THE CONSERVATION OF BIRDS. 259 



prime factor in decrease in birds is shown by the recent rec- 

 ommendation of a committee of the British Association for 

 the Advancement of Science that particular pains should be 

 taken to instruct the youth concerning the birds that should 

 be protected. 



Enormous numbers of birds are sacrificed annually for 

 millinery purposes. There is an opinion prevalent that the 

 birds worn on women's hats in America are largely derived 

 from the faunas of tropical regions. Some justification of this 

 is found in the impossible colors of all sorts assumed by the 

 plainest songsters when they have passed through the dye-pot 

 of the preparator. But there can be no question that an 

 immense quantity of bird life is annually destroyed in the 

 United States to gratify the caprice of fashion, the birds thus 

 killed being very largely used within our own borders, while 

 many are exported to Paris and other European cities. The 

 evidence on this point is abundantly sufficient ; some of it may 

 properly be introduced here, as the subject is one which is 

 greatly in need of more general knowledge on the part of the 

 public. 



An editorial article in the Forest and Stream a few years ago 

 mentions a dealer who, during a three months 1 trip to the 

 coast of South Carolina, prepared no less than eleven thousand 

 and eighteen bird-skins. A considerable number of the birds 

 killed were, of course, too much mutilated for preparation, so 

 that the total number of slain would be much greater than 

 the number given. The person referred to states that he 

 handles on an average thirty thousand bird-skins a year, of 

 which the greater part are cut up for millinery purposes. 

 About the same time, according to a writer in the Baltimore 

 Sun, a New York milliner visited Cobb's Island, off the coast 

 of Virginia, to get material to fill a foreign order for forty thou- 

 sand bird-skins. She hired people to kill the birds, for which 

 she paid ten cents apiece. The birds comprised in this whole- 

 sale slaughter were mainly gulls and terns, or sea-swallows, 



