CHAPTER VIII 



BIRDS ON HATS, BOYS, COLLECTORS, SO-CALLED BIRD 

 STUDENTS, BIRD HUNTERS, UBIQUITOUS GUNNERS 



IT is a pleasure to state that the fashion of wearing 

 birds on hats is certainly waning. Let every girl and 

 every lady interested in song birds refrain from wear- 

 ing any feathers except those of game birds, domestic 

 birds, and ostriches, and the plume hunters' business 

 will cease to pay and die a natural death. Intelli- 

 gent women, prominent in society, can easily place hats 

 with song-bird corpses under the ban. With the school- 

 girls, the teachers can accomplish the desired result. 

 Still more good would result, if some inventive genius 

 could discover a process by which artificial feathers could 

 be succesfully manufactured from rubber, celluloid, or 

 some other substance. Perhaps the feathers of the 

 numerous varieties of domestic fowls could be so pre- 

 pared that they would satisfy the most divergent tastes. 

 Any one who would invent or perfect a process by 

 which the manufacture of artificial feathers would be- 

 come a commercial success, would be one of the great- 

 est benefactors of the birds. I am convinced that the 

 majority of women wearing feathers of song birds or 

 other wild birds do so from ignorance. Schools, 

 G 81 /- 



