20 8 Cruelty to Birds 



the natives got an inkling that money was to be made, 

 and shot a good number of the birds. The prices 

 realised astonished them, and this spring every man 

 who could shoot at all was on the look-out. A terrible 

 slaughter began on the arrival of the wretched egrets, 

 and continued until from Suey Kao, seventy miles up 

 river, to Hing-hua, some sixty miles south of Foochow, 

 the country may be said to have been swept clean. 



" I will give you one or two cases only, of all the 

 sickening details told of the massacre. 



" A ' heronry ' of Herodias garzetta, which used in 

 summer to be a beautiful sight from the river, with 

 the white plumage of the birds showing out in strong 

 contrast to the dark green foliage of the two huge 

 trees in which their nests were placed, has been 

 entirely depopulated. 



" Further down river was a ' herony ' of H. garzetta 

 with a sprinkling of H. eulophotes^ in a village. The 

 local mandarin put up notices warning people against 

 molesting the birds. 



" The ' shooting-men/ however, found out that the 

 birds flew in a certain line down a narrow valley to 

 their feeding-grounds. 



" Selecting an afternoon with a stiff breeze that 

 not only deadened the reports of the guns, but made 

 the birds fly low, a party of five or six stationed them- 

 selves at the end of the valley, and shot down the 

 whole colony. 



" One of these men told me that the villagers 

 were very angry because of the bad smell that arose 

 from the decaying bodies of the nestlings. 



