212 
NATURE NOTES. 
FEATHERED WOMEN. 
[Overcrowded as our pages are, we cannot omit this important letter, which 
Mr. W. II. Hudson communicated to the Times of October 17th, and to which 
that paper devotes an admirable leader which we shall, if possible, reprint next 
month. Forcible as the words of both are, they are in no way exaggerated ; and 
it is impossible not to feel disheartened and almost hopeless when one sees 
how little the women of the age are affected either by sentiment or sarcasm. — 
Ed. N.N.'\ 
In a letter from Professor Newton denouncing the bird-wearing fashion, which 
appeared in your columns seventeen years ago (January 28, 1876), the writer pre- 
dicted that the continuance of such a mode would inevitably cause the extinction 
of many of the most beautiful species on the earth. We know that it has con- 
tinued down to the present time, in spite of prophecies and protests, of ridicule, 
of all that individuals and associations have been able to do to arrest it. Many of 
those who have been trying to save the birds have doubtless ere now experienced 
the feeling which caused Ruskin to throw down his pen in anger and sickness of 
heart when engaged in writing Love's Meinie. Small wonder that he could 
not proceed with such a work when he looked about him to see all women, even 
his worshippers, decorated with the remains of slaughtered songsters ! I have 
not the courage to quote here the Cambridge professor’s words, which you, sir, 
printed, but his prophecy has not proved a false one. In the American ornitho- 
logical journals we read the lists of bright-plumaged species which are on the 
verge of extinction ; and besides these, which were lately abundant but are now 
represented by a few scattered and harried individuals, there are many others fast 
becoming so rare that they may be considered as practically lost to the avi-fauna 
of that region. All the world over, where birds have a bright-coloured plumage, 
the same destructive war has been waged, with a result that may be imagined 
when we remember that for twenty-five years the fashion has been universal, and 
that it was estimated nine years ago that twenty to thirty millions of birds were 
annually imported by this country to supply the home demand. 
Since last autumn many of us have been rejoicing in the belief that bird-wear- 
ing was at last going out. So marked was the decline that many of the best 
millinery establishments at the West End and in country towns ceased to supply 
birds. Another sign of the falling off was the very low prices at which even the 
finest examples were offered at drapers’ and milliners’ shops in the poorer and un- 
fashionable districts of London. In some of the thoroughfares where Saturday 
evening markets are held, I saw trays and baskets full of tropical birds exposed — 
tanagers, orioles, kingfishers, trogons, humming birds, &c. — from twopence to 
fourpence-halfpenny per bird. They were indeed cheap — so cheap that even the 
ragged girl from the neighbouring slums could decorate her battered hat, like any 
fine lady, with some bright-winged bird of the tropics. The change was attributed 
to that better feeling so long desired ; to the literature which the Selborne, Bird 
Protection, and other Societies had been industriously disseminating ; and to the 
increased regard for bird life which comes with increased knowledge. Is it 
possible any longer to cherish such a belief when we see the feathers displayed in 
the windows of milliners and drapers in London and every country and seaside 
town at the present moment ; when we read in all the ladies' journals that wings 
are to be “ all the rage ” during the coming winter ; and when almost every 
second woman one sees in the streets flaunts an aigrette of heron’s plumes on her 
bonnet? Of these aigrettes formed of “ospreys," it may be mentioned that they 
consist of the slender decomposed dorsal feathers of the white herons or egrets ; 
that they are the bird’s nuptial ornaments, consequently are only to be obtained 
during the breeding season, when the death of the parent bird involves the death 
by starvation of the young in the nest. P'or the sake of the few ornamental 
feathers yielded by each bird killed, the white herons have been entirely exter- 
minated in Florida, their great breeding district in North America, and the 
massacre has since gone on in South America, Africa, India, and Australia — the 
birds being slaughtered wholesale in the heronries. According to Lord Lilford, 
in his beautifully-illustrated Birds of the British Islands, the thoughtless fashion- 
for these feathers has caused the almost entire extermination of more than one 
