 12 Destruction of Songbirds by Southern Negroes and Poor Whites Before going farther there is one point I wish to make quite clear. Whenever the people of a particular race make a specialty of some particular type of wrongdoing, anyone who pointedly rebukes the faulty members of that race is immediately accused of race prejudice. On account of the facts I am now setting forth about the doings of Italian and Negro bird killers I expect to be accused along that line. If I am I shall strenuously deny the charge, the facts speak for themselves. Soologically, however, I am strongly prejudiced against the people of any race, creed, club, state or nation, who make a specialty of any particularly offensive type of bird or wild animal slaughter, and I do not care who knows it. The time was, and I remember it very well, when even the poorest gunner scorned to kill birds that were not considered game. In day's lang sign many a zoological collector has been jeered because the specimens he had killed for preservation were not game. But times have changed. In the wearing of furs we have bumped down steps both high and steep. In 1880 American women were seal skin, martin, otter, beaver, and mink. Today nothing that wears hair is too humble to be skinned and worn. Today they are wearing skins of muskrats, foxes, rabbits, skunks, domestic cats, squirrels, and even rats. And see how the taste for game of some sections of our population also has gone down. In the north the Italians are fighting for the privilege of eating everything that wears feathers, but we allow no birds to be shot for food save game birds and cranes. In the south the negroes and poor whites are killing songbirds, woodpeckers, and doves for food, and in several states some of it is done under the authority of the laws. Look at these awful lists. In these states robins are legally shot and eaten. Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Maryland, Texas, Florida. In these states black birds are legally shot and eaten. Louisiana, District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee. Cranes are shot and eaten in these states. Colorado, North Dakota, Nevada, Oklahoma, Nebraska. In Mississippi the cedar bird is legally shot and eaten. In North Carolina the meadowlark is shot and eaten. In the following states doves are considered game and are shot in an open season. Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Utah, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas. The killing of doves represents a great and widespread decline in the ethics of sportsmanship. In the twenty-six states named a great many men who call themselves sportsmen indulge in the cheap and ignoble pastime of potting weak and confiding doves. It is on a par with the sport of hunting English sparrows in a city street. Of course this is, to a certain extent a matter of taste, but there is at least one club of sportsmen into which no dove killer can enter, provided his standard of ethics is known in advance. With the killing of robins, larks, black birds, and cedar birds for food the case is quite different. No white man calling himself a sportsman ever indulges in such low pastimes as the killing of such birds for food. That burden of disgrace rests upon the Negroes and poor whites of the South. But at the same time it is a shame that respectable white men sitting in state legislatures should deliberately enact laws permitting such disgraceful practices or permit such disgraceful and un-gentlemanly laws to remain in force. Here is a case by way of illustration copied very recently from the Atlanta Journal. Editor Journal. I located a robin roost up the Trinity River, six miles from Dallas, and prevailed on six Dallas sportsmen to go with me on a torchlight bird hunt. This style of hunting was, of course, new to Texans, but they finally consented to go, and I had the pleasure of showing them how it was done. Equipped with torchlights and shotguns, we proceeded. After reaching the hunting grounds the sport began in reality and continued for two hours and ten minutes with a total slaughter of ten thousand one hundred fifty-seven birds, an average of one thousand four hundred fifty-one birds killed by each man. But the Texans give me credit for killing at least two thousand of the entire number. I was called the King of Bird Hunters by the sportsmen of Dallas, Texas, and have been invited to command in chief the next party of hunters which go from Dallas to the Indian Territory in search of large game. F. L. Crowe, Dallas, Texas, former Atlanta. Dallas, Texas papers and Oklahoma papers please copy. The Robin of the North. Our best beloved songbird, now being legally shot as game in the South. In the North there is now only one Robin for every ten