THE TRAFFIC IN FEATHERS 



starvation, a method which history shows has never 

 been followed by even the most savage race of men 

 dealing with their most hated enemies. This war of 

 extermination which was carried forward unchecked 

 for years could mean but one thing, namely, the 

 rapid disappearance of the Egrets in the United 

 States. As nesting birds, they have disappeared 

 from New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and also 

 those States of the central Mississippi Valley where 

 they were at one time to be found in great numbers. 

 Amateur Feather Hunters. — Quite aside from the 

 professional millinery feather hunter there should be 

 mentioned the criminal slaughter of birds which has 

 been indulged in by individuals who have killed them 

 for the uses of their own lady friends. I know one 

 Brown Pelican colony which was visited by a tourist 

 who shot four hundred of the big, harmless, inoffen- 

 sive creatures in order to get a small strip of skin on 

 either side of the body. He explained to his boatmen, 

 who did the skinning for him, that he was curious to 

 see if these strips of skin with their feathers would not 

 [•53] 



