66 



BIRD NOTES AND NEWS. 



while they are netted by tens of thousands on 

 migration through France and Italy. It is of 

 little avail for naturalists to denounce the ruthless 

 slaughter of the exquisite Birds-of-paradise for 

 women's headgear if the land where the birds 

 breed does not extend some legislative aegis 

 over them. Even the United States, which in 

 many ways is taking the lead in Bird Protection 

 matters, is discovering that it is comparatively 

 useless to protect the Herons and Egrets of 

 American territory, while foreign egret plumes 

 may be imported and used by the trade. In 

 such a case all egrets are apt to become 

 "foreigners," since they have no language or 

 accent to attest their citizenship ; just as every 

 game-bird in the English poulterer's shop 

 becomes a foreigner immediately Close Time 

 begins. 



The question of the Swallow is a typical and 

 pressing one. The decrease in the number of 

 birds appears to be more marked this year than 

 ever; and it seems probable that not one 

 swallow but a host of gnats may serve to show 

 the approach of an English summer of the 

 future. In this matter the aid of France 

 and other Continental countries is imperative. 



Another question for international considera- 

 tion is that of plume-birds in general. These 

 comprise the gems of the entire feathered 

 race; many of them are very rare as well as 

 singularly beautiful creatures, and in danger of 

 extermination. The plume-trade, with its large 

 vested interests and with ramifications in every 

 land, is intent on seizing and bringing to 

 market all of these species on which it can lay 

 hands ; no swamp is so malarial, no forest so 

 dense that a bird may long hide from the 

 hunters to whom its feathers mean gold. Eng- 

 land, it is true — as the nation of shopkeepers in 

 the worst sense of that famous phrase — is the 

 chief mart for all the spoils ; in London ware- 

 houses may be seen cases and rooms full of these 

 gleaming skins and ravished plumes from the 

 tropics before they pass to the feather fac- 

 tory and the milliner's show-room ; but while 

 England's ports remain free, and her commerce 

 what it is, no restriction on imports can be 

 looked to as the remedy for the evil. Nor 



would this be effectual, it would merely remove 

 the central mart to Paris or Vienna ; while taxa- 

 tion would but increase the evil by making the 

 trade a source not only of private gain but of 

 revenue to the country, thus dragging in the 

 nation at large as sleeping partners in the detest- 

 able business. One alternative course is to use 

 every endeavour and every pressure possible to 

 persuade the countries where the plume-birds 

 dwell to guard them and to penalize the export 

 of their skins. In this several British Colonies, 

 as well as the Government of India, have shown 

 the way. " Some of the leading drapery estab- 

 lishments in England, France, Germany and 

 Russia, employ so-called sportsmen to trap, 

 snare, and shoot all our most valuable birds," 

 writes a veteran bird protector of New South 

 Wales to the Sydney press. " Why should this 

 be?" 



Another case for international agreement is 

 afforded by birds such as the Penguins. When 

 Dr. Wilson called attention at the annual meet- 

 ing of the Royal Society for the Protection of 

 Birds to the advisability of securing some pro- 

 tection for the Penguins of Antarctic regions, 

 some of his hearers may have thought that here 

 at least, amid desolate ice-fields where man is. 

 a greater rarity than birds, nothing w r ould need 

 to be done. But the sordid notion of boiling 

 down Penguins wholesale merely for their oil 

 has already been avowed a paying thing ; con- 

 sequently, unless the Governments concerned 

 come to the rescue, the Penguin must go. A 

 flightless bird, assembling in large "rookeries" 

 at the breeding-time, with a very slow rate of 

 reproduction and helpless young, what chance 

 does it stand against commercial cupidity ? 

 Mr. T. Southwell recalls in a letter to the Field 

 (7th April, 1905) how when the Transit of 

 Venus Expedition visited Kerguelen Island, in 

 1874, the whole of the penguin community 

 near Observatory Bay w r as made into " hare 

 soup " for the officers of the vessel ; and how 

 in Macquarie Island the birds have been killed 

 by thousands to be boiled down for oil. It 

 took only a few generations to extirpate the 

 Great Auk, and we move faster now. 



Again, there is the important question of 



