chiefly, if not solely, at the breeding-season that the most 

 beautiful, and therefore the most valuable, feathers are 

 developed in birds." 



Most of the feathers enumerated in this catalogue were Heron 

 and Egret plumes from India, and Humming-birds and other 

 exotic species from South America and its islands. 



Professor Newton himself was mainly responsible for the 

 Sea Birds Preservation Act of 1868, which put a check on the 

 killing of Kittiwakes on British coasts for the sake of their wings 

 (though even this destruction is not wholly suppressed). Since 

 that time the foreign trade has attained huge proportions ; and 

 few parts of the world where birds of any commercial value exist 

 have escaped the attentions of the plume-hunter. The principal 

 areas of destruction have been India, South America, especially 

 Brazil and Venezuela ; North America, especially Florida ; 

 China, Burmah, and New Guinea. But from the slopes of the 

 Himalayas, where the Impeyan Pheasant (*) has been decimated, 

 to the small islands of the Pacific, where colonies of graceful 

 Terns and lordly Albatross ()) have been shot out, and from the 

 Australian bush, in which the Lyre-bird (f) tries in vain to 

 shelter, to the steppes of Russia, where the Willow Grouse (J) 

 has been shot by the thousand, that its wings might be sold at 

 three farthings a pair, the emissaries of the trade have been at 

 work. London and New York sale-rooms have seen the result. 



The Movement in America, 



In 1885 Mr. Sennett, of the American Ornithologists' Union, 

 called the attention of American ornithologists to the rapid dis- 

 appearance of native birds owing to their use for millinery, and, 

 as a result, the American Ornithologists' Union Bird-Protection 

 Committee was organized in 1886. In 1886 also the first Audubon 

 Society was formed in Massachusetts, having as its object : 



" To discourage buying and wearing for ornamental 

 purposes the feathers of any wild bird, and to further other- 

 wise the protection of our native birds. We would awaken 



* Page 25. f Page 23. J Page 29. 



