72 



Feathers for Ornament. 



In the midst of modern civilization we still cling tenaciously 

 to rings, beads and feathers, the ornaments of the savage. The 

 trade in feathers for adornment has grown to such enormous 

 proportions that it has furnished employment or partial em- 

 ployment to hundreds of thousands of people; and the profits 

 made from the handling, dyeing, "manufacture" and sale of 

 feathers have run into millions, if not billions of dollars. 

 Birds of all sizes have contributed their feathers to fashion's 

 demands, from the lowly duck or chicken of the farmyard to 

 the giant ostrich, and from the tiny hummingbird, warbler or 

 kinglet to the regal bird of paradise, the snowy-plumaged egret, 

 the royal eagle, the giant condor or the long-winged albatross. 

 This trade has gone on, recklessly slaughtering and extermi- 

 nating the birds of the world, until public sentiment has at- 

 tempted to call a halt in many countries, protecting the birds 

 by law, and forbidding the exportation or the importation of 

 plumage. Wardens armed with rifles have been placed on guard 

 over protected bird colonies. Still the slaughter, though 

 checked to some extent, goes on. Tons of feathers are smug- 

 gled out of one country and into another, and there is always 

 a supply at hand for woman's adornment. The scarcity of 

 some feathers and the difficulty of smuggling them has in- 

 creased their value in the retail market to much more than 

 twice their weight in gold. 



During the last century there was a great demand for swan's 

 down, which sold at high prices and was used for trimming fine 

 fans, cloaks and other articles for women's wear or adornment. 

 This traffic contributed largely toward the threatened extinc- 

 tion of the trumpeter swan, the pitiful remnant of which the 

 Canadian authorities are now trying to save. We have no 

 record of the early trade in swan skins, when the trumpeter 

 swan was abundant and bred widely in the Athabasca-Mac- 

 kenzie region, but the number sold annually by the Hudson 

 Bay Company decreased from 1,312 in the year 1854 to 122 in 

 1877. In 1899 the Athabasca output had dwindled to 33 skins. 1 

 The trumpeter swan is now nearly extinct. 



1 Preble, E. A.: North American Fauna, No. 27, Bureau of Biological Survey, United States 

 Department of Agriculture, 1908, pp. 309, 310. 



