44 SLA UGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS. 



able ornament deserves nothing but castigation, and that in 

 unmeasured terras. No apology can be made for such 

 wanton cruelty. It is matter for great rejoicing that the 

 wearing of birds on ladies' bonnets has almost gone out of 

 vogue, and is scarcely considered good form to-day ; at 

 least, such is my impression, although I do not profess to 

 be posted on fashionable modes and fads. My opinion is, 

 however, that a brilliant-hued bird on a woman's bonnet 

 would now be considered boisterous — which some of you 

 may recognize as a synonym for " loud." That surely is 

 an indication that the Millennium is coming, and we might 

 already begin to sing, " All hail, the glorious morn ! " with- 

 out being guilty of an anachronism. A bird in the bush is 

 worth forty on the head. It is apt to kill more troublesome 

 insects. Between the man who shoots a beautiful bird 

 and sells it to the fashion-monger, and the woman who wears 

 it, the moral distance is infinitesimal. 



There is another class of slayers of the innocents who 

 deserve a word of rebuke. I may here be treading on 

 delicate ground, and the technologist in bird-lore may take 

 exceptions to some things I shall say. However, to get to 

 the point at once, I refer to the professional collector — the 

 man who massacres birds and burglarizes their nests for 

 glimmering lucre ; the clutcher who is forever clutching 

 after " clutches." I may be accused of lacking the true 

 scientific spirit, and of being a mere sentimentalist ; but I 

 retaliate, if you please, that a little more sentimentality, in 

 the sense of tenderness of heart, would not hurt a good 

 many of the naturalists of this and other countries. If 

 science consists merely or chiefly in addition and multiplica- 

 tion tables, and never-ending catalogues of Latin names, 

 then let us slay all the sweet creatures around us, and live 

 on statistics instead of fruits and cereals. But I suspect that 

 there is as much science in discovering a live bird's real 

 character, learning his cunning ways, his likes and dislikes, 

 as in classifying a dead bird's bones. 



