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locality to protect and preserve the great skua, whose numbers at one 
time had dwindled almost to vanishing point, is surely a matter of 
common knowledge to every well-informed ornithologist. But against 
this there has to be set the system, still extensively prevailing, of surrep¬ 
titiously robbing the eggs of rare birds in the Highlands and some of 
our northern islands to supply the demands' of professional dealers and 
amateur collectors. Oological expeditions to the 1 properties of strangers 
are a breach of honesty, and need to 1 be rigorously suppressed. But, 
as I have already pointed out, a new law of trespass, directed against 
bird-fanciers, trappers, and vagrants—the pests who clear our woodlands 
and hedgerows of their principal charms—would not only act as a very 
powerful deterrent, but would prove a valuable weapon in the hands 
of landowners generally. 
And now for a few words in conclusion. The carelessness of women 
as a class in regard to the 1 encouragement of cruelty to 1 birdsi, and the 
inordinate greed of the plumassiers, would furnish a text for a most 
lengthy discourse. To the former I unhesitatingly apportion the major 
share of blame. Were there no demand, there would be no need of a 
supply. We have all heard about the great plume question, but 
how many are aware that osprey and egret are not scientifically con¬ 
vertible terms ? The bird known in England as the osprey is the fishing 
hawk (pandion halioetus), and has no congenic connexion whatsoever with 
the egret which produces the plumes that the vendors call “ ospreys ” 
—otherwise aigrettes. On the extent of this essay a comparative limit 
is imposed, but I should like to bring home to all sorts and conditions 
of women, before writing my last word, the immensity of the cruelty 
involved in the slaughter of this species-—a slaughter that has been 
carried on for years past in many parts of the world for no other purpose 
than the supply of the dorsal plumes for the supposed adornment of 
feminine—and, I may add, until recently, military—headgear. A 
thoughtless fashion has, indeed, brought about the almost entire extinc¬ 
tion of the species. What a shameful business! If these delicate 
plumes form, as they appear to do, such an irresistible attraction for 
women, surely recourse might be had to artistic imitation which now- 
a-days has reached such a pitch of perfection that it is possible for even 
experts to be deceived. Are women aware that the white herons, from 
which the plumes in question are taken, are destroved upon their nests, 
and the young left miserably to perish of slow starvation? I ask them, 
