I 10 
A SUGGESTION. 
ROM month to month the reader of Nature Notes is 
reminded of the horrors of bird destruction, and that 
woman, for the adornment of her beauty sometimes — 
more often of her very plainness — is making to cease 
and perish from the earth beauty compared with which her own 
is small indeed. For what, if we can set our mere human 
prejudices aside, is the loveliest of women compared with such 
gorgeous and aerial beings as humming-birds and birds-of- 
paradise ? Now, in this April number we have the scorn of 
“ Ouida’s ” powerful pen to remind us. But what use is it if 
our feelings are but lacerated from time to time, and there an 
end ? Cannot something practical be done ? Societies for the 
prevention of cruelty to children and animals exist here in 
England. Why should not a more specialised Society be 
started amongst us whose sole object should be the discounte- 
nancing of the wearing of hats containing the plumage of the 
more rare and beautiful birds, or, indeed, of any birds except 
poultry ? Such a Society should, I think, make children rather 
than their mothers the principal object of its efforts. The 
hearts of children, even the children of fashionable parents, 
are open to good and simple impulses. They have not yet 
become callous. They are “ made of penetrable stuff.” As 
for the heart of the fashionable woman, it is such as beats in 
the statues of Phidias or Praxiteles. She would be a statue 
herself, though not often a masterpiece, were she as marble as 
her heart. To one argument, to one form of appeal only is she 
open, viz., that feathers are no longer the fashion. And if the 
boyhood and girlhood of the country grows up contemning them, 
they will soon cease to be so. Numbers of women, however, 
other than the fashionable ones pure and simple, strut in their 
borrowed plumes. They will be open to the voice and wish of 
their children more than to any other influence. To move the 
children, therefore, is to move the parents. And why should it 
not be done ? Pamphlets could be sent to schools (both girls’ 
and boys’), and the heads of these schools could, perhaps, be 
enlisted in a movement which, though it must advance educa- 
tion, could not interfere with either cricket or football. In this 
way birds in hats might get to be “voted” “bad form” by the 
children of the country, and then the women of the country, 
with minds more open to a phrase of the kind than to the most 
able arguments, the most eloquent appeals, would yield en masse. 
But, though to win the children would be to win the world, the 
mothers might also be attacked personally. I would suggest 
that every member of such a Society and every person interested 
in it should send to its working committee the names and ad- 
dresses of as many women of his acquaintance (or her acquaint- 
ance) as were known to wear bird-decked hats. Such women 
