April 27, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
531 
all our things together and would bring them 
to Pryor the first time he was in. He had put 
out the word that if anyone found them that 
they were ours, and those Indians brought them 
all in to him. He told us to keep his skillet and 
use it until we got home and he would use ours. 
One day while we were sitting in camp between 
rains I was cleaning my rifle and a big old buck 
came up to about thirty yards of camp and 
watched me for several minutes. Charles wanted 
me to kill him, but I said no. We were in Dela¬ 
ware county and the season was closed. Of 
course he had forgotten. 
Bird Preservation 
By MINNIE MOORE WILSON 
1 
One Result of Protection. 
Worcester, Mass., April 13. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: While on a fishing trip to Fort 
Myers, Florida and vicinity last winter, I saw a 
T is a bright and glorious morning. The 
scene is in a Florida yard. Mockingbirds 
are singing with all the abandon of happi¬ 
ness ; redbirds of the most scarlet hue feed com¬ 
placently along with the dove, breakfasting on 
the seeds of the now dying grass. Jaybirds in 
numbers herald their presence as they beg for 
crumbs. Central in the scene are two large 
white birds, the great white heron or American 
egret—all happy and contented because man with 
his gun is not in pursuit. 
These egrets, among the shyest of wild birds, 
are found in domestication to be as gentle as 
chickens. The more one studies these creatures, 
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WILDFOWL IN FLORIDA WATERS. 
pretty good illustration of what protection will 
do. On the Caloosahatchee and Orange rivers, 
where I did most of my fishing, were large num¬ 
bers of wild ducks, mostly bluebills or scaups, 
with an occasional black duck and a sprinkling 
of coots. These birds are all protected by law 
within a radius of two miles of the town of Fort 
Myers. As a consequence large numbers of the 
ducks are always on the river opposite the town, 
and they have become very tame, and it is one 
of the events of the day for the guests at the 
hotels to go down to the piers and feed the ducks 
with corn, etc. All it is necessary to do is to 
stand on the piers, whistle and make motions as 
though throwing food on the water, and the birds 
immediately begin to come in. 
less God-like than ourselves, the more one feels 
an indulgent care and kindly sympathy for them. 
If the American women could know the wild 
bird, its native confidence in man and how quick¬ 
ly it responds to kindness, saying nothing of its 
economic value, surely the wearing of feathers 
and wings would soon be relegated to the past, 
and for this reason a brief pen picture of these 
egrets is given. 
The birds were the gift of Billy Bowlegs, a 
Seminole Indian, and soon became tame, eating 
beef from the hand, loving companionship, stand¬ 
ing at the dining room door during meal hours, 
beautiful enough, with their long silken plumes, 
to be the envy of any nature lover. With the 
instinct of nature they gather small sticks, and 
The accompanying picture may be of some in- carrying them about, chatter and fuss over them 
terest, as it shows a flock of bluebills I had just 
called in. Some of the birds were under water 
when the picture was taken. 
Ch.\rles a. Allen. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any newsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply you regularly. 
with an affection existing between them that 
would be a lesson to many a cottage home or 
brownstone front. 
As we picture these beautiful birds watching 
over their nestlings with as much gentleness as 
the human parents, who shall say God will not 
call to account every plume hunter and every 
woman who wears the aigrette and wings of the 
wild bird? The slaughter of the wild bird life 
of the world is almost too sad to dwell upon, 
and yet to illustrate truths we must see the pic¬ 
ture. What the guillotine was to the French 
nobles during the bloody revolution, the millinery 
trade is to the birds of to-day. Slaughter, starv¬ 
ing nestlings and blood-stained aigrettes belong 
to the tragic picture. The parental instinct of 
the birds is so strong that they will not leave 
their young, no matter what the danger, a great 
convenience to the hunter, for it permits him to 
shoot almost every bird in the colony, and yet 
this tragic epoch of the nation’s history must be 
laid at the door of woman. Woman, tender, 
true and a heroine in time of distress and disas¬ 
ter, who is ever in the front ranks for the pre¬ 
vention of cruelty to children and animals, and 
whose love for humanity has made civilized 
America the great nation that it is. No chain 
is stronger than its weakest link. To what then 
must we ascribe the barbarous slaughter of the 
exquisite bird life of the world? Woman’s weak 
point must be vanity. Rich women of the world 
set the fashion and poor women foolishly follow. 
Unfortunately, it is something that is expensive 
and hard to acquire that the wealthy seek after 
To their credit be it said that many leaders of 
fashion would like to be something better than 
parasites and idlers if they could, and why not 
help protect the birds? 
If all the well-to-do women in America would 
absolutely stop wearing feathers in their hats 
to-morrow, if they would realize the cruel, brutal 
fashion of tearing the wings from living birds 
for the purpose of putting on to hats to stick 
up into the air like a foolish looking Valkyrie, 
they certainly could not be happy at the thought 
that the wings on their hats may mean that 
half a dozen young birds starved to death in 
their nests. Another thought: These dust and 
germ-collecting feathers on the heads of women 
are far from a standard of refined cleanliness. 
What fashionable leader will start the idea of 
hats without feathers? Aside from the humanity 
and the fact that the earth suffers because the 
birds are killed off by millions, it rests with 
leaders of fashion to bring fame to themselves 
and glory to their country and to make the 
world kinder and life sacred to our feathered 
kin. Just as human life would be impossible 
without earth, air and water, so it would be im¬ 
possible without birds. These flitting beautiful 
creatures are the patrols of the earth, air and 
water, and unlike the policeman on his beat they 
never lag and are on duty day and night. 
Fighting for the preservation of the gentle, 
beautiful and helpless feathered creatures is the 
work of the great Audubon Societies, and equally 
is the National Government doing all in its 
power to arrest the extermination of the valu¬ 
able plumage birds of America. The feminine 
devotee of fashion has for years been demand¬ 
ing the delicate aigrette from the snowy heron. 
The milliner has supplied it, and man has broken 
the law, but at last a stronger power has come 
that will save the lives of the beautiful egrets 
in the future, and this is the terrible calumny, 
“Out of style,’’ and for this reason: 
When the New York milliners were compelled 
