18 



BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



longing on the part of dealers and collectors to 

 swoop down upon the tiny songster, and sweep 

 " something new " off the face of the earth into 

 their catalogues and cabinets. They have swooped 

 and swept accordingly, and the extinction of this 

 wren seems likely to attest their prowess. The song 

 of St. Kilda's bird is also stated to be a slight 

 variant on the ordinary brilliant lyric of the wren ; 

 to be louder and clearer, as though striving to 

 make itself heard above the harsh cries of gannets 

 and guillemots and the roar of the ocean. But 

 the song cannot be collected : it can only be 

 silenced. 



Meantime, while the hunting of the wren has 

 gone merrily forward, conditions of life have been 

 modified at St. Kilda. With improved communica- 

 tion, and with the better housing provided by the 

 present owner, Macleod of Macleod, has come a 

 development of sheep-breeding and wool industries, 

 and the St. Kildan of to-day does not rely to the 

 extent his fathers did on fulmar and guillemot. 

 Trading enterprise has, however, taught him a 

 new way of making money out of the birds of his 

 island, and, as is usually the case when trading 

 enterprise is the instructor, the profit does not go 

 wholly to the native. " Of late years,' 5 says 

 Dr. Wiglesworth, who visited St. Kilda in 1902, 

 " the trading collector has got a foothold in the 

 place, and the number of eggs now exported 

 annually to supply the insatiable demand of the 

 trade seems destined to do more damage to the 

 bird population of St. Kilda than the natives 

 would ever have effected if left to themselves." 

 The raid is, of course, mainly on the rarest birds — 

 the fork-tailed petrel, and, especially, the St. Kilda 

 wren, which " is hunted down remorselessly for 

 the sake of its eggs." At two sales at Stevens's 

 Auction Rooms this autumn (1903) there were 

 offered for sale nine or ten clutches of these eggs, 

 with the nests, taken this year and sent to market 

 by one person. They did not fetch any great 

 price, but the gain is presumably sufficient to 

 encourage collectors of this type to continue 

 their depredations until the last wren has been 

 hunted down, and they have the satisfaction of 

 knowing that they have "wiped out" one sprightly 

 little song-bird from its only habitat. 



At the same sales various clutches of protected 

 eggs sent in by the same individual (who had 

 about a hundred lots at each sale) were objected 

 to as having been illegally taken, and were at 

 once withdrawn by Mr. Stevens. In other cases 

 rare eggs had been taken in counties in which 

 protection orders have not been obtained or are 



inadequate. But the case of the St. Kilda wren 

 stands alone ; the goodwill of the proprietor 

 of the island is insufficient to meet it ; and we 

 trust that some way may be found of protecting 

 the birds before protection is too late. The excep- 

 tion in the Act of 1880 was intended to befriend 

 a hardy and straitened people. It was never 

 meant to cover the spoliations of curiosity 

 mongers and of the trading collector by giving 

 facilities for the extinction of unique and interest- 

 ing forms of wild life. 



BIRDS IN HATS. 



The following letter from the Duchess of Portland, 

 President of the Society for the Protection of Birds, 

 appeared in the Times of October 27th, 1903 : — 



" Any one who bestows even a passing glance at 

 the milliners' windows cannot fail to notice with 

 amazement the profusion of stuffed birds, birds' 

 wings, and various bird trimmings which are con- 

 spicuous in so many of them, whether in Regent 

 Street, Kensington, the suburbs, or in far provincial 

 towns. 



" Hats composed of feathers — some wreathed in 

 bullfinches, some with twisted and distorted bodies 

 of terns, others decked with dyed plumes — offend 

 the eye at every turn. From sea-gulls and bull- 

 finches, in fact, to the brilliant gem of the tropics, 

 nothing appears to be sacred to the trade. 



" Is it useless to protest yet once more against 

 the reckless slaughter of bird-life which this bar- 

 barous fashion entails ? 



" The personal vanity which sacrifices not the 

 life only but the very race of birds created for the 

 beautifying of the world is unworthy of the civili- 

 zation of the twentieth century. In the interest of 

 good taste, and for the sake of bird-life, I hope I 

 need not plead in vain." 



[Copies ot the above letter, which has evoked 

 much sympathetic comment in the Press, can be had 

 at the office of the Society, 3, Hanover Square, W.] 



In supporting the Duchess of Portland's appeal, 

 Lord Medway writes to the Times : — 



" Partly from ignorance, partly from indifference, 

 but still more because ladies appear to be the 

 slaves of their dressmakers and milliners, they 

 continue to turn their hats into cemeteries. Why 

 does no young Member of Parliament grasp the 

 nettle, and bring in a Bill making it illegal to 

 exhibit in a shop a hat decorated with feathers, 

 except those of the ostrich and birds killed for 

 food? It would be a case of protection to which 

 no one could object." 



Mr. T. Southwell, writing to the Eastern Daily 

 Press (October 28th, 1903), apropos of an exhibition 



