^°^m?^T ^otes and News. 289 



after the Parts have all appeared, I trust to be able to do so. In the mean- 

 time, however, I hope our application for assistance in the matter of 

 material, as set forth in this letter, will result in obtaining in this country 

 what has been asked for above. 



Faithfully yours, 



R. W. Shtjfeldt. 

 3366-18th Street, Washington, D. C. 

 January 8th, 1914. 



NOTES AND NEWS. 



The feeling at the present moment against the traffic in wild bird plumage 

 is stronger and more widespread than ever before. Following the lead of 

 the United States, England has a bill in ParUament prohibiting the importa- 

 tion of plumage, and from practically all other countries come letters 

 endorsing this stand. Quoting from the winter number of 'Bird Notes 

 and News' we find the following from Prof. C. G. Schillings, the distin- 

 guished German naturalist: "The United States has found the only satis- 

 factory solution of this question. Only direct prohibition will reach the 

 core of the matter. . . . We German friends of nature and of the birds 

 only wait anxiously that England, too, may get its Feather Importation 

 law. We certainly will follow. If AustraHa, North America, England and 

 Germany close the market, the trade will die out." 



'German Fashion' for October 26, 1913, says: "Thanks to the prohibi- 

 tion of import into America and the coming Plumage Bill in England, the 

 end is at hand of the use of the Egret in fashionable Millinery." 



In a discussion at the Academy of Sciences at Paris, M. Perrier, 

 Director of the Natural History Museum, protested strongly against the 

 destruction of birds. He begged the Academy to decline the trade offer 

 of $2000 for the best method of domesticating egrets in farms. It was a 

 mere blind, he said, to gain time and divert attention; everyone knew 

 that these birds could not be domesticated. 



In Holland Professor Swaen states that steps are being taken to prepare 

 the pubHc for a favorable reception of a bill to prohibit importation of 

 wild bird plumage, and similar statements and letters of approval come 

 from Denmark, Austria and Switzerland. 



The direct effect of the American tariff prohibition is shown with great 

 clearness when one studies the catalogues of the London feather auctions. 

 In the 'N. Y. Zoological Society Bulletin' for January, Dr. Wm. T. Horna- 

 day states that "exactly ten days from the signing of our tariff law by 



