316



Correspondence.



“FOR LOVE OF SCIENCE.”


SIR, — I have read with much interest the various letters respecting my

article under this heading, in the July No. of our Magazine and in Le Chenil.

To my horror I discover that I have committed the unpardonable sin of not at

once repudiating with scorn the evidence published in trade Reports touching the

present method of obtaining Egret plumes in Venezuela. The truth is that I

was so pleased to be assured, not only by French plumage collectors, but by His

Britannic Majesty’s Minister at Venezuela in a letter under date of January

14tli, 1909, directed to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds * (that the

wholesale massacre of families in which we had (with the deepest horror and

disgust) been taught to believe, as the sole method by which Egret’s plumes

were or could be collected, was no longer practised : that I thought it would

please my grieved fellow-members of this Society to be told the joyful news.


Not having ever been out of Europe in this life, I do not pretend to any

knowledge beyond what I read : however I need not enlarge upon this point,

which was the last item touched upon in my article, but has been referred to as

if it had been an obsession with me and had tinctured my whole existence and

all my writings, whereas — as I stated before—I personally object to see the

mortal remains of birds, however beautiful, perched aloft upon women’s hats.

At the same time I do not for a moment admit that feathers, picked up after a

moult from bushes in the sleeping quarters of birds (not out of the mud under

deserted nests), must necessarily be either broken, frayed or soiled. I often pick

up feathers in my comparatively small aviaries, after the moult of my birds, in

absolutely perfect condition. If it is a deadly sin for me, when I am told that

some crying evil has been remedied by very strict laws, to ask my friends to

rejoice with me, I suppose I must be content to be a sinner and unrepentant;

but it is not exactly pleasant, when I would do good, to be informed that evil is

present with me.


Now I will cease to be feather-brained and revert to the commencement

of my paper. Monsieur A. P. (I don’t know the gentleman’s patronymic) speaks

of me as birdsnesting when a village infant and Mr. St. Quintin as a lad.

I was not born in a country village but at Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, in June 1844,

and I began to collect eggs in the Blean Woods near the village of Herne when

staying in the neighbourhood with my wife in 1871. Belonging, as I then did

to the Staff of our National Museum, I loved the natural sciences for their

own sake and not for personal profit: the study of Natural History is rarely

profitable.


As I never was a rabid collector, of course I agree perfectly with many of



* See “ The Feather Trade, the case for the defence” pp. 30, 31. The

London Chamber of Commerce (Incorporated) Oxford Court, Cannon Street,

E.C., a booklet courteously sent to me by our friend Frank Finn, the well-known

ornithologist. In all fairness this accumulated evidence ought to be carefully

weighed by all bird-lovers.



