16 
HISTORY AND WORK OF THE 
Societies under direction of our National Audubon Society. 
During the summer of 1905 an international ornithological 
congress was held in London at which the question of bird 
protection was taken up vigorously. Three meetings had 
been held previously, at Vienna, Budapest and Paris. At 
these meetings bones and pther remains of extinct species 
of birds were exhibited and the list given as destroyed by 
man is a surprisingly large one, running into the score, and 
a score more are on the verge of extermination. 
The Germans are becoming active in bird protection and 
the British have had bills introduced in their various colonies 
providing for protection. One can appreciate the traffic in 
birds when he reads the report of Dr. T. S. Palmer, of the 
United States Biological Survey, for 1905 to the effect that 
“one consignment of foreign birds arrives on an average 
nearly every day in the year, that in busy seasons as many 
as ten thousand birds have come to New York on one 
steamer.” He further states that 200,000 canaries arrive in 
this country yearly and 40,000 miscellaneous birds. On the 
other hand, there was a large shipment of wild birds from 
this country to Europe consisting mainly of Cardinals, Mock- 
ingbirds, Indigo Buntings and a score species of our bright- 
plumaged warblers. We have been speaking about the com- 
merce in live birds, but it is a small matter compared with 
the traffic for millinery purposes. 
The Plume Trade. 
Bird Notes and News of the Royal Society (England), for 
1905, has an item on the plume trade which is printed in full: 
The trade report on the sales held in London on April 
11, 1905, records a good attendance of buyers and good com- 
petition. Birds-of-paradise sold well at steady prices; 2,258 
of light and dark jdumed were offered, and 3,886 ‘Various,” 
the prices varying from 22s. for light plumes to 5d. for kings. 
Of Tmpeyan pheasants 100 skins were sold; and of the 295 
nackages of “osprey” feathers, 145 were stated to be East 
Indian, 45 \'enezuelan, 52 South American, 41 Senegal, T 
Chinese, and 5 Turkish. The miscellaneous bird-skins com- 
;)rised crested pigeons, cocks-of-the-rock, trogons, tanagers. 
