144 WILD WINGS 



shoot, any person found upon the property with a gun. And 

 where is it ? May my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, 

 if I reveal the Egrets' secret. 



This whole business of the slaughter of the white herons 

 to say nothing of other birds for their plumes for millinery 

 purposes is one that every lover of nature and every person 

 of humane feeling who understands the case will regard as 

 no less than infamous. This is one of the moral questions 

 to be classed with the opium traffic and the slave trade to 

 which there is but one side. The origin of this trade is ignor- 

 ance on the one hand and greed for money on the other, and 

 there is not one true word which can be said in its defence. 



It should be understood at the outset that these plumes 

 which are variously called by milliners " aigrettes," " stubs," 

 or " ospreys," and are dyed to whatever color is fashionable 

 are borne by herons, and only during the nuptial season, 

 and can be secured only by shooting the birds when they 

 have assembled in colonies to breed, when their usual shyness 

 has departed, owing to the strength of the parental instinct. 

 Returning to their nests, they are shot down and their young 

 are left to starve. 



Let it be nailed as a trade lie that these plumes are 

 secured in any other way. I do not think that it can be said 

 that I do not make use of my eyes ; yet in all my explorations 

 of these rookeries I have found but ONE solitary " aigrette " 

 feather, badly worn at that. It is inconceivable, impossible, 

 that any one could find them in paying quantities, scattered 

 about in these morasses and jungles. NEITHER ARE THEY 

 MANUFACTURED. This lie has also been " nailed," as when 

 recently a leading firm in England, for whom the claim 

 had been made, though challenged to show one single 

 manufactured plume, was unable to do so. Manufactured 

 aigrettes and hens' teeth belong to the same class. 