formerly there. As a further illustration of the spirit manifested in the South toward Robbins I quote the following story from Dr. P. P. Claxton of the University of Tennessee as related in Audubon Educational Leaflet No. 46 by Mr. T. Gilbert Pearson. The roost to which I refer says Professor Claxton was situated in what is locally known as a cedar glade near Porrestville, Bedford County, Tennessee. This is a great cedar country and Robbins used to come in immense numbers during the winter months to feed on the berries. The spot which the roost occupied was not unlike numerous others that might have been selected. The trees grew to a height of from five to thirty feet and for a mile square were literally loaded at night with Robbins. Hunting them while they roosted was a favorite sport. A man would climb a cedar tree with a torch while his companions with poles and clubs would disturb the sleeping birds on the adjacent trees. Blinded by the light the suddenly awakened birds flew to the torchbearer who as he seized each bird would quickly pull off its head and drop it into a sack suspended from his shoulders. The capture of three or four hundred birds was an ordinary night's work. Men and boys would come in wagons from all the adjoining counties and camp near the roost for the purpose of killing Robbins. Many times one hundred or more hunters with torches and clubs would be at work in a single night. For three years this tremendous slaughter continued in winter and then the survivors deserted the roost. No, these people were not Apache Indians led by a Geronimo who knew no mercy, no compassion. We imagined that they were mostly poor white trash of Tennessee. One small hamlet sent to market annually enough dead Robbins to return five hundred dollars at five cents per dozen which means one hundred twenty thousand birds. Last winter Mr. Edward A. McElhenny of Avery Island, Louisiana, south of New Iberia, informed me that every winter during the two weeks that the holy berries are ripe thousands of Robbins come to his vicinity to feed upon them. Then every negro man and boy who can raise a gun is after them. About ten thousand Robbins are slaughtered each day while they remain. Their dead bodies are sold in New Iberia at ten cents each. The accompanying illustrations taken by Mr. McElhenny shows one hundred ninety-five Robbins on one tree and explains how such great slaughter is possible. An officer of the Louisiana Audubon Society states that a conservative estimate of the number of Robbins annually killed in Louisiana for food purposes when they are usually plentiful is a quarter of a million. The food of the Robbins is as follows. Insects forty percent, wild fruit forty three percent, cultivated fruit eight percent, miscellaneous vegetable food five percent, special work of the southern negroes. In nineteen twelve a female colored servant who recently had arrived from country life in Virginia, chanced to remark to me at our country home in the middle of August. I wish I could find some bird's nests. At four I asked, rather puzzled, Why, to get the eggs and eat them, she responded with a bright smile and flashing teeth. Do you eat the eggs of wild birds? Yes indeed, it's fine to get a potridge nest. From them we nearly always get a whole dozen of eggs at once, back where I live in Virginia. Do the colored people of Virginia make a practice of hunting for the eggs of wild birds and eating them? Yes indeed we do. In the spring and summer when the birds are around we used to get out every Sunday and hunt all day. Some days we'd come back with a whole bucket full of eggs and then we'd set up half the night cooking and eating them. They was awful good. Her face fairly beamed at the memory of it. A few days later this story of the doings of Virginia negroes was fully corroborated by a colored man who came from another section of that state. Three months later, special inquiries made at my request, a gentleman of Richmond obtained further corroboration from negroes. He was himself much surprised by the state of fact that was revealed to him. In the north the economic value of our songbirds and other destroyers of insects and weed seeds is understood by a majority of the people, and as far as possible those birds are protected from all human enemies. But in the south a new division of the army of destruction has risen into deadly prominence. In Recreation Magazine for May 1909 Mr. Charles Askins published a most startling and illuminating article entitled The South's Problem in Game Protection. It brought together in concrete form and with eye-witness reliability the impressions that for months previous had been gaining ground in the north. In order to give the testimony of a man who has seen what he