Giant Fish of Florida 



and strong again, and the gap in his pouch had to all 

 appearance healed. 



There is an island just off the coast measuring scarce 

 one hundred yards in any direction, and thereon stands a 

 pelicans' rookery. There these great confiding, prehistoric- 

 looking, silly birds used to gather until they were all but 

 shot out by plume-hunters at 25 cents, the skin. And here, in 

 the highest trees, some of the great birds still congregate, 

 their curious webbed feet looking most incongruous as 

 they grasp the swaying branches. The neighbouring island, 

 somewhat larger in extent, is the home of innumerable 

 cormorants and herons, both blue and white, all nesting 

 in the tall black mangroves, and so tame that you may 

 approach to within six yards of the little blue herons. Yet on 

 all sides are the tiny corpses of deserted little birds, their 

 parents in the breeding plumage ruthlessly shot down to 

 deck women's hats ! The thin end of the wedge of bird 

 protection has, it is true, been inserted, but the law is 

 almost inoperative in these out-of-the-way regions, and 

 the slaughter proceeds unchecked. And so the beautiful 

 American woodlands are being denuded of their unrivalled 

 bird life in order that every mistress and every maid may 

 dangle "osprey" plumes over their heads. 



With my pictures, then, end my notes, and I am only too 

 conscious of their meagreness. My object, however, was, as I 

 may have said already, to put before intending visitors to 



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