138 NATURE-STUDY 



A dealer in bird skins in three months killed 11,000 birds 

 in South Carolina. He sold 30,000 a year mainly to the 

 millinery trade. A New York milliner, who wanted 40,000 

 skins, hired men to shoot gulls, terns, etc., on an island off 

 the coast of Virginia, and paid 10 cents apiece for them. 

 During four months a Long Island village furnished 70,000 

 terns and land birds for the trade. 



Happily, a change seems to be taking place in regard to the 

 wearing of feathers, though how long the present decrease in 

 their use will last is impossible to state. It may be that when 

 feathers are next in vogue in millinery, the birds will again 

 suffer. But at present most ladies, in this country at least, 

 have had the cruelty of the practice of wearing plumage 

 shown to them, and prefer not to wear it. The crusade of 

 the last twenty years against the wearing of feathers seems 

 to have had good results. In our schools the cause of pro- 

 tection for the birds has been helped. Various ornithological 

 societies, the Audubon Societies, and the League of American 

 Sportsmen have united in showing the enormity of the de- 

 struction of birds that has been going on, and in urging the 

 abandonment of the fashion of wearing feathers. The 

 periodical and daily press also have lent their aid in this good 

 work. 



As a result of all this agitation the separate states and 

 the National Government have passed laws regulating or 

 prohibiting the destruction of birds, the shipment, and 

 even possession of plumage of birds other than game. 

 The Lacey Act, passed by Congress in 1900, prohibits the 

 importation of all foreign birds except such as are per- 

 mitted by the Secretary of Agriculture. This prevents the 

 importation of birds from the tropics or other countries, 