describes I shall now give numerous quotations from Mr. Askins' article which certainly bears the stamp of truthfulness without any race prejudice whatever. It is a calm, judicial, and emotional analysis of a very bad situation, and I particularly commend it alike to the farmers of the north and all the true sportsmen of the south. In his opening paragraphs Mr. Askins describes game and hunting conditions in the south as they were down to twenty years ago when the negroes were too poor to own guns and shooting was not for them. SPECIAL WORK OF THE SOUTHERN NEGROES It is all different now, says Mr. Askins, and the old days will only come back with the water that has gone down the stream. The master is with his fathers, or he is whiling away his last days on the courthouse steps of the town. Perhaps a chimney or two remain of what was once the big house on the hill. Possibly it is still standing, but is forlorn and lifeless as a dead tree. The muscadine grapes still grow in the swale and the persimmons in the pasture field, but neither possum nor coon is left to eat them. The last deer vanished years ago, the rabbits died in their baby coats and the quail were killed in June. Old Uncle Ike has gone across the great river with his master and his grandson glances at U.S. scants, nods sullenly, whistles to his half-breed bird dog, shoulders his three dollar gun and leaves you. He is typical of the change and has caused it, this grandson of dear old Uncle Ike. In the same way the white man is telling the black to abide upon the plantation raising cotton and corn, and further than this nothing will be required of him. He can cheat a white man or a black, steal in a petty way anything that comes handy, live in marriage or out of it to please himself, kill another negro if he likes, and lastly shoot every wild thing that can be eaten if only he raises the cotton and corn. But the white sportsmen of the South have never willingly granted the shooting privilege in its entirety and hence this story. They have told him to trap the rabbits, pot the robins, slaughter the doves, kill the songbirds, but to spare the white sportsman's game, the aristocratic little bob-white quail. In the beginning not so much damage to southern game interests could be accomplished by our colored man and brother, however decided his inclinations. He had no money, no ammunition, and no gun. His weapons were an ax, a club, a trap, and a hound dog. Possibly he might own an old war-musket board out for shot. Such an outfit was not adapted to quail shooting and especially to wing-shooting, with which knowledge Dixie's sportsmen were content. Let the negro ramble about with his hound dog and his war-musket he couldn't possibly kill the quail. And so Uncle Ike's grandson loafed and potted about in the fields with his ax and his hound dogs, not doing so much harm to the quail but acquiring knowledge of the habits of the birds and skill as a still-hunting pot-hunter that would serve him well later on. The negro belongs to a primitive race of people and all such races have keener eyes than white men whose fathers have poured over lines of black and white. He learned to see the rabbit in its form, the squirrels in the leafy trees, and the quails huddled in the grass. The least shade of gray in the shadow of the creek bank he distinguished at once as a rabbit, a glinting flash from a treetop he knew instantly as being caused by the slight movement of a hidden squirrel and the quiver of a single stem of sedggrass told him of a bevy of birds hiding in the depths. The pot-hunting negro has all the skills of the Indian, has more industry in his loafing, and kills without pity and without restraint. This grandson of Uncle Ike was growing silky, too, with the knowledge that the white man was bribing him with half a loaf to raise cotton and corn when he might as well exact it all, and this he shortly did, as we shall see. The time came when cotton went up to sixteen cents a pound and single breach-loading guns went down to five dollars apiece. The negro had money now, and the merchants, these men who had said, let the nigger alone so long as he raises cotton and corn, sold him the guns, a gun for every black idler, man and boy, in all the south. Then shortly a whale went up from the sportsman. The niggers are killing our quail. They not only were killing them, but most of the birds were already dead. On the grounds of the Southern Field Club, where sixty bevvies were raised by the dogs in one day, within two years but three bevvies could be found in a day by the hardest kind of hunting. And this story was repeated all over the south. Now the negro began to raise bird dogs in place of hounds, and he carried his new gun to church if services happened to