INTRODUCTION 



BIRD life is disappearing from the United States and Canada 

 at so alarming a rate I sometimes feel it is wrong, at this day 

 and age of the world, to encourage the hunting and shooting of 

 birds of any kind. Mr. W. T. Hornaday, the Director of the New 

 York Zoological Society, has recently collected and compiled 

 statistics from more that thirty states, showing that the decrease 

 of birds within the past fifteen years has averaged over forty per 

 cent. At this rate another twenty years would witness the total 

 extermination of many birds in this country. Several species 

 have already become extinct, and others are rapidly approaching 

 the danger line. Conspicuous among these are the wild turkey 

 and the pinnated grouse, two of the noblest birds on the con- 

 tinent. Several species of water-fowl are also growing scarce. 



Not only are game birds pursued and killed, in season and out 

 of season, under the name of sport and for market, but the song 

 birds, plumage birds, water-fowl, and many innocent birds of 

 prey are hunted, from the Everglades to the Arctic Circle, for the 

 barbaric purpose of decorating women's hats. The extent of this 

 traffic is simply appalling. Some of the plumes of tropical and 

 semi-tropical birds sell at as high a price as fifteen dollars an ounce. 

 No wonder the cupidity of ignorant and heartless market hunters 

 is tempted by such prices to pursue and kill the last one of these 

 birds. It seems incredible that any woman in this enlightened 

 and refined age, when sentiment against cruelty to animals is 

 strong in human nature, could be induced to wear an ornament 

 that has cost the life of so beautiful a creature as an egret, a 

 scarlet tanager, or a Baltimore oriole. What beauty can there be 

 in so clumsy a head decoration as an owl or a gull ? Yet we see 

 women whose nature would revolt at the thought or the sight 

 of cruelty to a horse or a dog, wearing the wings, plumes, and 

 heads, if not the entire carcasses of these birds. Not only is the 

 life of the bird sacrificed, whose plumage is to be thus worn, but 

 in thousands of instances the victim is the mother bird, and a 

 brood of young is left to starve to death in consequence of her 

 cruel taking off. Is it not time to check this ruthless destruction 

 of bird life by the enactment and enforcement of proper laws ? 



