144 
WILD WINGS 
shoot, any person found upon the property with a gun. And 
where is it ? May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, 
if I reveal the Egrets’ secret. 
I his whole business of the slaughter of the white herons — 
to say nothing of other birds — for their plumes for millinery 
])urposes is one that every lover of nature and everv person 
of humane feeling who understands the case will regard as 
no less than infamous. This is one of the moral questions — 
to be classed with the opium traffic and the slave trade — to 
which there is but one side. The origin of this trade is ignor¬ 
ance on the one hand and greed for money on the other, and 
there is not one true word which can be said in its defence. 
It should be understood at the outset that these plumes — 
which are variously called by milliners “aigrettes,” “stubs,” 
or “ ospreys,” and are dyed to whatex'er color is fashionable 
— are borne by herons, and only during the nuptial season, 
and can be secured only by shooting the birds when thev 
have assembled in colonies to breed, when their usual shyness 
has departed, owing to the strength of the parental instinct. 
Returning to their nests, they are shot down and their young 
are left to starve. 
Let it be nailed as a trade lie that these plumes are 
secured in any other way. I do not think that it can be said 
that I do not make use of my eyes ; yet in all my explorations 
of these rookeries I have found but ONE solitary “ aigrette ” 
feather, badly worn at that. It is inconceivable, impossible, 
that any one could find them in paying quantities, scattered 
about in these morasses and jungles. NEITHER ARE THEV 
MANUEACTURED. This lie has also been “ nailed,” as when 
recently a leading firm in England, — for whom the claim 
had been made, — though challenged to show one single 
manufactured plume, was unable to do so. Manufactured 
aigrettes and hens’ teeth belong to the same class. 
