corpses, rifled by “ civilized ” men and natives from anti- 
podal nests. What if their death speaks of a dreariness that 
creeps over the world as of “ a garden without flowers, 
childhood without laughter, an orchard without blossoms, 
a sky without color, or roses without perfume. Fashion 
has once more proved (as says the Londo 7 i Times, 
October 17, 1893) that in its influence on the human 
mind it is more than a match for humanity.” A shame- 
ful fact, truer now than it was in 1886, when you find 
(see Science, February 26, 1886) among 13 women in a 
Madison Avenue, New York, street-car, 11 hatted as 
follows: “ 1. Heads and wings of 3 European starlings. 
2. Entire bird of foreign unknown species. 3. Several 
warblers, representing 4 species. 4. A large tern. 5. 
The heads and wings of 3 shore larks. 6. The wings of 
7 shore larks and grass finches. 7. Half a gallinule. 8. 
A small tern. 9. A turtle dove. 10. A vireo and 
yellow-breasted chat. 11. Ostrich plumes. ” 
How, when, and where these unfortunates met 
their death, who can tell ? though we may guess that 
the 100,000 rails and bobolinks slaughtered in a 
month near Philadelphia, or the hundreds of robins, 
thrushes, wax-wings, sparrows, meadow-larks, vireos, 
blackbirds, and warblers marketed in March, 1885 
{Science, February 26, 1896), at Norfolk, Virginia, 
for food were not killed nesting. 
Forever winning the love of man, “ How many 
women in ten thousand ” asks Ouida {Nineteenth Cen- 
tury, August, 1896) “ use this unlimited power which 
they possess to breathe the quality of mercy into the 
souls of those who are for a time as wax in their 
hands?” If, as they may argue, or as a Spaniard 
told me, the American pigeon shooting, or the 
European battue game slaughter, protected by legis- 
lators, who according to their lights would eat skylark 
pie and vote down prize-fights, or the stabbed pig, or the 
fox torn by the pack, are things as cruel as bull-fights ; 
if, as woman might urge, American buffalo extinction, 
the desire to slay that possesses the big-game-hunting 
Anglo-American; if the corpse-making of elephants 
( 40,000 a year in Africa, — see Cosmos, January, 1897) or 
Boone and Crockett Club glory in the death of the 
Rocky Mountain goat and vanishing species, are things 
equally pitiless, how can she extinguish the slaughter lust 
8 
