I 2 
Osprey ; or , 
brighter plumage and feather ornaments, as in the 
egrets, these deteriorate and drop off at the end of 
the breeding season, just as petals wither and fall 
when the flower is set. It is when in that gayer dress 
that birds are most valuable for the purposes of 
fashion and for other forms of decoration ; nor is this 
all; it is then that they are most easily found and taken. 
The shyest, most secretive kinds lose all their wild 
instincts in the overmastering anxiety for the safety 
of eggs or young. And when the poor bird, uttering 
piercing cries, its sensitive frame quivering, its bill 
gaping as if the air could no longer sustain it in such 
intense agitation, and fluttering its lovely wings to 
make them more conspicuous aud by such means 
draw the danger away from its treasures and on to 
itself—when it has been ruthlessly shot for the sake 
of its feathers, its fledglings are left to starve in the 
nest. And if to the starved young we add all the 
birds that fly away with pellets of lead in their bodies 
to languish and die of their wounds, and those that 
drop down in dark forests, and amidst the tangled 
undergrowth, and in dense reed-beds and are never 
recovered, it would be no exaggeration to say that 
for every bird worn in a lady’s hat, at least ten birds 
have suffered the death pang. 
The effect of the millions of individual acts of 
cruelty of this description, which are annually inflicted 
on birds, is that a vast number of beautiful species, 
including all those that give the greatest lustre to bird 
