68 



NATURE 



[April 8, 1920 



The Plumage Bill and Bird Protection. 



The protection of beautiful and interesting birds is 

 the object of Col. Yate's and Lord Aberdeen's Bill now 

 before Parliament. The chief end is to close Great 

 Britain (and presumably all parts of the British 

 Empire controlled from London) as a market in which 

 the plumage of wild birds (excepting eider down and 

 ostrich feathers) may be bought and sold. The reasons 

 for excepting the down of the eider duck and the 

 plumes of the ostrich need scarcely be explained. The 

 eider duck strips herself of the downy feathers she 

 develops during the breeding season and lines her nest 

 with them. This down can be obtained without injur- 

 ing the bird, or even without depriving her nestlings, 

 who leave the downy nest soon after birth. Such a 

 large proportion of ostrich plumes is obtained from 

 tame birds (and the wild ostrich chicks are so easily 

 domesticated) that it is scarcely worth while pursuing 

 the wild bird for its feathers. Moreover, the plumes 

 can be removed from the tame birds painlessly. 



The Bill is drawn so as to protect wild birds 

 from persecution by closing to the trade in their 

 feathers the very Jmportant British market, which, 

 tog-ether with the "strong action of the United States 

 and Canada, will go far towards extirpating this com- 

 merce. We should protect beautiful, useful, interest- 

 ing, and harmless birds — adjectives which include all 

 the avian class except, perhaps, the house-sparrow, 

 the tree-sparrow, and the wood-pigeon, because : — 



(i) They are beautiful in shape, in plumage, in 

 their manner of life, or in their voice, and they always 

 add to the aesthetic charm of a landscape. 



(2) The majority of birds feed upon insects, ticks, 

 land moUusca, small rodents, or carrion. They 

 are our principal allies in keeping the insect hosts at 

 bay and destroying the sources and disseminators of 

 germs which breed disease in man, beast, and plant. 

 They save our food crops and our timber-trees from 

 destruction by insects, snails, and slugs ; thev attack 

 snakes; and they assist to maintain the balance of 

 creation in favour of man. 



(3) Sea-birds — especially gulls, auks, petrels, gannets, 

 frigate-birds, cormorants, and penguins — are the pro- 

 ducers of guano useful in agriculture and horticulture. 



(4) Many fruit-eating birds are great distributors of 

 the seeds, stones, and nuts of valuable timber-trees 

 or trees producing spices, dyes, drugs, or fruits of 

 value to humanity. 



Erg^o,^ all birds, save the sparrows and the European 

 wood-pigeon (which is verv destructive to crops, and 

 is believed to spread the germs of diphtheria), should 

 be protected from attacks which are not necessitated 

 by some real human need. What would be such a 

 need? The preservation of the bulk of a food crop, 

 or the necessitv for the bird's flesh, or the requiring 

 of its under-plumage as a material for warding off 

 cold. The last-named requirement does not affect the 

 tropics^ or sub-tropics. Most insect-eating or euano- 

 producing- birds are unfit for food, and are disliked 

 from that point of view by the savage quite as much 

 as by the white man. Penguins and a few other sea- 

 birds vield a valuable oil, but there is no reason why 

 penguin rookeries should not be established for that 

 purpose provided the species is properly preserved 

 from_ serious diminution. Yet the amount of oil thus 

 obtained is trifling in comparison with the vield from 

 whales, porpoises, seals, and fish; and 'these in- 

 habitants of the seas and oceans are more protected 

 bv their habitat from devastating attacks than are 

 birds resorting to a terrestrial life during the breedint? 

 season. At anv rate, the extermination of marine 

 mammals or of fish is not such a loss to landscape 

 beauty or to the economics of human life as is the 

 destruction of sea-birds. 



NO. 2632, VOL. T05] 



What is the offset against this argument for wild- 

 bird preservation? What quality do beautiful and 

 interesting wild birds possess that they should be 

 attacked, pursued, and destroyed until in many cases 

 they become extinct? They produce feathers and 

 plumes of great beauty in colour or of exquisite out- 

 line or texture which are desired as a personal adorn- 

 ment by certain European — not Asiatic, American, or 

 African— women, who stick these trophies in head- 

 coverings or as a trimming on their corsage. There is 

 also in about half a dozen instances a further use of 

 wild birds' plumage in the making of artificial flies 

 used by anglers. 



All that European women or anglers can in 

 reason require in the way of plumes, wings, 

 tails, or skins of birds for their decoration or 

 other purposes can be obtained without cruelty 

 from the domesticated or preserved birds that 

 are killed for food or kept for egg production — 

 ostriches, the domestic fov^i in a hundred varieties, 

 the common pheasant and other pheasants bred 

 in aviaries, pea-fowl, turkeys, guinea-fowl, pigeons, 

 grouse, partridges, ducks, geese, certain kinds of wild 

 duck sufficiently preserved to be in no danger of dying- 

 out, and so forth. Trade in such feathers is in no 

 way restricted by the Plumage Bill. It is not right 

 that rare and beautiful or exceedingly useful wild 

 birds of the tropics and sub-tropics should be 

 destroyed, eliminated from the landscapes for the sole 

 purpose of decorating the persons of European women. 

 We are told that the disuse of this practice would 

 throw out of employment four or five thousand persons 

 in England, France, and Holland ; but surely they 

 could find work in dealing with the feathers of 

 domesticated birds. H. H. Johnston. 



St. John's Priory, Poling, Arundel. 



It is desirable in a discussion on the Plumage Bill 

 to ensure that knowledge is not controlled by senti- 

 ment, and that the solid facts of the matter are borne 

 definitely in mind. Supporters of the Bill give three 

 main reasons for it. They claim that the Bill will 

 stop (i) the extinction of rare birds ; (2) cruelty in that 

 it will stop the killing of breeding birds, and so pre- 

 serve their young; and (3) cruelty in the actual 

 slaughter of nbirds at all. Against the Bill are the 

 statements that it effects nothing- in regard to 

 these points (in that it has no action in the places 

 where the birds occur); that it stops a great 

 deal of perfectly harmless and legitimate trade ; and 

 that the real protection of birds must be an inter- 

 national matter, which was being quite easily brought 

 about bv voluntarv effort, which effort will be killed 

 by the Bill. 



The important points are to consider (i) whether 

 there is cruelty, (2) whether birds are being made 

 extinct owing to the plumage trade, (3) whether the 

 present Bill will prevent cruelty and extinction, and 

 (4) whether any alternative proposal can be sugrgested. 

 In regard to" cruelty, it is extremely difficult to 

 secure real evidence " apart from unsujjported state- 

 ments. In a letter to the Times a few days ajjo Mr. 

 H. J. Massingham produced a private letter detailing 

 horrible cruelty in China with getting egret plumasie. 

 There is an American bulletin that details the killing 

 of 150,000^ or 300,000 " albatrosses and noddies." One 

 may admit the first as "crueltv," but scarcelv the 

 second so long as hunting and shooting are carried on 

 in England. The Right Hon. Sir C. E. H. Hobhouse 

 in the House of Commons referred to an auction of 

 75,000 herons, and to another of 77,000 herons, 22,000 

 crowned pigeons, 25,000 humming-birds, and 162,000 

 Smvrnian kingfishers. But is this wrong? No one 

 could say that this trade was making any bird extinct. 



