Society for the Protection of Birds. — do. 32. 
1st to 5th Thousand. April, 1899. 
THE PLUME TRADE. 
- ^ - 
BORROWED PLUMES. 
Letter from Professor Alfred Newton, Magdalene College, 
Cambridge, published in the Times, January 28th, 1876. 
(Reprinted by Special Permission.) 
“ When, some years since, I drew the attention of the British 
Association to the cruelty and evil consequences of the then prevailing 
fashion of ladies wearing “ plumes ” of sea-birds’ feathers, you were 
good enough to notice my efforts favourably, and in the ensuing 
Session of Parliament an Act was passed whereby the mischief was 
effectually stopped. I therefore now solicit your aid in bringing before 
the public a fashion quite as disastrous to the feathered race, though, I 
regret to say, one that cannot be put an end to by the same simple 
means. Like others of my brother naturalists, I have been long 
aware by report of the enormous sales of birds’ feathers which are 
being constantly held in London ; but the particulars of them do not, 
except by accident, come before us. Chance has thrown in my way 
a catalogue, or portion of a catalogue, of one of these auctions, and 
its contents are such as to horrify me, for I had no conception of the 
amount of destruction to which exotic birds are condemned by 
fashion—an amount which cannot fail speedily to extirpate some 
of the fairest members of creation, for I must premise for the benefit 
of your non-ornithologieal readers, that it is chiefly, if not solely, at 
the breeding-season that the most beautiful, and therefore the 
most valuable feathers, are developed in birds. 
“ What I have before me is a “ First Supplement to-’s 
Feather Sale of —th January, 1876 ” (I omit the name and date for 
obvious reasons), which gives the details of Lots 71-223 to be offered for 
sale on that day. The second page of this document (the first being 
occupied by the title) relates to 2,077 bundles of herons’ or egrets’ 
feathers (they go by other names, in the trade,), the weight of which I 
find to be given as 702 ozs. How many feathers may go to a bundle 
I cannot say, but weighing some twenty exceptionally stout feathers (not 
herons’) which happened to be at hand, I find them to balance oz. 
exactly. I think, therefore, that these 2,077 bundles cannot well contain 
fewer than 56,160 feathers, and allowing 20 of them to each bird 
(which I believe to be a fair allowance) we have evidence of the death 
of 2,808 herons or egrets. The next page relates to 2,948 similar 
bundles, weighing 1,168 oz., showing on the same estimate 4,672 birds. 
To these follow other lots, which in like manner, I compute to 
represent 2,220 birds—or, in all, 9,700 herons or egrets. All these lots 
are said to have arrived from India, and nearly all to have been ware¬ 
housed last autumn. The spoils of how many more birds were included 
in the catalogue itself, to which this is a first supplement, or of how 
many in the second supplement, I of course, cannot say; but even if 
there were none, I venture to affirm that no country could long supply 
