°,8g7 J Report of Committee on Bird Protection. 



29 



extermination of the Herons of Lower California. The follow- 

 ing extracts are from letters from Mr. Anthony to Mr. Stone, 

 dated April 5 and May 3, 1896. 



" I see by the January ' Auk ' that you are a member of the 

 new Committee on Protection of North American Birds. The 

 subject is one in which I have been, and still am, very much in- 

 terested ; of late, however, I have about given up ever seeino- 

 anything done for the few Herons that are left. The fact that a 

 new Committee has been appointed would seem to indicate that 

 something was to be done, but jvhat i Has any plan been 

 proposed t 



" I have for several years thought of all sorts of impossible 

 plans for protection, but could never hit upon anything that I 

 thought would do any good. If we could get one or two journals 

 like ' Harper's Bazar ' to cry down the custom of wearing birds, 

 advising something in their place, the fight would be short. I 

 think that about half the women who wear Heron plumes honestly 

 believe they are not feathers ; and then, also, education is needed. 

 I often, when I scold at such head-wear, am somewhat taken 

 down by : ' The idea! that ' aigrette ' never saw a bird. They are 

 simply manufactured feathers,' etc. 



" The slaughter has begun here on this coast in all its glory. 

 Eastern firms are sending out great inducements to anyone they 

 think will hunt or buy for them. Papers like the San Francisco 

 ' Call,' etc., in their Sunday editions, print accounts several columns 

 in length of how someone made some fabulous sum in a few 

 weeks shooting Herons for their plumes ' which are worth several 

 times their weight in gold,' etc., and every such article does vast 

 harm. 



" As a result, all the Indians on the Colorado River below 

 Yuma, and many white men also, are hard at work killing off the 

 birds that nest in considerable numbers on the islands in the 

 delta and along the extensive lagoons of that region. This year 

 they have got into Magdelena Bay, where countless thousands 

 have heretofore nested in safety, but at the rate they are now 

 being killed they cannot last long. 



" I have carefully avoided publishing anything regarding the 

 very extensive nesting colonies of Terns, Herons, etc., of Lower 



