Giant Fish of Florida 
and strong again, and the gap in his pouch had to all 
appearance healed. 
There is an island just off the coast measuring scarce 
one hundred yards in any direction, and thereon stands a 
pelicans’ rookery. There these great confiding, prehistoric- 
looking, silly birds used to gather until they were all but 
shot out by plume-hunters at 25 cents. the skin. And here, in 
the highest trees, some of the great birds still congregate, 
their curious webbed feet looking most incongruous as 
they grasp the swaying branches. The neighbouring island, 
somewhat larger in extent, is the home of innumerable 
cormorants and herons, both blue and white, all nesting 
in the tall black mangroves, and so tame that you may 
approach to within six yards of the little blue herons. Yet on 
all sides are the tiny corpses of deserted little birds, their 
parents in the breeding plumage ruthlessly shot down to 
deck women’s hats! The thin end of the wedge of bird 
protection has, it is true, been inserted, but the law is 
almost inoperative in these out-of-the-way regions, and 
the slaughter proceeds unchecked. And so the beautiful 
American woodlands are being denuded of their unrivalled 
bird life in order that every mistress and every maid may 
dangle “osprey” plumes over their heads. 
With my pictures, then, end my notes, and I am only too 
conscious of their meagreness. My object, however, was, as I 
may have said already, to put before intending visitors to 
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