for Love of Science.



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factories and workshops for the treatment of feathers. The turnover

is more than six million pounds sterling a year, and more than

50,000 men and women derive a living from the manufacture and

industries associated with it.


Then, again, as touching the destruction of Egrets, about

which more capital has been made by the protectionist party than

anything else, we read (p. 9) :—“It is not necessary to slaughter

Egrets to obtain their ornamental feathers. Indeed, Mr. Geay, who

lived and travelled for many years in Venezuela, Darien and French

Guinea, has noticed that in moulting time you find these elegant

feathers scattered here and there in large quantities on the bushes

and at the foot of the trees near the “ lagunos ” and small rivers.

Natives pick up these feathers, which would else be lost, by the kilo,

and sell them to the trade without any damage to either species of

heron. When collected in proper time, these feathers are almost as

fine as those of a shot bird. Soiled feathers easily regain their

beautiful snowy white by the peroxide water treatment. In no case

are they taken from the living bird.”


This statement is confirmed by Mr. Leon Lag'laize who

travelled for two years in the valleys of Orinoco and Apure. But I

need not make further quotations from this essay since its cost is

only 6d. and anybody interested in the subject can readily secure

a copy and study it for himself.


Finally, no real lover of birds objects to a certain amount of

reasonable protection, but in the present day, restrictions upon the

liberty of the subject are becoming every year more unbearable, the

masses are being tormented for the self-glorification of a few mistaken

sentimentalists and the means of earning an honest livelihood are

being continually decreased. If, to the discouraging of the laudable

instincts of budding naturalists, to the enfeebling of the children of

would-be bird-catchers (by depriving them of food at a time when it

is most needed), be added the total abolition of the trade in living

birds, the misery resulting to many thousands will be simply appal¬

ling. Surely to anybody with a spark of real humanity it would be

infinitely better that a thousand birds should spend their lives in

aviaries than that one human being should perish from hunger or

be reduced to want.



