the salmon. The negro fishermen of Flor- 

 ida often surround schools of them with 

 their seines ; but as the lines are hauled 

 in and the circle grows smaller, the dark 

 forms of the 'trout' begin to appear, 



springing over the cork line to the height 

 of five feet or more, and returning to lib- 

 erty in splashes and jets of spray." 



Seth Mindwell. 



MUST THE SNOWY HERON BECOME EXTINCT? 



Upon the women of America rests the 

 solution of the following problem — is the 

 Snowy Heron to be absolutely extermi- 

 nated from the face of the earth, or can 

 the remnant be saved? At fashion's de- 

 mand the thousands of these harmless and 

 beautiful birds have perished from our 

 borders ; only a remnant remains to us. 



Nor is this all ; the area of the plume- 

 hunter's trail has widened beyond our 

 own desolated shores, and reaches our 

 neighboring nesting ranges of these birds, 

 where thousands formerly congregated, 

 but which are now repaidly becoming de- 

 populated. 



Must this vandalism go on in spite of 

 our boasted civilization and humanity? 

 Much has been done to enlighten the pub- 

 lic as to the threatened extinction of the 

 Snowy Heron, and also as to the bitter 

 price of each aigrette of commerce — a 

 price in anguish, for every such aigrette 

 costs not only the life of its helpless 

 owner, but that life is given up under 

 most barbarous conditions, the skin con- 

 taining the aigrette — the wedding plume 

 of the Heron — being torn from the body, 

 the unfortunate bird being left in agony 

 to perish miserably by a slow death of 

 torture. 



Why will men soil their hands with 

 such barbarous traffic, and how can wom- 

 en decorate themselves at such a cost? 

 These plumes are only worn by the 

 Heron in the breeding season ; it is when 

 the nests are filled with helpless baby 



birds that the plume-hunter approaches 

 the colony. He moves cautiously, being 

 careful to be armed with a rifle that 

 makes no noise to alarm the birds, and 

 hides himself well from sight, awaiting 

 the return of some mother to the nest. 

 The very caution of the poor bird, who, 

 before approaching her young, poises her- 

 self at some point of outlook, facilitates 

 the deed of death ; the plume-hunter has 

 found his opportunity and it is but a 

 moment before the victim is writhing in 

 its death agony. 



The report is low ; other mothers wing- 

 ing in toward the nests have not heard 

 it. They are unwarned, unguarded — these 

 helpless mothers — and there is for them 

 neither hope nor pity. Our human 

 American mothers must wear the plumes 

 of the Heron, and there are men brutal 

 enough to supply the demand, one plume- 

 hunter alone, with his two or three assist- 

 ants, boasts of having killed three hun- 

 dred in one afternoon, at a time when 

 the work of extermination had not de- 

 populated the colonies. 



Three hundred birds perishing in an- 

 guish in one afternoon, however, does 

 not complete the scene of suffering, for in 

 the nests are the little ones, crying for 

 food which will never be brought; hun- 

 dreds of little ones whose doom is starva- 

 tion and whose anguish cries are not un- 

 heard by the mutilated, death-stricken lit- 

 tle mothers. 



George Klingle. 



J 86 



