292 
PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. Ill, October, 1949 
government officers had no business on this un- 
inhabited island, the ship did not stay long, and 
I could not land on the island to collect eggs and 
chicks. It was hard enough to get specimens of 
adults. 
It is also likely that the species may once have 
nested on other isolated islands south of Japan, 
from which it was extirpated before authentic 
record could be made of its presence. Certainly 
it should have bred on one or more of the 
Daito Islands 10 where Kuroda (loc. cit.) was 
told it was "very abundant on Rasa Island.” 
THE FEATHER TRADE 
The decline and probable extermination of 
Steller’s Albatross were caused entirely by hu- 
man persecution on its breeding grounds, which 
started about 1885 when the value of its feathers 
was first realized. The white body feathers of 
Steller’s Albatross were particularly valued by 
the plume hunters, because they brought the 
top prices when marketed as "swansdown” for 
quilts and pillow stuffing. The wing and tail 
feathers were sold as "eagle feathers” for quill 
pens, and for millinery and other ornamental 
purposes. Each albatross yielded about V4 pound 
of feathers, worth in those days about 5 sen per 
pound. This seems little enough, but harvesting 
them was a profitable business because the birds 
were so plentiful and labor so cheap. 
The revolting details of the nefarious feather 
trade never have been and probably never will 
be written in full. It was conducted mostly by 
illiterate hunters and fishermen and was super- 
vised in its hey-day by close-mouthed business 
interests concerned only with immediate profits. 
The first feather hunting was done by casual 
fishermen, but as the trade proved more and 
more remunerative, it was taken over by big 
business. Most of the Japanese feather hunting 
was supervised by the South Seas Trading Com- 
pany, which is now defunct. Its records of the 
feather trade, if they ever existed, and the men 
connected with it are no longer traceable. 
10 Lat. 24° 28' N, Long. 131° 11' E, midway be- 
tween the Bonins and the Ryukyus. 
The trade was abolished by law in America 
50 years ago, but not before our egrets and j 
terns were almost wiped out. Protection reached 
the Hawaiian archipelago just in time to save 
the famous Laysan colonies, to which the plume 
hunters were then turning their attention. Ya- 
mashina states (1942: 244) that the Japanese 
Government prohibited the killing of alba- 
trosses in 1907, but the statutes show them to j 
have been legal game birds until the amend- 
ments of 1947, and the Annual Hunting Sta- 
tistics published by the Ministry of Agriculture I 
list from 500 to 4,000 "albatrosses” killed each 
year from 1930 to 1942, the last year for which 
figures are available. These data, however, are ij 
neither accurate nor specific, and undoubtedly 
refer to the other two species of North Pacific 
albatrosses. The only protection ever afforded 
Steller’s Albatross by the Japanese was their 
designation of Torishima and Kita-no-shima as 
"no hunting areas,” and apparently they made 
no effort to enforce the law on these outlying 
islands. In both cases the designation was for a 
10-year period only, which was not renewed at 
its expiration. 
Japan has never had a law prohibiting traffic 
in or possession of protected birds or parts 
thereof, and the import-export trade in feathers 
flourished in Yokohama as long as birds were 
available to supply the demand. The accompany- 
ing graph shows, from the only figures available, 
the total exports of feathers from Japan. All 
sorts of wild birds contributed to this total, 
which is impossible to break down by species, 
but feathers from the Pacific sea bird colonies 
constituted the major portion, and Steller’s Al- 
batross, as long as it survived, was one of the 
most sought sources of supply. Although we 
hear little about it nowadays, the trade has not 
died out entirely. A demand for feathers of all 
sorts still exists, Paris being the main market, 
but the export center is reported to have shifted 
some years ago from Japan to Shanghai, China. 
VALEDICTUM 
We are loath to regard any species as extinct 
