THE CONSERVATION OF BIRDS. 261 



The dirt had been beaten smooth with its wings ; its neck was 

 arched; feathers on its head were raised, and its bill was 

 buried in the blood-clotted feathers of its breast, where a gap- 

 ping wound showed that a leaden missile struck. It was an 

 awful picture of pain. Sorely wounded, this heron had crawled 

 away and, after enduring hours of agony, had died, the victim 

 of a foolish fashion. Young herons had been left by scores 

 in the nests to perish from exposure and starvation. These 

 little sufferers, too weak to rise, reached their heads over the 

 nests and faintly called for food, which the dead mothers could 

 never bring." 



This slaughter of the innocents is by no means confined to 

 our Southern States. During four months seventy thousand 

 bird-skins were supplied to the New York trade by one Long 

 Island village. " On the coast-line of Long Island," wrote 

 Mr. William Dutcher, not long ago, " the slaughter has been 

 carried on to such a degree that, where, a few years since, 

 thousands and thousands of terns were gracefully sailing over 

 the surf-beaten shore and the wind-rippled bays, now one is 

 rarely to be seen." Land-birds of all sorts have also suffered 

 in a similar way, both on Long Island and in adjacent locali- 

 ties in New Jersey. Nor have the interior regions of the 

 , United States escaped the visits of the milliner's agent. An 

 Indianapolis taxidermist is on record with the statement that 

 in 1895 there were shipped from that city five thousand bird- 

 skins collected in the Ohio Valley. He adds that "no county 

 in the State is free from the ornithological murderer," and 

 prophesies that birds will soon become very scarce in the 

 State. 



These isolated examples can only suggest the enormous 

 number of birds that are sacrificed on the altar of fashion. 

 The universal use of birds for millinery purposes bears suffi- 

 cient testimony to the fact. Yet it is probable that most 

 women who follow the fashion seldom appreciate the suffer- 

 ing and the economic losses which it involves. 



