26 EXPEDITION TO LAYSAN ISLAND IN 1911. 



Several months ago it became my duty as the representative of the 

 National Association of Audubon Societies in Hawaii to notify that 

 society and the Biological Survey that the island of Laysan of the 

 Leeward chain of this group had been visited by a company of 

 feather hunters. They were under the employ of Mr. Max Schlemmer, 

 now of Honolulu, but who was for many years a resident on Laysan 

 as manager for a large guano and fertilizer concern with headquarters 

 in Honolulu. 



After spending several months on the island engaged in the whole- 

 sale slaughter of the bird life there, the poachers were taken off by 

 the U. S. revenue cutter Thetis under command of Capt. Jacobs, 

 who was sent there by the Federal Government for that purpose. 

 With the 23 poachers who were brought to Honolulu for trial the 

 Thetis brought two or three carloads of the feathers, wings, and 

 birdskins that had been made ready for shipment to Japan. Had the 

 plan of the promoters been carried out, they would doubtless have 

 been sent from Japan to the fashion centers of Europe and America for 

 millinery purposes. 



COMPARISON OF CONDITIONS IN 1903 AND 1911. 



By my experience on Marcus Island and Midway Island a few years 

 ago, where I had the sad privilege at the first-named island of finding 

 a colony of poachers actually engaged in killing birds by the thousands 

 for the millinery market, and at the latter of finding the hundreds of 

 heaps of dead birds' bodies left by a party that had finished securing 

 its ship load of wings and feathers, I was in a measure able to antici- 

 pate the damage that had been done by these ruthless spoilers at 

 Laysan. 



My surprise was great, however, to find that the few rabbits intro- 

 duced by Mr. Schlemmer shortly after my former visit had literally 

 taken possession of the island. In 1903 Mr. Schlemmer, then oper- 

 ating a lease and engaged in the guano business, made a number of 

 trips from Honolulu. On a number of these voyages he took several 

 small shipments of rabbits of different breeds as well as a number of 

 Japanese guinea pigs. All of these animals were liberated on Laysan 

 and they have since multiplied until they are found in great numbers 

 at this time. 



The slaughter wrought by the plume hunters is everywhere appa- 

 rent. One of the work buildings formerly used by the guano company 

 and later as a storehouse by the poachers is still standing. With 

 a side torn out and left open to the weather by the men of the Thetis, 

 it is still filled with thousands of pairs of albatross wings. Though 

 weatherbeaten and useless, they show how they were cut from the 

 birds whose half-bleached skeletons lie in thousands of heaps scat- 

 tered all over the island. 



