236 BIRD ENEMIES. 



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 ornamentation. Think 

 of a woman or girl of real refinement 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 ar- 

 tificial destruction that disturbs the balance of nature. 

 The operation of natural causes keeps the birds in 

 check, but the greed of the collectors 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 less 

 satisfactory and less valuable than he imagines, but 

 the professional nest-robber and skin collector should 

 be put down, either by legislation or with dogs and 

 shot-guns. 



