178 



Wholesale Destruction of Birds i7i Florida. 



the attempt to force the fashion of feather 

 millinery back again, called for the best 

 efforts of our workers, and ten thousand 

 circulars were sent out by a few of the 

 most zeaJous, while letters and newspaper 

 protests were used to spread the opposition. 

 When college opened in the fall, although 

 the class of '86, with whom the Society 

 originated, had gone, the "S. C. A. S." was 

 found in the same vigorous condition, and 

 fifty observers took up field work at the 

 outset. The interest increased through 

 the year, and the meetings were varied by 



discussions of field work, essays by observ- 

 ers, and popular articles from those natu- 

 ralists who have the art of putting others 

 into the spirit of the woods. 



In fact, the '*S. C. A. S. ' has become one 

 of the established institutions of the college, 

 and it is safe to predict for it a long 

 career of usefulness, for it is helping to 

 make of our girls who have been blinded 

 by the absorbing public school training, 

 women who shall see, and that in the deep- 

 est, fullest sense ever emphasized by Mr. 

 Ruskin. 



From Behind the Scenes. 



WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION OF BIRDS IN FLORIDA, 



NO one familiar with the story of Phar- 

 aoh and the plagues of Egypt would 

 openly advocate the extermination of the 

 birds of this continent; but while thousands 

 look on at the process with calm indiffer- 

 ence, unconscious that birds play any im- 

 portant part in the economy of nature, there 

 are other — and on this point better informed 

 — people who realize clearly some of the 

 possible consequences of such extermina- 

 tion, but who pooh-pooh the idea that the 

 annual demand for five or ten million bird 

 skins can in any way affect the permanent 

 supply. 



With such people it is useless to argue 

 from general i)rinciples, and if facts are ad- 

 duced they are generally ready to dispute 

 them on the ground that they have been 

 collected by incompetent observers, or to 

 assert that they are explicable on some 

 other theory; but a careful report upon the 

 so-called rookeries of Florida (the erstwhile 

 winter home and breeding grounds of m- 

 numerable waterfowl, divers and waders) by 

 W. E. D. Scott in the April and July num- 

 bers of The Auk is conclusive as to the 

 disappearance of all birds of this class from 

 our Southern lowlands, and leave no room 

 for the plea of incompetence to form a con- 



clusion. Mr. Scott is a naturalist, familiar 

 with the region of which he treats, and the 

 evidence which he adduces as to the rapid 

 disappearance of waterfowl from the Florida 

 lowlands and waters, is not the testimony of 

 theorists, sentimentalists or casual observers, 

 but the very best of all evidence for our 

 purpose, viz., that of men who pursue the 

 collection of skins as a calling. 



But we will first call Mr. Scott himself to 

 the bar. Mr. Scott went down in 1886 to 

 visit localities with which he had already 

 familiarized himself in 1880. As a natural- 

 ist and trained observer he had carried 

 away with him on his first visit a perfectly 

 distinct impression of the region as he then 

 saw it. Let him now speak for himself as 

 to the sense of contrast awakened by his 

 second visit after a six years' interval. 

 Writing of the smaller of the Anclote Keys 

 (two islands in the Gulf of Mexico) he says: 



"Six years ago the smaller of these two keys was 

 a rookery for countless pairs of birds. There were 

 literally thousands of them. The several acres of 

 breeding ground are closely wooded with mangrove 

 and other trees and bushes, and each tree or bush of 

 any size contained several nests. * * * besides, 

 during May and June, hundreds of pairs of frigate 

 birds {Frcgcta aqiiila) though these, as far as I am 

 aware, did not breed. * * This morning in passing 



