KA From Magazines, &c. [isf'Tiiv 



month of July ; nesting is certainly in full swing during August. 

 . . . All the nests which I have found on this North-West 

 Coast of Tasmania have been placed well within a large sagg or 

 tussock. . . . The nest is usually placed a foot or two from 

 the ground, in the heart of the tussock, with the entrance to one 

 side among the drooping blades, by which it is completely 

 concealed. The structure is generally placed on a base of moss 

 and vegetable debris, such as fragments of dry tussock-blades. 

 . . . Just before the middle of September I saw two young 

 Field- Wrens making their way through a scrub of small tea-tree 

 in charge of their parents, the example of which they followed 

 most worthily in slipping out of sight in the quickest possible 

 time. At the end of the same month I found three young which 

 had lately left the nest and were concealed in some low scrub. 

 The old birds laboured hard to draw me away from the spot, but 

 at length I was successful in flushing the young, which lay very 

 closely in cover." 



Slaughter of Egrets. — Bird Lore for January-February, 1912, 

 contains an interesting Audubon Education Leaflet on the White 

 Egrets, written by T. Gilbert Pearson. The following " con- 

 fessions " of a plume-hunter are given : — " My attention has 

 been called to the fact that certain commercial interests in this 

 city are circulating stories in the newspapers and elsewhere to 

 the effect that the aigrettes used in the millinery trade come 

 chiefly from Venezuela, where they are gathered from the ground 

 in the large garceros, or breeding-colonies, of White Herons. I 

 wish to state that I have personally engaged in the work of col- 

 lecting the plumes of these birds in Venezuela. This was my 

 business for the years i8q6 to 1905, inclusive. I am thoroughly 

 conversant with the methods employed in gathering Egret and 

 Snowy Heron plumes in Venezuela, and I wish to give the following 

 statement regarding the practices employed in procuring these 

 feathers : — ^The birds gather in large colonies to rear their young. 

 They have the plumes only during the mating and nesting season. 

 After the period when they are employed in caring for their 

 young, it is found that the plumes are virtually of no commercial 

 value, because of the worn and frayed condition to which they 

 have been reduced. It is the custom in Venezuela to shoot the 

 birds while the young are in the nests. A few feathers of the 

 large White Heron (American Egret), known as the Garza bhwca, 

 can be picked up of a morning about their breeding-places, but 

 these are of small value, and are known as ' dead feathers.' They 

 are worth locally not over $3.00 an ounce, while the feathers 

 taken from the bird, known as ' live feathers,' are worth $15.00 

 an ounce. My work led me into every part of Venezuela and 

 Colombia where these birds are to be found, and I have never 

 yet found or heard tell of any garceros that were guarded for the 

 purpose of simply gathering the feathers from the ground. No 



