THE BIRD STUDY BOOK 

 feathers bore their brightest lustre, and the birds be- 

 ing assembled on their nesting grounds they could 

 easily be shot in great numbers. After the birds were 

 killed the custom was to skin them, wash off the blood 

 stains with benzine, and dry the feathers with plaster 

 of Paris. Arsenic was used for curing and preserving 

 the skins. Men in this business became very skilful 

 and rapid in their work, some being able to prepare 

 as many as one hundred skins in a day. 



Millinery agents from New York would sometimes 

 take skinners with them and going to a favourable 

 locality would employ local gunners to shoot the 

 birds which they in turn would skin. In this way 

 one New York woman with some assistants collected 

 and brought back from Cobbs' Island, Virginia, 

 10,000 skins of the Least Tern in a single season. 



In the swamps of Florida word was carried that the 

 great millinery trade of the North was bidding high 

 for the feathers of those plume birds which gave 

 life and beauty even to its wildest regions. It was 

 not long before the cypress fastnesses were echoing 

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