Correspondence.



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agreed that it is impossible for the agents of the plume-traders to pick up shed

“ aigrettes,” and that these feathers are undoubtedly plucked from the slaughtered

birds. If moulted plumes can be obtained as Dr. Butler mentions, how is it

that the poor Egrets are becoming exterminated ? Even if it is not necessary to

slaughter them, the fact remains that they are slaughtered, and I consider it a

most abominable and vicious way of obtaining a living. No doubt plenty of

people have earned a living by slave-traffic, opium growing, etc., etc., but are we

to hesitate to put down such things on that account ? Human beings bring

punishments upon themselves, the birds are unable to reason sufficiently to

avert the miserable destiny which, owing to humans, so often awaits them.


Let the plume-traders and milliners employ the people in the factories

and workshops upon artificial plumes, etc.


If the turnover represents more than six millon sterling a year, and more

than 50,000 men and women derive a living through the plume trade, all I can

say is that it is a shameful blot upon humanity’s civilized escutcheon, and are

we to countenance such an evil, connected as it is -with intense cruelty to the

birds, because people mustn’t suffer, whatever they may do ?


Are we, as aviculturists, who strive to keep a few birds happy in our

aviaries, where they sing and build their nests, and are protected from many

foes ; to encourage indiscriminate and cruel slaughter, instead of doing our

utmost to crush it down ?


I drew attention in a review, to Mr. Hornaday’s book, ‘‘Our Vanishing

Wild Life; ” and no one after reading that would be anywhere but on the side

of the persecuted and exterminated birds.


Mr. HORNADAY says :—“ To offset as far as possible the absolutely true

“charge that Egrets bear their best plumes in the breeding season, when the

“ hapless young are in the nest, and the parent birds must be killed to obtain

“their plumes, the feather trade has obtained from three Frenchmen—Leon

“ Laglaize, Mayeul Grisol and F. Geay—a beautiful and plausible story to

“the effect that in Venezuela the enormous output of Egret plumes has been

“ obtained by picking up, off the bushes and out of the water and mud, the

“ shed feathers of those birds! According to the story, Venezuela is full of

“ Egret farms, called ‘ garceros ’—where the birds breed and moult under

“strict supervision, and kindly drop their feathers in such places that it is

“possible to find them, and to pick them up, in a high state of preservation !

“ and we are asked to believe that it is these very Venezuelan picked up feathers

“that command in London the high price of forty-four dollars per ounce !


“ Mr. Laglaize is especially exploited by Mr. Downham, as a French

“traveller of high standing, and well-known in the Zoological Museums of

“France ; but, sad to say, when Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn cabled to the

t( Museum of Natural History in Paris, inquiring about Laglaize, the cable

“flashed back the one significant word: ’ ‘ Inconnu ! ’ ’ (Unknown!)


“ That the great supply of immaculately perfect Egret plumes that

“ annually come out of Venezuela could by any possibility be picked up in the



