41 



CHAPTER THE SECOND. 

 THE MOULTED PLUME. 



The story that in certain places plume-hunters pick up vast 

 supplies of beautiful feathers which Herons and Egrets drop in 

 the moulting season, has been heard once and again during the 

 last twelve or fifteen years, varied by a tale of still more distant 

 lands where Egrets were said to be domesticated on farms. 



On these foundations has risen the specious argument that 

 since there are Ostrich farms, why not Egret farms, where the 

 birds could be bred and the feathers cut off or systematically 

 collected ? Those who argue thus overlook the fact that Herons 

 and Egrets are not flightless birds which can be herded in paddocks 

 to be clipped, but shy, winged species, which build in trees by 

 lake and swamp, and for the rest of the year scatter themselves 

 over wide expanses of country. The light and delicate nuptial 

 plumes are worn throughout the nesting and brooding period, 

 and at the end of this time are shed on the marshland in a torn 

 and draggled condition. Even when the birds are shot with 

 their plumes in full beauty, the stain of swamp water will lessen 

 the value of the thread-like filaments. The trade admit that these 

 so-called moulted plumes are inferior,* but are anxious that the 

 public should believe that they form the greater part of those 

 brought into the market. 



When the " moulted plumes " theory was started they were 

 said to be picked up on the walls of China ; but the Heron has 

 now been practically exterminated in many of the more accessible 

 parts of China. One illustration of the manner in which this 



* " Ospreys : We have always been of opinion that a large propor- 

 tion of the feathers are dead feathers. They are quite different from 

 the other feathers. They are brittle and obviously perished." Mr. G. K. 

 Dunstall (feather-merchant) before the H.L. Committee. 



" There may be a few that the hunters call chasse, that is to say, they are 

 hunted, shot by the hunters, and these plumes, if they are on the bird, 

 are naturally much better than those that are picked off the ground when 

 they are moulted." Mr. Downham, ibid. 