be held on a weekday. Finally the negro had grown up and had compassed his ambition. He could shoot partridges flying just the same as a white man, was a white man except for a trifling difference in color, and he could kill more birds, too, three times as many. It was merely a change from the old order to the new in which a dark-skinned sportsman had taken the place in plantation life of the dear old kernel of loved memory. The negro had exacted his price for raising cotton and corn. The Southern Negro method of combing out the wildlife. Our colored sportsman is gregarious at all times, but especially so in the matter of recreation. He may slouch about alone and pot a bevy or two of quail when in actual need of something to eat, or when he has a sale for the birds, but when it comes to shooting for fun he wants to be with the gang. I have seen the darkies at Christmastime collect fifty in a drove with every man his dog and spread out over the fields, such a glorious time as he has then. A single cotton-tail will draw a half-dozen shots, and perhaps a couple of young bucks will pour loads into a bunny after he is dead out of pure devil-tree and high spirits. I once witnessed the accidental killing of a young negro on this kind of a foray. His companions loaded him into a wagon, stuck a cigar in his mouth, and tried to pour whiskey down him every time they took a drink themselves as they rode back to town. This army of black hunters and their dogs cross field after field, combing the country with fine teeth that leave neither wild animal nor bird life behind. There comes a time toward the spring of the year after the quail season is over, when the average rural darkie is between hay and grass, the merchants on whom he has depended for supplies make it a practice to refuse credit between January first and crop time. The black has spent his cotton money, his sweet potato pile has vanished, the sorghum barrel is empty, he has eaten the last of his winter's pork, and all that remains is a bit of meal and the meat his gun can secure. He is hunting in grim earnest now, using all the cunning and skill acquired by years of practice. He eats woodpeckers, jaybirds, hawks, and skunks, drawing the line only at crows and buzzards. At this season of the year I have carried chicken hawks up to the cabins, for the sake of watching the delight of the pickeninnies who with glowing eyes would declare them's most as good as chicken. What happens to the robins, doves, larks, redbirds, mockingbirds, and all the songsters in this hungry season needs hardly to be stated. It is also a time between hay and grass for the rabbits and the quail. The cornfields are bare and the weed seeds are exhausted. A spring cold-spell pinches, they lose their vitality, become thin and quite lack their ordinary weariness. Then the figure-four trap springs up in the hedgerow and the sedge, while the work of decimation goes more rapidly along. The rabbits can no longer escape the half starved dogs, the thinning cover fails to hide the quail, and the songbirds betray themselves by singing of the coming spring. With the growing scarcity of the game now comes the season of sedge and field burning. This is done ostensibly to prepare the land for spring plowing, but really to destroy the last refuge of the quail and rabbits so that they can be bagged with certainty. All the negroes of a neighborhood collect for one of these burnings, all their dogs, and of course all the boys from six years old up. They surround the field and set it on fire in many places, leaving small openings for the game to dash out among the motley assembly. I have seen quail fly out of the burning grass with flaming particles still attached to them. They alight on the burnt ground, too bewildered to fly again, and the boys and dogs pick them up. Crazed rabbits try the gauntlet amidst the barking currs, shouting negroes and popping guns, but death is sure and quick. The few quail that may escape have no refuge from the hawks and nothing to eat, so every battu of this kind marks the absolute end of the birds in one vicinity, and the next day the darkies repeat the performance elsewhere. At this season of the year, the first of May, the blacks are putting in some of their one hundred working days while the single breech-loader rusts in the chimney corner. Surely the few birds that have escaped the foray of the gang, lived through the hungry days, and survived their burned homes can now call Bob White and Mate in peace. But school is out and the summer sun is putting new life into the bare feet of the half-grown boys, and the half-breed bird-dogs are busier than they were even in winter. The young rabbits are killed before they get out of the nest and the quail eggs must be