Report of an Expedition to Laysan Islands in 1911 281 



place of bird life. An area of over three hundred acres on each side of the 

 buildings was apparently abandoned. Only the Shearwaters moaning in their 

 burrows, the little wingless Rail skulking from one grass tussock to another, 

 and the saucy Finch remained. It is an excellent example of what Professor 

 Nutting calls the survival of the inconspicuous. 



"Here, on every side, are bones bleaching in the sun, showing where the 

 poachers have piled the bodies of the birds as they stripped them of wings and 

 feathers. In the old open guano shed (p. 283) were seen the remains of hundreds 

 knd possibly thousands of wings which were placed there but never cured for 

 shipping, as the marauders were interrupted in their work. 



"An old cistern back of one of the buildings tells a story of cruelty that 

 surpasses anything else done by these heartless, sanguinary pirates, not except- 

 ing the practice of cutting the wings from living birds and leaving them to 

 die of hemorrhage. In this dry cistern the living birds were kept by hundreds 

 to slowly starve to death. In this way the fatty tissue lying next to the skin 

 was used up, and the skin was left quite free from grease, so that it required 

 little or no cleaning during preparation. 



"Many other revolting sights, such as the remains of young birds that had 

 been left to starve and birds with broken legs and deformed beaks, were to be 

 seen. Killing clubs, nets, and other implements used by these marauders 

 were lying all about. Hundreds of boxes to be used in shipping the bird-skins 

 were packed in an old building. It was very evident they intended to carry on 

 their slaughter as long as the birds lasted. 



"Not only did they kill and skin the larger species but they caught and 

 caged the Finch, Honey-eater, and Miller Bird. Cages and material for making 

 them were found." 



Prof. William A. Bryan, the representative of the National Association 

 of Audubon Societies in Hawaii, through whom the depredations of the feather- 

 hunters were brought to the attention of the Government, joined the expedition 

 as a representative of the Biological Survey. Professor Bryan had visited 

 Laysan in 1903 and was thus able to compare existing with past conditions. 

 He writes : 



"This wholesale killing has had an appalling effect on the colony. No one 

 can estimate the thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of birds that 

 have been wilfully sacrificed on Laysan to the whim of fashion and the lust 

 for gain. It is conservative to say that fuUy one-half the number of birds 

 of both species of Albatross that were so abundant everywhere in 1903 have 

 been killed. The colonies that remain are in a sadly decimated condition. 

 Often a colony of a dozen or more birds will not have a single young. Over a 

 large part of the island, in some sections a hundred acres in a place, that ten 

 years ago was thickly inhabited by Albatrosses, not a single bird remains, 

 while heaps of the slain lie as mute testimony of the awful slaughter of these 

 beautiful, harmless, and, without doubt, beneficial inhabitants of the high seas. 



