CHAPTER VIII 
BIRDS ON HATS, BOYS, COLLECTORS, SO-CALLED BIRD 
STUDENTS, BIRD HUNTERS, UBIQUITOUS GUNNERS 
Ir is a pleasure to state that the fashion of wearing 
birds on hats is certainly waning. Let every girl and 
every lady interested in song birds refrain from wear- 
ing any feathers except those of game birds, domestic 
birds, and ostriches, and the plume hunters’ business 
will cease to pay and die a natural death. Intelli- 
gent women, prominent in society, can easily place hats 
with song-bird corpses under the ban. With the school- 
girls, the teachers can accomplish the desired result. 
Still more good would result, if some inventive genius 
could discover a process by which artificial feathers could 
be succesfully manufactured from rubber, celluloid, or 
some other substance. Perhaps the feathers of the 
numerous varieties of domestic fowls could be so pre- 
pared that they would satisfy the most divergent tastes. 
Any one who would invent or perfect a process by 
which the manufacture of artificial feathers would be- 
come a commercial success, would be one of the great- 
est benefactors of the birds. I am convinced that the 
majority of women wearing feathers of song birds or 
other wild birds do so from ignorance. Schools, 
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