hidden rarely well that escape both the eyes of the boys and the noses of the dogs. After all it is not surprising that but three beveys remained of the sixty. Doubtless they would not, except that nature is very kind to her own in the sunny south. Not every white man in the south is a sportsman or even a shooter. Many are purely businessmen who have said let the nigger do as he likes so long as he raises cotton and buys our goods. But Dixie has her full share of true men of the out-of-doors, and they have sworn in downright southern fashion that this thing has got to end. Nevertheless their problem is deep and puzzling. In Alabama they made an effort and a beginning. They asked for a law requiring every man to obtain written permission before entering the lands of another to hunt and shoot. They asked for a resident license law taxing every gun not less than five dollars a year for a shortened season, a bag limit, and a complete system of state wardens. Unfortunately a lot of white farmers were in the same range as the blacks and being hit too they raised a great outcry. The result was that the Alabama sportsman got everything they asked for except the foundation of the structure they were trying to build. The high resident license or gun tax which alone could have shut out three dollar guns and saved the remnant of the game. Under the new law the sale of game was forbidden. Neither could it be shipped out of the state alive or dead. The ever popular non-resident license was provided for. The season was shortened and the bag limited. The office of state game warden was created with deputies to be paid from fines. Hunting upon the lands of another without written permission became a misdemeanor and then the whole thing was nullified by reducing the resident license to nothing where a man shot upon his own land, one dollar in his own county, and two dollars outside of it. In its practical workings the new law amounts to this. A few northern gunners have paid the non-resident license fee and enough resident licenses have been taken out by the city sportsmen to make up the handsome salary of the state warden. The negro still hunts upon his own land or upon the land of the man who once corn and cotton raised, with perfect indifference to the whole thing. Who was to enforce the law against him? Not the one disgusted deputy with three big counties to patrol, who depended for his salary upon the fines collected from the negroes. It would take one man to every three miles square to protect the game in the south. The one effective way of dealing with the situation in Alabama was to have legislated three dollar guns out of existence with a five dollar tax, adding to this nearly alike amount on dogs. Hardly a sportsman in the south would disagree with this conclusion. But sportsmen never had a majority vote either in the south or in the north, and the south's grave problem is yet unsolved. I do not favor depriving the black man of his natural human right to hunt and shoot. If he is the owner of land, or if he leases or rents it, or if he does not, he should have exactly the same privilege of hunting that the white man has. That is not the question now, however, but how to restrict him to legal shooting, to make him amenable to the law that governs the white man, to deprive him of the absolute license he now enjoys to kill throughout the year without mercy, without discrimination, without restraint. If only for selfish reasons we of the north should reach to southern sportsmen a helping hand, for by and by the last of our migratory songbirds will go down into Dixie and never return. Mr. Askins has fairly stated a profoundly disturbing case. The remedy must contain at least three ingredients. The sportsmen of the south must stop the unjustifiable slaughter of their non-migratory gamebirds. As a matter of comedy between states, the gentlemen of the south must pass laws to stop the killing of northern songbirds and all crop-protecting birds for food. Finally all men, north and south, east and west, must unite in the work that is necessary to secure the immediate enactment by Congress of a law for the federal protection of all migratory birds. by Anna Simon. Our Vanishing Wildlife by William T. Hornaday. Chapter 13. Extermination of Birds for Women's Hats. Footnote. In the preparation of this chapter and its illustrations, I've had much valuable assistance from Mr. C. William Bebe, who recently has probed the London Feather Trade almost to the bottom. End. Footnote. It is high time for the whole civilized world to know that many of the most beautiful and remarkable birds of the world are now being exterminated to furnish millenary ornaments for women's wear. The mass of new information that we have recently