90 
BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
and abhorrent fashion of wearinor slain birds as 
ornaments. The degrading business of supplying 
the demand for this kind of feminine adornment 
must doubtless continue to flourish in our midst, 
commerce not being compatible with morality, but 
the material comes from other lands, unblessed as 
yet with Wild Bird Protection Acts, and "indi- 
vidual efforts, and thousands of centres of personal 
influence ; " it comes mainly from the tropics, where 
men have brutish minds and birds a brilliant 
plumage. This trade, therefore, does not greatly 
affect the question of our native bird life, and the 
consideration of the means, which may be within 
our reach, of making it more to us than it now is. 
Some species from warm and even hot climates 
have been found to thrive well in England, breed- 
ing in the open air ; as, for instance, the black 
and the black-necked swans, the Egyptian goose, 
the mandarin and summer ducks, and others too 
numerous to mention. But these birds are semi- 
domestic, and are usually kept in enclosures, and 
that they can stand the climate and propagate 
when thus protected from competition is not 
strange ; for we know that several of our hardy 
domestic birds — the fowl, pea-fowl, Guinea-fowl, 
and Muscovy duck — are tropical in their origin. 
Furthermore, they are all comparatively large, an i 
if they ever become feral in England, it will not be 
