 

 ble to take care of themselves, and the beautiful parents 

 are busy flying to and fro, attending to the wants of 

 their helpless nestlings, the plume-hunters glide among 

 them noiselessly, threading the watercourses in an 

 Indian dug-out or canoe, and when once within the 



