VALUABLE WILD LIFE 35 



fallen 20 per cent, and in Paris the milliners fear 

 that the fashion for aigrettes is as good as dead, 

 because their best customers can wear them no 

 more. 



The sweeping prohibition that we have enacted 

 sets the pace for the civilized world. The suppres- 

 sion of the cruel slaughter of the innocents at the 

 behest of fashion and vanity and commercial greed, 

 was here treated as a cause involving the honor of 

 the nation. To-day the people of England, Hol- 

 land, France and Germany are appealing to their 

 governments on the same basis. The honor of 

 nations demands the suppression of bird slaughter 

 for plumage; and assuredly that suppression will 

 come, and be made general. The crusade affects 

 at least a hundred species of the most beautiful and 

 curious birds of the world, the most of them to-day 

 quite unprotected, so far as the laws of their home 

 countries are concerned. 



In assembling our conclusions, we find that the 

 first relates to the state of the public mind. 



During the past fifteen years, the improvement 

 in that direction has been enormous ! To-day, dras- 

 tic measures can be enacted into law which even ten 

 years ago would have been deemed visionary, 

 fanatical and wildly impossible. To-day a million 

 American people are anxious to atone for their past 

 follies in the destruction of wild life. To-day, the 

 man who proposes a great reform, and appeals to 

 the mass of people who do not shoot wild life, soon 



