10 MURDEROUS MILLINERY. 
now at one another ” with aigrettes made 
from Chinese egrets. There is no more 
homing of the herons to their hereditary nests 
above the Buddha to tell the hour of the 
evening; for those innocent white birds whom 
the people of China had spared for genera¬ 
tions have, like so many others, been offered 
up as martyrs to the Moloch of European 
fashion. 
The destruction of Golden Pheasants in 
China, in consequence of the demand for 
their feathers in Europe, has been recently 
dealt with by the combined action of the 
foreign ministers in petitioning the Chinese 
Government to prohibit the exportation of 
pheasants’ plumage. This, Mr. Conger, the 
United States Minister in Peking, says, is only 
a temporary expedient until regulations can 
be made regarding close seasons to “avert 
the extermination of these beautiful birds, 
which are very valuable to the Chinese, and 
to foreigners living in China, but of no great 
importance elsewhere.” 1 
' There remains the question of the alleged 
difficulty of distinguishing between real and 
artificial plumes. That difference, broadly 
stated, is the same in kind as between real 
and artificial flowers, only greater in degree. 
Human fingers may dexterously model a 
white wax arum lily, but the snowy silvery 
fibre-fine plume of the white egret is beyond 
imitation. 
The late Sir William Flower, director of 
the British Natural History Museum, ex¬ 
amined numbers of aigrettes brought to him 
by ladies, who had been assured by their 
milliners that they were not real egret 
1 The Times, July 22, 1900. 
