4 
unknown correspondent offering him good terms for herons’ crests 
from Western China. “ Never ! ” my husband said, “ never t 
Extirpate those beautiful birds here, as they have been extirpated 
everywhere else ? No ! ” “ Some one else will be sure to do it if 
you don’t,” said she who ought to have been his spiritual upholder. 
“I don’t care. I won’t.” We came away and returned once 
again to Chungking, and there were the herons still. We greeted 
them with effusion, and once more knew the hour of the evening 
by the homing of the birds. 
Then a telegram, and a half circling of the world, and the 
joys of London once again, mind rubbing against mind as a cow 
rubs its back against a tree-trunk, getting ease and refreshment 
thereby. Till one day came a box, a little box, sent by post, and 
inside it—such a little box—fifty pounds’ worth of herons’ crests. 
For the representative left in charge of my husband’s business 
had had the same offer, and had accepted it all in the way of 
business. The transaction paid, of course, and people in London 
can nid-nod now at one another with the crests from Chinese 
egrets. But we know that when we go back to our Central 
Asian home there will be no beautiful white birds winging home¬ 
wards to their nests above the Buddha, no homing of the herons 
to tell the hour of the evening ; for those innocent white birds 
the people of China had spared for generations have, like so many 
others, been offered up as martyrs to the Moloch of European 
fashion. Doubtless the aigrettes’ wearers have each their pets, 
are many of them perchance members of the Kennel Club, but 
those white birds were our pets. And we know that we shall see 
them never more, those herons we have watched so often in the 
long, long evening hours of life inside a Chinese city’s walls. 
Do our soldiers'" fight the better for their busbies made of 
egrets’ crests ? Would our lovely ladies not look ever fair if no 
plumes waved upon their heads ? Alicia Bewicke Little. 
* The order to abolish the wearing of the osprey plumes by the officers of 
the Royal Horse Artillery, Hussars, and Rifle Regiments has now been made. 
In India the Viceroy’s bodyguard hare abandoned their use. Will the ladies 
follow these examples P—M. L. L. 
Note .—In August, 1899, a Society for the Protection of Gfarne and other 
Wild Birds in China was formed and has received influential support. 
February, 1900. 
Copies oi tnis Leaffit, Id. each, 9d. per dozen, or 5s per 100, may be 
obtained from the Society for the Protection of Birds, 3, Hanover Square, W. 
