Society for the Protection of Birds.—No. 26 Ut to Vdth Thousand. inc. 
An Egret Hunter’s Narrative, 
Note.— The following narrative of an egret hunter in Central 
America, which appeared in The Sim, New York, June 7th, 1896, 
forms an important contribution to the history of the deplorable war 
which is being waged against a lovely species of bird, in order that 
civilized ladies may have ospreys in their hats and bonnets. Professor 
Newton, of Cambridge, who kindly prepared for the Society for the 
Protection of Birds an abstract of a series of papers on “ The 
Devastation of Bird Homes in Florida” (No 7), has read this docu¬ 
ment, and advised its publication. In it we find that the relentless 
persecution of the egret, which will soon cease in Florida from want of 
victims, continues elsewhere unabated; and that the bird is now 
becoming increasingly scarce and difficult to procure throughout the 
sub-tropical countries of North and Central America, where it was 
most abundant a few years ago. It should be stated here that the 
two species, which are the objects of this zealous feather hunter’s 
pursuit, called by him egret and heron respectively, are both egrets— 
members of that group of the heron family which have a gift of 
beauty that is now fast proving fatal to them. His “ egret ” is the 
small white egret, Ardea egretta ; his “ heron,” the snowy egret, Ardea 
candidissima. Owing to the length of the paper, many of the less 
relevant passages have had to be excised. 
Pomona, California, May 27th, 
1896.—David Bennett, of San 
Diego, came up the coast from 
Mexico the other day. He is 
probably the most experienced and 
systematic hunter of the wild egret 
or heron on this continent, if not in 
the world. He is known through¬ 
out this region as “ Egret ” Ben¬ 
nett, and the handsome property 
and the bank stock he owns in Los 
Angeles and San Diego are proofs 
of the profit he has found in hunt¬ 
ing egrets and herons each spring 
and summer for about twenty-two years. Next week he will return 
to Mexico to hunt until September. 
“ I have been shooting egrets and herons exclusively since 
1874,” said Mr. Bennett. “ Along in the summer of 1873 I was 
prospecting for silver mines off the coast of Yucatan. I shot a 
dozen or so herons that were wading about a marsh or lagoon, and 
the long white plumes were so delicate and filmy-like that I took 
them to my sisters in New Orleans a few months later. Our next 
door neighbour was a wholesale milliner, and he said he would buy 
