Who has followed the steps of Lechevallier ? We 
only catch occasional glimpses, in the pages of Mr. 
Scott, of a malevolent figure ranging the southern 
swamps, that reminds us of the child kidnappers of 
Gilles de Retz, the French “ Bluebeard. ” We only know 
(as eye-witness Frank Johnson told Mr. Scott) how 
again for our sisters and cousins, Lechevallier happened 
to be seen slaughtering as he went along, as a mere trifle, 
80 to ioo brown pelicans that nested on a little island 
near Johnson’s house, and then, as always, leaving the 
young to perish in the nests. Thus one massacre out 
of hundreds gets upon record, that might do for a 
court of law. 
Fair one, full of influence over men, children, 
and fashion, throw this into the fire for the sake 
of your egrets, before you read that Johnson told 
Mr. Scott how Batty, a New York plume man, with 
headquarters near Fort Myers, West Florida, helped 
by from 40 to 60 men, ravaged the whole west coast of 
Florida for you ; bought up all the spoonbills, egrets, 
ibises, and herons that his men could kill from the 
nests; all the breeding Wilson’s plovers, all the sand- 
pipers, least terns, boat-tailed blackbirds, gray king- 
birds, owls, and hawks that his boatmen could land and 
shoot, in season or out of season, at from 10 cents to $1 
a carcass, and from 20 cents to $2.50 a skin. 
Egrets (back feathers), 40 cts. 
Snowy heron (back, breast, and head), 55 cts. 
Ardea rufa (back), 40 cts. 
Ardea riijficolis tricolor (back), ... 10 cts. to 15 cts. 
Ward’s heron (head and back), 75 cts. 
Roseate spoonbill (whole skin), $2.00 to $2.50 
All this and much more is related by the orni- 
thologist, Mr. W. E. D. Scott, in The Auk for April, 
July, and October, 1887. Are the details and author- 
ity exact enough ? Are our sisters and cousins con- 
soled with the information of the woman who, I 
hear, wrote to the London Times last summer (from 
India) that their egret feathers were moulted feathers? 
Do they want to appoint a committee of the Acorn Club 
or the Colonial Dames to consider the fact that a man 
named Wilkerson told Mr. Scott that he shot, with 
a 22-caliber Winchester, making little noise, 400 nesting 
plume-birds in four days? Dare they follow the foot- 
4 
