The Horrors of the Plume Trade 3 



This set me speculating as to the cause of this unusual sight. As I drew nearer, 

 what a spectacle met my gaze, — a sight that made my blood fairly boil with 

 indignation. There, strewn on the floating water-weed, and also on adjacent 

 logs, were at least fifty carcasses of large White and smaller Plumed Egrets, — 

 nearly one-third of the rookery, perhaps more, — the birds having been shot 

 off their nests containing young. What a holocaust ! Plundered for their plumes. 

 What a monument of human callousness! There were fifty birds ruthlessly 



FATHERLESS AND MOTHERLESS — NO ONE TO FEED THEM — GROWING 



WEAKER— ONE ALREADY DEAD FROM STARVATION AND EXPOSURE 



Photographed by A. H. E. Mattingley 



destroyed, besides their young (about 200) left to die of starvation! This last 

 fact was betokened by at least seventy carcasses of the nestlings, which had 

 become so weak that their legs had refused to support them, and they had fallen 

 from the nests into the water below, and had been miserably drowned; while, 

 in the trees above, the remainder of the parentless young ones could be seen 

 staggering in the nests, some of them falling with a splash into the water, as their 

 waning strength left them too exhausted to hold up any longer, while others 

 simply stretched themselves out on the nest and so expired. Others, again, 

 were seen trying in vain to attract the attention of passing Egrets, which were 



