LEVY, THE STORY OF AK EGRET 159 



ing, lay with its head and neck hanging out of a nest. 

 On higher ground the embers of a fire, and the scattered 

 straw where a horse had been fed, gave evidence of the 

 plume hunter 's recent camp. 



The plume feathers of each bird killed were worth at 

 that time ninety cents in Jacksonville. From there they 

 were shipped to certain great millinery houses in New 

 York, where in due time they were placed on the market 

 and sold as ^ ^ aigrettes ' ' for decorations on ladies ' bonnets. 



Egrets are shy and difficult to approach at all times, 

 save when in the neighborhood of their nests. Here the 

 poor birds are loath to leave their young, and return again 

 and again within range of the concealed hunter's gun. It 

 is during the season of rearing their young that the plumes 

 are at their finest,— another reason why the hunters seek 

 to kill the birds in their breeding places. 



Possibly all twelve of the egrets which lived here were 

 slain. It may be that some of them escaped and fled to 

 wilder recesses of the swamps. At any rate no more were 

 found about the heronry in the woods that year. The bird 

 which haunted the lake shore and the ones seen in the 

 marshes did not come again to feed in their old wading 

 places. 



The nexx spring I visited the nesting site of the egrets 

 but found only the old nests fast falling to decay. Rarely 