secured on this traffic from the headquarters of the Feather Trade is appalling. Previously I had not dreamt that conditions are half as bad as they are. It is entirely fitting that on this subject New York should send a message to London. New York is almost a spotless town in plume-free millinery, and London and Paris are the worst places in the world. We have cleaned house. With but extremely slight exceptions, the blot of the slaughtered innocence is no longer upon our skirts, and on the subject of plumage millinery we have a right to be just as fair as we choose. Here in New York, and also in New Jersey, no man may sell, own for sale, or offer for sale, the plumage of any wild American bird other than a game bird. More than that, the plumage of no foreign bird belonging to any bird family represented in the fauna of North America can be sold here. There are only a few kinds of improper millenary feathers that it is possible to sell here under the law. Thanks to the long and arduous campaign of the National Association of Audubon Societies, founded and for ten years directed by Gallant William Dutchle, you now see on the streets of New York very, very little wild bird plumage save that from game birds. It is true that a few servant girls are now wearing the cast of regrets of their mistresses, but they are only as one in a thousand. At Atlantic City there is said to be a fine display of servant girl and ladies made regrets. In New York and New Jersey, in Pennsylvania, for everything saved the sale of heron and e-grat plumes, a privilege obtained by a bunco game. In Massachusetts, and in many other of our states, the wild bird's plumage millenary business is dead. Two years ago, when the New York Legislative refused to repeal the Dutch law, the millenary association asserted and brought a cloud of witnesses to Albany to prove that the enforcement of the law would throw thousands of operatives out of employment. The law is in effect and the e-grat business is dead in this state. Have any operatives starved or been thrown out of employment? We've heard of none. They are now at work making very pretty head ornaments of silk and ribbons and gores and lace, and they are wearing them. But even while these words are being written, there is one large fly in the ointment. The store window of E&S Myers, 688 Broadway, New York, contains about 600 plumes and skins of birds of paradise for sale for millenary purposes. No wonder the great bird of paradise is now almost extinct. Their sale here is possible because the Dutch law protects from the feathered dealers only the birds that belong to avian families represented in the United States. With fiendish cunning and enterprise, the shameless feather dealings are ferreting out the birds whose skins and plumes may legally be imported into this country and sold. But we will meet that with a law that will protect all foreign birds so far as we are concerned. Now it is time for the universal enactment of a law which will prohibit the sale and use as ornaments of the plumage, feathers or skins of any wild bird, that is not a legitimate game bird. London is now the head of the giant octopus of the feather trade that has reached out its deadly tentacles into the most remote wildernesses of the earth, and steadily is drawing in the skins and plumes and quills of the most beautiful and most interesting unprotected birds of the world. The extent of this cold blooded industry, supported by vain and hard-hearted women, will presently be shown in detail. Paris is the great manufacturing centre of feather trimming and ornaments, and the French people obstinately refuse to protect the birds from extermination because their slaughter affords employment to a certain number of French factory operatives. All over the world, where they have real estate possessions, the men of England know how to protect game from extermination. The English are good at protecting game, when they decide to set about it. Why should London be the mecca of the feather-curlers of the world? It is easily explained. 1. London has the greatest feather market in the world. 