XXXIV : INTRODUCTION. 
the ‘lion’s share’ of the responsibillty for the decrease of our song birds; with what 
justice, or rather injustice, may be easily shown, for the necessary statistics are not 
difficult to obtain. The catalogue of the ornithological department of the National 
Museum numbers rather less than 110,000. bird-skins. This record covers nearly half a 
century, and the number of specimens is four times greater than that of any other 
museum in this country; while the aggregate number of all our other public museums 
would probably not greatly exceed this number. But to make a liberal estimate, with 
the chance for error on the side of exaggeration, we will allow 300,000 birds for the 
public museums of North America, one-half of which, or nearly one-half, are of foreign 
origin, or not North American. To revert to the National Museum collection, it should 
be stated, that, while only part of the specimens are North American,—say about two- 
thirds,—they represent the work of many individuals, extending over a third of a 
century, and over the whole continent, from Alaska and Hudson Bay to Mexico and 
Florida, and from-.the Atlantic to the Pacific. Furthermore, this number—110,000, 
more or less—is not the number now in the national collection, which is far less than 
this, thousands and thousands of specimens having been distributed in past years to 
other museums in this country and abroad. 
“So far the public museums: now in relation to private cabinets of bird-skins. 
Of these it is safe to say there are hundreds scattered throughout the country, contain- 
ing from three hundred to five or six hundred specimens each, with a few, easily counted 
on the fingers of the two hands, if not on a single hand, numbering five or six thousand 
each, with possibly two approaching ten thousand each. Probably 150,000 would be 
a liberal estimate for the number of North American bird-skins in private cabinets, but, 
again to throw the error on the side of exaggeration, let us say 300,000,—not, how- 
ever, taken in a single year, but the result of all the collecting up to the present time, 
and covering all parts of the continent. Add this number to the number of birds in our 
public museums, less those of foreign origin, and we have, allowing our exaggerated 
estimates to be true, less than 500,000 as the number of North American birds thus 
far sacrificed for science. The few thousand that have been sent to other countries in 
exchange for foreign birds can safely be included under the above estimate, which is at 
least a third above the actual number. 
“We have now passed briefly in review all the agencies and objects affecting the 
decrease of our birds, save one, and that the most important—many times exceeding 
all the others together,—the most heartless and the least defensible, namely, the sacri- 
fice of birds to fashion, for hat ornamentation and personal decoration. Startling as 
this assertion may seem, its demonstration is easy. 
“In this country of 50,000,000 inhabitants, half, or 25,000,000, may be said to- 
belong to what some one has forcibly termed the ‘dead-bird wearing gender,’ of whom 
at least 10,000,000 are not only of the bird-wearing age, but—judging from what we 
see on our streets, in public assemblies, and public conveyances—also of bird-wearing 
proclivities. Different individuals of this class vary greatly in their ideas of style and. 
quantity in the way of what constitutes a proper decoration for that part of the person 
the Indian delights to ornament with plumes of various kinds of wild fowl. Some are 
content with a single bird, if a large one, mounted nearly entire: others prefer several 
