EXOTIC BIRDS FOR BRITAIN 139 



to be merely a thing to be lightly taken by human 

 hands, in order that its dropped garment may be 

 sold for filthy lucre. There are warehouses in this 

 city where it is possible for a person to walk ankle- 

 deep — ^literally to wade — ^in bright-plumaged bird- 

 skins, and see them piled shoulder-high on either 

 side of him — a sight to make the angels weep ! 

 Not the angel called woman. It is not that she is 

 naturally more cruel than man : bleeding wounds 

 and suffering in all its forms, even the sigh of a 

 burdened heart, appeal to her quick sympathies, 

 and draw the ready tears ; but her imagination helps 

 her less. The appeal must in most cases be direct 

 and through the medium of her senses, else it is not 

 seen and not heard. If she loves the ornament of a 

 gay-winged bird, and is able to wear it with a light 

 heart, it is because it calls up no mournful image 

 to her mind ; no little tragedy enacted in some far-off 

 wilderness, of the swift child of the air fallen and 

 bleeding out its bright life, and its callow nestlings, 

 orphaned of the breast that warmed them, dying 

 of hunger in the tree. We know, at all events, that 

 out of a female population of many millions in this 

 country, so far only ten women, possibly fifteen, 

 have been found to raise their voices — ^raised so 

 often and so loudly on other questions — ^to protest 

 against the barbarous and abhorrent fashion of 

 wearing slain birds as ornaments. The degrading 



