318



Correspondence.



ancestors and therefore have become instinctive. Unhappily cats seem naturally

attracted to me, and sometimes jump into my lap when I am visiting friends

to my great disgust.


There have been many prosecutions of unhappy persons caught with young

birds in their possession ; and, in spite of all assertions to the contrary, I am

quite satisfied that if I had been caught with the rescued Wagtail in my

possession by any zealous protectionist, I should have been dragged before a

magistrate, fined, and the barely fledged youngster turned loose to die of hunger

and cold, or be devoured by the first predacious creature which came across it :

nor, if I had explained my motives in taking the bird home, should I have been

believed.


The Wryneck is a single-brooded bird, and if we allow six eggs to a sitting,

the hen cruelly plundered in 1872 and the year following was deprived, each

season of the equivalent of seven clutches, whereas under natural conditions

only half a dozen eggs would probably have been laid. Where then is the want

of logic in my remark that to take one sitting from such fertile creatures as

birds, could have no injurious effect upon them ?


I think these are the only points which need comment from me, but the

Editor may surely congratulate himself upon the additional copy which my

little article has brought him.* A. G. BUTLER.



EGRET PLUMES.


SIR,—I had no intention of taking part in the discussion raised by Dr.

Butler’s letter in the June issue of the Magazine, but when recently reading Mr.

Caspar Whitney’s charming book, “The Plowing Road,” published in 1912,1

came across some authentic information on the subject of Egrets which, being

first-hand, has an important bearing on the question and cannot fail to interest

aviculturists. I make no apology, therefore, for quoting Mr. Whitney’s own

words:—“The father [of this family] in the summer season was a plume

hunter, he told me, devoting his efforts almost entirely to Egrets, whose

feathers he-tookto San Fernando de Apure to a milliner’s agent, who assorted

and forwarded them to New York. The last year had been a poor one for him ;

indeed for several seasons the general annual plume harvest had fallen far below

the standard, because of the great and repeated yearly slaughter. He referred

enthusiastically to the profits of the business, declaring he had in a few weeks’

hunting made enough to keep him a year, and [that] one hundred birds in a

single visit to a colony rookery [was] not unusual.


“ Killing an Egret is as easy as killing chickens in the yard, he explained,

because the birds return year after year to the same places to make their

rookeries, which are closely occupied in great numbers, and because they are

easy of approach during their breeding period, the only time when they wear the

white nuptial plume .... known to the millinery world as the aigrette. . . .



[ * He does. ED.]



