THE GULF COAST OF FLORIDA 25? 



adequate to express, not only my amazement, 

 but also the increasing horror that grew on me 

 day after day as I sailed southward. I was sick 

 at heart before the cruise was well under way. 

 The great Maximo rookery at the mouth of 

 Tampa Bay was no longer a rookery; it was a 

 deserted mangrove island. The beautiful rookery 

 at the mouth of John's Pass was the resort of 

 only a few frightened birds, and so it continued. 

 At a point on the Myiakka River I saw a breed- 

 ing place of the little white egret in process of 

 destruction, and at another point in Charlotte 

 Harbor I arrived the day after a great nesting 

 resort had, as the "plume hunters" phrased it, 

 been " broken up." At both places the result was 

 accomplished in the same way. To put the 

 reader fully in possession of the method I shall 

 go briefly into the matter. 



The time when the several kinds of herons, 

 known as egrets, wear their decorative plumes is 

 coincident with the nuptial season. Then nature 

 adds to their charm and beauty these superb deco- 

 rations. They are worn only for a brief period, 

 perhaps six weeks or two months altogether, and 

 during all this interval the birds are busied in 

 mating, in nest building, in incubating their eggs, 

 and in rearing and feeding their young. It is 

 a comparatively easy thing to disturb birds and 

 to drive them away at the period of nest build- 



