168 Canadian Record of Science. 



" That the President be authorized to issue a circular to 

 the ministers of the various congregations of the city espe- 

 cially, and as far as possible of the Province, and ask them 

 to bring to the notice of the ladies of their respective con- 

 gregations, the subject of the slaughter of birds for millinery 

 purposes, of which five to ten millions are ruthlessly and 

 unnecessarily slaughtered every year to decorate their 

 head-gear." 



It would be an easy matter to cite instances of the extent 

 of this bird decoration ; as you walk in the streets you have 

 only to look at the head-dress of the ladies and count the 

 birds as you go along. Look in the milliner's windows, and 

 you will be astonished, as I have been. A gentleman walk- 

 ing on Yonge street Toronto, last week, between Trinity 

 Square and Wellesley street, counted no less than 38 whole 

 birds on hats, not to mention all the wings &c. used as em- 

 bellishments. " The assemblage of diverse and incongruous 

 forms sometimes met with on the same hat is often striking 

 in the . extreme ; birds from the opposite ends of the earth, 

 and of the ornithological scale of classification, being brought 

 into most inharmonious combination, viewed even from the 

 artistic stand-point. Bearing on this subject, and illustra- 

 ting the range of taste in such matters, as well as the extent 

 to which birds are used for hat embellishment, may be given 

 the following inventory, furnished by an ornithological 

 friend, of what recently met his eye in a Madison Avenue 

 horse-car in New York. The car contained thirteen women, 

 of whom eleven wore birds, as follows : (1) heads and wing 

 of three European starlings ; (2) an entire bird (species un- 

 known), of foreign origin : (3) seven warblers, representing 

 four species; (4) a large tern; (5) the heads and wings of 

 three shore-larks ; (6) the wings of seven shore-larks, and 

 grass-finches ; (7) one-half of a galliuule ; (8) a small tern ; 

 (9) a turtle-dove; (10) a vireo and a yellow-breasted chat; 

 (11) ostrich-plumes. That this exhibition was by no means 

 exceptional as to number or variety is obvious to any one 

 who has given close attention to the ornithological displays 

 one daily meets with in street-cars and elsewhere, wherever 

 he may travel. Advertisements in newspapers, by milli- 



