20 



III. 



DESTRUCTION AND EXTERMINATION. 



With regard to the questions of the extermination of species, 

 and the destruction of rare birds, it has been already shown 

 that the Society for the Protection of Birds has never cited the 

 plume-trade as the only cause of the decrease or extermination 

 of birds. The fact that there are other and inevitable causes 

 for the disappearance of birds renders it the more necessary to 

 check preventable waste of bird- life. Neither has the Society 

 ever maintained that a threatened extermination of species is 

 the sole reason for dealing with the plume-hunter. If it be to a 

 limited extent true that the hunters do not actually seek out 

 the last survivors of a species, this affords no reason why any 

 form of bird-life should be reduced even to scarcity, or should be 

 brought so low, either as a member of the avi-fauna of the world, 

 or of a particular country or district, as to be within measurable 

 distance of extermination. There is no sufficient reason why a 

 single colony of harmless and beautiful birds should be " wiped 

 out " or " used up " for so paltry a purpose as millinery trimming. 



Rare Species. 



The arguments advanced by the trade amount to this : If a 

 very small number of a given species are offered for sale, they 

 come " accidentally." " If," says Mr. Downham (much virtue 

 in " If.") 



" If rare birds come to the sale-rooms from time to time it is 

 because those who killed them, and who would have killed them 

 in any case for sport or food, have sent the skins on the off-chance 

 of their purchase by collectors." 



Headers of " The Feather Trade " may picture the native of 

 New Guinea, or the traveller in Mexico, cooking his blue Bird- 

 of-Paradise or his Quetzal, and carefully saving the skin to forward 



