AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY. 
27 
their wings, the fowlers in their haste do not stop to kill the 
wounded birds, but merely wrench the wings off, and cast the 
birds back to die in slow agony on the water. The wretches 
who are engaged in this work come at last to take pleasure in it, 
and regard it as good sport ; the birds, they have been heard to 
say, when their wings are being wrenched off, “ cry or scream, 
just like a child.” 
Equally shocking is the case of the white egret. It is known 
that the aigrette, so much affected by women in head-decorations 
at the present time, is made of the slender, decomposed dorsal 
feathers of the small white egret, or heron ; and that these 
feathers form the bird’s nuptial ornament, being acquired at the 
pairing time, or love season, and shed when the breeding is 
over. The birds inhabit heronries, and it is in the breeding 
season that they are sought for by the feather-hunters : for it is 
only at that time that they are found congregated together in 
considerable numbers. It is then, too, that their anxiety for 
the safety of their young makes them fearless of the gunners, 
the instinct of self-preservation being overmastered by the love 
of their offspring. 
••\s they hover in a white cloud over the heads of the hunters 
they are shot down without trouble ; and when the few orna- 
mental feathers have been plucked from each bird, the carcasses 
are thrown down in a heap to fester in the sun, and the fledglings 
are left to starve in the nests. 
This subject was referred to by the Times of October 17, 1893, 
in a leading article on “ Feathered Women,” from which we 
quote the subjoined passage : — 
“ Hosv long will women tolerate a fashion which involves 
such wholesale, wanton, and hideous cruelty as this ? If their 
sense of humanity is too feeble, will not their native sense of 
maternit)^ arouse them ? The case of the egret is not a singular 
one. Of nearly all the birds with which women adorn their 
dress, the nuptial plumage is the brightest, and, therefore, that 
which is most in demand. Let every woman who adorns herself 
with a dead bird, or with plumage only to be got by wanton 
slaughter, think first of the bright and joyous being that has 
died in order that she may be smart, and then of the callow 
fledglings lingering in desolate starvation in the ravished and 
deserted nest. If these things were fully known, surely there is 
no good and reflecting woman who would care, and no bad or 
thoughtless woman who would dare, to wear the feathers of 
birds thus cruelly slaughtered. And why should they not 
be fully known ? If in every pulpit of the land this shocking story 
of the egrets were told, surely for once humanity would prove stronger 
than fashion. Let it be clearly understood, once for all, that the 
feathered woman is a cruel woman, that for the sake of a passing 
fashion, which pleases no rational being and should disgust all 
who can think and feel and understand, she brings dishonour 
upon her sex, and robs nature of its beauty without adding to 
