Protection of North American Birds. 163 



at considerable intervals of time and from a large area of 

 country. A squad of street urchins set loose in the suburbs 

 will often destroy as many nests in a single morning's foray 

 as a collector, gathering for strictly scientific purposes, would 

 take in a whole season, and with far more harmful results, 

 because local and sweeping. Much of the egg-collecting by 

 schoolboys should be stopped, and can be easily checked 

 under proper statutory regulations." 



Having called your attention to various agencies and 

 objects affecting the decrease of birds, we now come to con- 

 sider the most important — many-times exceeding all the 

 others together — the most heartless and least defensible, 

 namely, the sacrifice of birds' to fashion, for hat and bonnet 

 ornamentation and personal decoration. Startling as this 

 assertion may seem, its demonstration is easy. 



" In the United States of 50,000,000 inhabitants, half, or 

 25,000,000, may be said to belong to what some one has 

 forcibly termed the 'dead-bird wearing gender,' of whom at 

 least 10,000,000 are not only of the bird-wearing age, but — 

 judging from what we see on our streets, in public assemb- 

 lies and public conveyances — also of bird-wearing proclivi- 

 ties. Different individuals of this class vary greatly in their 

 ideas of style and quantity in the way of what constitutes a 

 proper decoration for that part of the person the Indian de- 

 lights to ornament with plumes of various kinds of wild fowl. 

 Some are content with a single bird, if a large one, mounted 

 nearly entire : others prefer several small ones, — a group of 

 three or four to half a dozen ; or the heads and wings of 

 even a greater number. Others, still, will content them- 

 selves with a few wings fancifully dyed and bespangled, or 

 a wreath of grebe ' fur,' usually dyed, and not unfrequently 

 set off with egret-plumes. In the average, however, there 

 must be an incongruous assemblage made up of parts of vari- 

 ous birds, or several entire birds, representing at least a 

 number of individuals. But let us say that these 10,000,000 

 bird-wearers have but a single bird each, that these birds 

 may be ' made over ' so as to do service for more than a 

 single season ; and still what an annual sacrifice of bird-life 

 is entailed ! Can it be placed at less than 5,000,000 ? — ten 



