66 Bird- Lore 



in flight. What feathers are so dropped are those that are frayed, worn out^ 

 and forced out by the process of molting. 



"The molting season is not during the hatching season, but is after the 

 hatching season. 



"The shedding, or molting, takes place once a year; and during this molt- 

 ing-season the feathers, after having the hard usage of the year from wind, 

 rain and other causes, when dropped are of absolutely no commercial value." 



(From letter of Julian A. Dimock, Peekamose, New York.) 



"I know a goodly number of the plume-hunters of Florida. I have camped 

 with them and talked to them. I have heard their tales of adventure and even 

 full accounts of the 'shooting-up' of an Egret rookery. Never has a man in 

 Florida suggested to me that plumes could be obtained without killing the 

 birds. 



'T have known the wardens, and have visited rookeries after they had 

 been 'shot-up,' and the evidence all pointed to the e\'erlasting use of the gun. 



"// is certainly not true that the plumes can be obtained without killing the 

 birds bearing them. 



"Nineteen years ago, I visited the Cuthbert Rookery with one of the men 

 who discovered the birds nesting in that Lake. He and his partner had sold- 

 the plumes gathered then for more than a thousand dollars. He showed me 

 how they hid in the bushes and shot the birds. He even gave me a chance to 

 watch him kill two or three birds. 



"I know personally the man chiefly responsible for the slaughter of the 

 birds at Alligator Bay. He laughed at the idea of getting plumes without 

 killing the birds. I well know the man who shot the birds up Rogers River, 

 and even saw some of the empty shells left on the ground by him. 



"I have camped with Seminoles, whites, blacks, outlaws, and those within 

 the pale, connected with plume-hunting, and all tell the same story: The 

 birds are shot to get the plumes. 



"The evidence of my own eyes, and the action of the birds themselves, 

 convinces me that there is not a shadow of doubt concerning this point." 



(From Affidavit of George N. Chamberlin, Daytona, Fla.) 



"George N. Chamberlin, being duly sworn, deposes and says that he has 

 been a resident of Daytona, Florida, for nearly twenty-four years and is fa- 

 miliar with the life and habits of the Egret, or Snowy Heron, large numbers 

 of which formerly nested in rookeries adjacent to the Halifax and Indian 

 River country, between St. Augustine and Miami. Large colonies of birds 

 once inhabiting these rookeries, have been almost entirely exterminated by 

 plume-hunters who, after shooting them, remove the plumes by a knife cut, 

 known as scalping, after which the bodies are left to rot or decay. 



"It is during the nesting-season that the bird's natural fear of man disap- 

 pears under stress of providing for and protecting its young. It is then that 



