4 
MURDEROUS MILLINERY. 
“ requisitioned ” from all part's of the world- 
It is quite impossible to form even an approxi¬ 
mate estimate of the total number annually 
sacrificed for so-called decorative purposes, 
but some idea of the variety and extent of 
the slaughter may be obtained by any person 
who will take the trouble to examine a file of 
the “ Public Ledger.” In the columns of 
that useful paper reports are given of the 
Fancy Feather and Bird Skin auctions which 
take place about every two months at the 
Commercial Sale Rooms, Mincing Lane, 
London. The goods are on view the day 
before each sale, and rooms upon rooms are 
filled with plumes and carcasses, just as 
they come from the docks, piled up on 
shelves or heaped together in huge crates 
like garden rubbish. These arsenic-tainted 
remains are in every sense sickening. 
Among those recently sold were Ospreys, 
Birds of Paradise, Humming Birds, Bronze 
Pigeons, including the Crowned Victoria 
Pigeon, Impeyan Pheasants, Argus Pheasants, 
Jays, Kingfishers and Parrots in abundance. 
Owls were in large supply on June 12, their 
barred wings being in request (as indeed 
English birds are, in addition to imported 
ones), and this in a country where they are 
so valuable to agriculture that Lord Lilford, 
when President of the Ornithologists’ Union, 
declared that “ the fittest place for the des¬ 
troyer of an owl was a lunatic asylum.” 
Of the so-called “ Osprey ” feathers 4,026 ozs. 
were sold in June, 1900, as against 3,519 ozs. 
in the April auctions. The term “Osprey” 
is an unaccountable misnomer. The plumes 
are those of the egret, in French “ aigrette,” 
a kind of heron, each one of which produces 
about one-sixth of an ounce of exquisitely 
fine white feathers. These grow on the back 
