214 SIGNS AND SEASONS 



nomenclature, he is not only the enemy of the birds, 

 but the enemy of all those who would know them 

 rightly. 



Not the collectors alone are to blame for the 

 diminishing numbers of our wild birds, but a large 

 share of the responsibility rests upon quite a differ- 

 ent class of persons, namely, the milliners. False 

 taste in dress is as destructive to our feathered 

 friends as are false aims in science. It is said that 

 the traffic in the skins of our brighter-plumaged 

 birds, arising from their use by the milliners, reaches 

 to hundreds of thousands annually. I am told of 

 one middleman who collected from the shooters in 

 one district, in four months, seventy thousand skins. 

 It is a barbarous taste that craves this kind of orna- 

 mentation. Think of a woman or girl of real refine- 

 ment appearing upon the street with her head-gear 

 adorned with the scalps of our songsters ! 



It is probably true that the number of our birds 

 destroyed by man is but a small percentage of the 

 number cut off by their natural enemies; but it is 

 to be remembered that those he destroys are in 

 addition to those thus cut off, and that it is this 

 extra or artificial destruction that disturbs the bal- 

 ance of nature. The operation of natural causes 

 keeps the birds in check, but the greed of the col- 

 lectors and milliners tends to their extinction. 



I can pardon a man who wishes to make a collec- 

 tion of eggs and birds for his own private use, if 

 he will content himself with one or two specimens 

 of a kind, though he will find any collection much 