2. The feather industry wants the money, and 3. The London feather industry is willing to spend money in fighting to retain its stranglehold on the unprotected birds of the world. Let us run through a small portion of the mass of fresh evidence before us. It will be easier for the friends of birds to read these details here than to procure them at first hand as we have done. The first thing that strikes one is the fact that the feather-hunters are scattered all over the world where bird-life is plentiful, and there are no laws to hinder their work. I commend to every friend of birds this list of the species whose plumage is today being bought and sold in large quantities every year in London. To the birds of the world, this list is of deadly import for its spells extermination. The reader will notice that it is the way of the millenary octopus to reach out to the uttermost ends of the earth and take everything that it can use. From the treckless jungles of New Guinea, round the world both ways to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes, no unprotected bird is safe. The hummingbirds of Brazil, the egrets of the world at large, the rare birds of paradise, the toucan, the eagle, the condor and the emu, all are being exterminated to swell the annual profits of the millenary trade. The case is far more serious than the world at large knows or even suspects, but for the profits the birds will be safe and no unprotected wild species can long escape the hounds of commerce. But behold the list of rare, curious and beautiful birds that are today in grave peril. List of birds now being exterminated for the London and continental feather markets by species and locality. American egret, Venezuela, South America, Mexico, etc. Snowy egret, Venezuela, South America, Mexico, etc. Scarlet ibis, tropical South America. Green ibis, species not recognizable by its trade name. Herons, generally, all unprotected regions. Marabous stork, Africa. Pelicans, all species, all unprotected regions. Busted, Southern Asia, Africa. Greater bird of paradise, New Guinea, Arrow Islands. Lesser bird of paradise, New Guinea. Red bird of paradise, islands of Wagyu and Batanta. Twelve-wired bird of paradise, New Guinea, Salvatty. Black bird of paradise, Northern New Guinea. Rifle bird of paradise, New Guinea generally. Joby bird of paradise, Island of Joby. King bird of paradise, New Guinea. Magnificent bird of paradise, New Guinea. Impian pheasant, Nepal and India. Tragopen pheasant, Nepal and India. Argus pheasant, Malay peninsular, Borneo. Silvip pheasant, Burma and China. Golden pheasant, China. Jungle cock, East Indies and Burma. Peacock, East Indies and India. Condor, South America. Vultures, generally, were not protected. Eagles, generally, all unprotected regions. Hawks, generally, all unprotected regions. Crown pigeon, two species, New Guinea. Tronkas, locality unknown. Pitta, East Indies. Magpie, Europe. Tuaku or plantain eater, Africa. Velvet birds, locality uncertain. Grives, locality uncertain. Mannequin, South America. Green parrot, now protected, India. Dominoes, sooty turn, tropical coasts and islands. Garnet tenogen, South America. Greep, all unprotected regions. Green murral, locality uncertain. Horfang, locality uncertain. Rhea, South America. Sixplet, locality uncertain. Starling, Europe. Tetris, locality not determined. Emerald-breasted hummingbird, blue-throated hummingbird and amethyst hummingbird. West Indies, Central and South America. Resplendent trogon, several species, Central America. Cock of the Rock, Macau, Toucan, South America. Emu, Australia. Sunbird, East Indies. Owl, all unprotected regions. Kingfisher, all unprotected regions. Jabiru Stork, South America. Albatras, turn all species. Girl, all species. Owl, unprotected regions. End table. In order to throw a spotlight on the most recent transactions in the London wild birds plumage market and to furnish a clear idea of what is today going on in London, Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam, I will set out in some detail the report of an agent whom I engaged to ascertain the London dealings in the plumage of wild birds that were killed especially to furnish that plumage. As one item, let us take the sales in London in February, May and October 1911, because they bring the subject well down to date. My agent's explanatory notice is as follows, quote, These three sales represent six months, very nearly double this quantity as sold by these four firms in a year. We must also take into consideration that all the feathers are not brought to the London market, and that very large shipments are also made direct to the raw feather dealers and manufacturers of Paris and Berlin, and that Amsterdam also gets large quantities from the West Indies. For your purpose, I report upon three sales at different periods of the year 1911, and as those sales do not vary much, you will be able to judge the consumption of birds in a year. End quote. The regrets of the feather trade come from egrets, and, being very light, it requires the death of several birds to yield one ounce. In many catalogues, the word albatross stands for the gibiru, a nearly exterminated species of giant stork inhabiting South America. Rhea often stands for vulture plumage. If the feather dealers had deliberately attempted to form an educational list of the most beautiful and the most interesting birds of the world, they could hardly have done better than they have done in the above list. If it were in my power to show the reader a colored plate of each species now being exterminated by the feather trade, he would be startled by the exhibit, that the very choicest birds of the whole avian world should be thus blotted out at the behest of vain and heartless women is a shame, a disgrace, and a worldwide loss. Table. London Feather Sale of February 1911. Sold by Hale and Sons. Egrets. 