Reviews.



47



At the end of three months Mr. Scott decided to leave the

shop and seek to obtain employment elsewhere, and before very

long he was engaged to take charge of the natural history

collection of the newly-formed museum of natural history

connected with the School of Science at Princeton, from which

has long since grown the Princeton University.


Of the habits of birds observed during his many wander¬

ings, Mr. Scott tells us much that our members will read with

intense interest. He viewed with the keenest delight the sight,

never to be forgotten, of vast colonies, or “rookeries” of Herons

and Egrets, breeding along the coast and lagoons of Florida, but

he discovered with dismay, six or seven years later, that the

whole of this “thing of beauty and priceless value, a never

ceasing panorama of action suggesting emotions of a profound

nature—all this was wantonly destroyed.” The ladies who wear

the fashionable sprays termed “ospreys” and “aigrets” have

little idea as to how these are obtained. Let them listen to Mr.

Scott:


“The time when the several kinds of Herons, known as Egrets,

wear their decorated plumes is coincident with the nuptial season.

Then nature adds to their charm and beauty these superb decorations.

They are worn only for a brief period, perhaps six weeks or two

months altogether and during all this interval the birds are busied in

mating, in nest building, in incubating their eggs, and in rearing and

feeding their young. It is a comparatively easy thing to disturb birds

and to drive them-’av'ay at the period of nest building. Even when

the eggs are laid, the old birds will often abandon them if slightly

alarmed. When the helpless young are in the nest nothing short of a

catastrophe will induce their desertion. The parental instinct and

affection is now strongest; the perpetuation of kind, the great

. achievement of all life, is about to be accomplished. The consumma¬

tion of that end, on which is based the strongest and most fundamental

of animal passions, is about to be fulfilled. This is the time and season

chosen by the plume hunter for his harvest. Now he realizes that the

cries of the young birds, hungry in their nests, will surely bring the

parents back at short intervals, no matter how frequently disturbed and

frightened away. To accomplish his object more surely he avails

himself of modern contrivances for killing. The almost noiseless

Flobert rifle, with its tinj' charge to speed the fatal ball, the gun whose

report is hardly louder than the snapping of a twig, is his weapon.

Stationed within ten or twelve feet of a nest both parents are secured



