246 TUBE-NOSED SWIMMERS OF MID-OCEAN 



all the stolen wings and plumage with the exception of one 

 shedful of wings that had to be left behind on account of lack 

 of carrying space. That old shed, w T ith one end torn out, 

 and supposed to contain nearly fifty thousand pairs of wings, 

 was photographed by Professor Dill in 1911, as shown here- 

 with. 



Three hundred thousand albatrosses, gulls, terns and other 

 birds were butchered to make a Schlemmer holiday! Had 

 the arrival of the Thetis been delayed, it is reasonably certain 

 that every bird on Laysan would have been killed to satisfy 

 the wolfish rapacity of one money-grubbing white man. 



In 1911 the Iowa State University despatched to Laysan 

 a scientific expedition in charge of Professor Homer R. Dill. 

 The party landed on the island on April 24 and remained 

 until June 5, and the report of Professor Dill (United States 

 Department of Agriculture) is deeply interesting to the friends 

 of birds. Here is what he has said regarding the evidences 

 of bird-slaughter: 



Our first impression of Laysan was that the poachers had stripped 

 the place of bird life. An area of over 300 acres on each side of the build- 

 ings was apparently abandoned. Only the shearwaters moaning in their 

 burrows, the little wingless rail skulking from one grass tussock to an- 

 other and the saucy finch remained. It is an excellent example of what 

 Professor Nutting calls the survival of the inconspicuous. 



Here on every side are bones bleaching in the sun, showing where 

 the poachers had piled the bodies of the birds as they stripped them of 

 wings and feathers. In the old open guano shed were seen the remains 

 of hundreds and possibly thousands of wings which were placed there but 

 never cured for shipping, as the marauders were interrupted in their work. 



An old cistern back of one of the buildings tells a story of cruelty 

 that surpasses anything else done by these heartless, sanguinary pirates, 

 not excepting the practice of cutting wings from living birds and leaving 

 them to die of hemorrhage. In this dry cistern the living birds were kept 



