64



The Plumage Question and Aviculture.



That the matter is possible we do not doubt for a single instant.

Under favourable conditions Egrets can be bred in confinement, and

the taking' of plumes from captive birds is an easy matter. Unfor¬

tunately they are large eaters, feeding on fish and other aquatic

aaimals, so that their keep would he an expensive matter, yet in

a suitable environment it should not be impossible to farm them

on an economic basis.


Birds of Paradise offer, perhaps, a more difficult problem, but

we now know, through Aviculture, that they are fairly hardy in

confinement and Sir Wm. Ingram has shown us that they will thrive

wild in other quarters of the Globe, where they could be much more

easily farmed and protected than in their native haunts, so that if

due attention was bestowed on them their case need be by no means

hopeless.


We must bear in mind that the destruction of these birds is,

as matters stand at present, only a matter of time and that then the

profit from much of the Plume Trade is gone. Can we not appeal to

the Trade before it is too late, to carry out a thorough investigation

on these lines which, we feel sure, would in the future repay them

a thousand-fold, and thus do away with these futile attempts at

legislation and counter legislation which entirely fail to reach the

root of the matter.


Here is also a chance for Aviculture to show its practical use

and at the same time to keep the trade open for its own necessities.

Prohibitive legislation is already beginning in certain countries, e.g.

America and Prance, to suck at Avicultural life blood, putting back

the progress of science and denying to many the pleasure and know¬

ledge to be derived from the keeping of the birds, to which also plume

wearers and bird keepers have equal, hut not greater, rights than the

most rabid of protectionists.


Let us, therefore, honestly attempt to solve this question by

the method that has hitherto been applied successfully to other

cognate cases and in a manner fair and satisfactory to plume lovers,

the trade, the protectionists, and lastly, but by no means least, to

those species which we are morally bound to leave in undiminished

numbers for the enjoyment of future generations.



