During the nine months of uninterrupted slaughter there had been time to kill a great 
many birds. Captain Jacobs, of the Thetis , by careful estimate, placed the total destruction 
at 259,000 birds. 
The methods employed by these Japanese were very cruel. Coveting only the wings of 
the albatrosses, they would frequently cut these off and let the birds go, to bleed to death. 
And finding that the plumpness of the albatrosses made it difficult to dress their plumage, 
they conceived the plan of driving the birds into pits and allowing them to starve to death, 
thus getting rid of the troublesome fat and so expediting the work. 
Such cruel methods are in vogue wherever birds are killed for their plumage. The men 
engaged in the business are usually of a lower order, whose one object is to perform their 
work as expeditiously as possible, regardless of pain or other result of their operations. A 
heron ‘ rookery ’ in Florida which was shot over by plume hunters last May was thus 
described by a warden who visited it, too late to prevent the shooting: 
Everywhere in the rookery, which covered several acres, we found the remains 
of dead long whites [egrets] and a few of the spoonbills that had been shot. There 
were many little long whites that had died in the nests [of starvation, their parents 
having been killed], and their bodies had been eaten by buzzards. The trees were 
full of shot from the guns of the murderers, and the sight was the saddest one I have 
ever seen of the sort. 
And the birds are being exterminated. The slaughter of birds for millinery purposes 
is greater than ever before in the history of the world. The emissaries of the milliners of 
London, Paris, Berlin, and New York are carrying their devastating work to the uttermost 
corners of the earth. Wherever plume birds are found the work of destruction is going on. 
Where the white man can not penetrate, the plumage is obtained from native savages by ex¬ 
change. In New Guinea bird-of-paradise skins are bartered by the natives for opium; 
hence the price paid for the decoration of hats with paradise plumes is the extermination of 
the most beautiful of all birds and the spread of the opium habit. 
If nothing be done to stop the slaughter of plume birds it is safe to say that 
within the next ten years from twelve to twenty=five species of the most beauti= 
ful and interesting birds of the world will be completely exterminated — never to 
be restored. 
How shall we stop it? 
We have appealed to the women to abandon the fashion of feather wearing, and thou¬ 
sands have responded nobly to our appeals. But the number whose hearts, or even whose 
ears, we can not reach is so great that it is hopeless to try to save the birds by this means. 
Remember that feather fashions are followed in South America, as well as North America, 
in New Zealand, as well as England. 
We have tried prohibiting the killing of the birds. But it is impossible to police the 
solitudes where these birds are found. Even in Florida, with its strict laws and small 
number of heronries now left, egrets are being killed and their plumes are being shipped to 
market despite the best efforts of State and Federal authorities and Audubon Societies. 
We have tried prohibiting export of plumage frpm the State or the country where 
the birds are killed. But plumage is smuggled out regardless of such laws. India, Japan, 
Australia, New Guinea, and other countries prohibit export of bird plumage; but packages 
of plumes are regularly received from these countries. 
There is only one way—CLOSE THE MARKETS. Prohibit importation of plumage 
into those countries in which are the great distributing markets of the world. Only recently 
the colonies of Great Britain united in an appeal to the home government, saying virtually, 
“Close the London market, or we can not save our birds.” England, in the last five years, 
has made four attempts to prohibit importation of plumage, but the hills have all failed. 
