,8 J Report of Committee on Bird Protection. 2 5 



"The majority of the feathers are from pigeons and chickens, 

 and are dyed. I cannot find, as reported by Miss Merriam, that 

 any artificial heads and beaks are made of celkiloid. 



" The rage for the Egret plumes is greater than ever, and in 

 the past sixty days the price has advanced over one hundred per 

 cent. At present the fashion is principally to use the stub half 

 of the plume, although the tips and finer ends are also used, but 

 to a less extent, naturally being considerably higher in price. 



" Our city taxidermists advise me that they have had little or 

 no order work for millinery purposes in the past year, and such 

 as they have had has not been for insectivorous birds, and that 

 they do not employ boys to shoot specimens, as was once their 

 custom. 



" The proprietor of one of our large wholesale millinery stores 

 informed me that a feather and plume dealer with whom he used 

 to do business had ceased fitting out any further expeditions, he 

 having lost heavily on former ventures. 



" About the only heads of birds that have been in use in the 

 past year have been those of some foreign Blackbirds and Spar- 

 rows, which have been principally imported from France. The 

 quills of one or two species of Pheasants, probably from China, 

 are also more or less in fashion. The birds are imported in the 

 skins, so as to save the duty on manufactured goods, and the 

 tail, composed of eighteen feathers, commands quite a large price. 



" Really the only destruction that is now going on among our 

 native birds is evidently among the Herons and Egrets, and, 

 while this has been on the increase for the present fashion of 

 this spring (1896), the general opinion is that it will die out, not 

 to return to the extent that has heretofore prevailed. 



" I have recently been using my influence upon a number of 

 ignorant country boys, who have annually made a great depreda- 

 tion among the Herons in what is known as ' Crane Heaven,' on 

 the Kankakee River, in Indiana, and, while my influence was only 

 on a moral basis, several promised to desist from any wanton 

 destruction this year. Two gunners would visit the heronry 

 once or twice during the summer and slaughter from sixty to 

 eighty Great Blue Herons in a day, leaving them where they fell 

 on the ground. 



