MISCELLANEOUS BIRDS 47 



their plumage. They are just as mean and cruel as 

 the truck driver who drives a horse with a sore shoulder 

 and beats him in the street. But they do it ! and appaals 

 to them to do otherwise they laugh to scorn, saying ' I 

 will wear what is fashionable when I please and where I 

 please ! ' 



Dr. Hornaday elsewhere in the same book quotes the 

 well-known bird tragedy of Laysan Island in the Pacific 

 Ocean. This is an isolated little island only two miles long 

 by a mile and half wide ; but until 1909 it was absolutely 

 teeming with all kinds of beautiful sea birds. In 1909 an 

 expedition was organized to exterminate all these birds 

 and send their feathers to Japan for sale and export. The 

 organizer of this raid was a European. For some months 

 he and his companions were uninterrupted, and managed 

 to tear off the wings of some three hundred thousand birds, 

 before a United States gunboat arrived and put a stop 

 to their energies. As a result the island was almost 

 stripped of bird life, and the neighbouring coasts of the 

 mainland missed their usual annual migrants which 

 used the island as a nesting-place. 



The birds mentioned above were mainly albatrosses, 

 terns, petrels, shearwaters, boobies, and man-of-war birds. 

 In other parts of the world a savage warfare is waged 

 against many beautiful and useful song birds merely 

 for the sake of their feathers. 



The various species of white egrets supply the plumes 

 known as " aigrettes " or " ospreys," and are therefore 

 hunted down and destroyed in vast numbers, though 

 they are harmless as well as beautiful birds. 



From nearly all the rest of the feather trade, the ostrich 

 industry stands out as a bright exception. In the former, 

 the birds required are merely killed off wholesale 

 to supply the demand, without anything being done 