3,069 ounces. Herons. 960 ounces. Burse of Paradise. 1,920 skins. Sold by Figas and Co. Egrets. 421 ounces. Herons. 103 ounces. Paradise. 414 skins. Eagles. 2,600 skins. Condors. 1,580 skins. Bustards. 2,400 skins. Sold by Dalton and Young. Egrets. 1,606 ounces. Herons. 250 ounces. Burse of Paradise. 4,330 bodies. Sold by Lewis and Pete. Egrets. 1,250 ounces. Burse of Paradise. 362 skins. Eagles. 384 skins. Trogons. 206 skins. Hummingbirds. 24,800 skins. If I am correctly informed, the London Feather Trade admits that it requires 6 egrets to yield 1 ounce of Egret plumes. This being the case, the 21,528 ounces sold as above stand for 129,168 egrets killed for a 9 month supply of egret plumes for London alone. The total number of bird corpses auctioned during these 3 sales is as follows. Egrets. 21,528 ounces is 129,168 egrets. Herons. 2,683 ounces is 13,598 herons. 20,698 birds of paradise. 41,090 hummingbirds. 9,464 eagles, conlers, etc. 9,472 other birds. Total number of birds? 223,490. It is to be remembered that the sales listed above cover the transactions of 4 firms only and do not in any manner take into account the direct importations from Paris, Berlin and Amsterdam of manufacturers and other dealers. The defenders of the Feather Trade are at great pains to assure the world that in the monthly, bimonthly and causally sales Feathers often appear in the market twice in the same year, and this statement is made for them in order to be absolutely fair. Recent examinations of the plume catalogues for an entire year, marked with the price paid for each item, reveals very few which are blank, indicating no sale. The subtractions of the duplicated items would alter the result only very slightly. The full extent of England's annual consumption of the plumage of wild birds slaughtered especially for the trade never has been determined. I doubt whether it's possible to ascertain it. The information that we have is so fragmentary that in all probability it reflects only a small portion of the whole truth, but for all that it is sufficient to prove the case of the defenders of the birds versus the London Chamber of Commerce. Import of Feathers and Down, Ornamental for the Year 1910 Venezuela, 8,398 pounds, Value in Dollars, $191,058 Brazil, 787 pounds, $5,999 American Dollars Japan, 2,284 pounds, $3,830 China, 6,329 pounds, $16,308 Tripoli, 345 pounds, $900 Egypt, 21,047 pounds, $89,486 Java, Sumatra and Borneo, 15,703 pounds, or $186,504 Cape of Good Hope, 709,406 pounds, or $9,747,146 British India, 18,359 pounds, $22,137 Hong Kong, 310 pounds, or $3,090 British West Indies, 30 pounds, or $97 Other British Colonies, 10,438 pounds, or $21,938 The above does not take into account the feathers from game birds received in England from France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Belgium and the Netherlands. As a final sightlight on the quantity of e-grid and heron plumes offered and sold in London during the 12 months ending in April 1912, we offer the following exhibit. Osprey Feathers, e-grid and heron plumes sold in London during the year ending April 1912. Venezuelan, long and medium, offered 11,617 ounces, sold 7,072 ounces. Venezuelan, mixed heron, offered 4,043 ounces, sold 2,539 ounces. Brazilian, offered 3,335 ounces, sold 1,810 ounces. Chinese, offered 641 ounces, sold 576 ounces. Total, offered 19,636 ounces, sold 11,997 ounces. Birds of Paradise, plumes, with two plumes is one bird, offered 2,385, sold 24,579. Under the head of Hummingbirds Not Wanted, Mr. Downham is at great pains to convey the distinct impression that today Hummingbirds are scorned by the feather trade and the demand for them is dead. I believed him, until my agent turned in the following statement. Hummingbirds sold by Lewis & Pete London February 1911, 24,800. Hummingbirds sold by Lewis & Pete London May 1911, 6,250. Hummingbirds sold by Hale & Sons London October 1911, 10,040. Total, 41,090. It is useless for anyone to assert that these birds were merely offered and not actually sold as Mr. Downham so laboriously explains is the regular course with Hummingbird skins for that will deceive no intelligent person. The statement published above comes to me direct from an absolutely competent and reliable source. Undoubtedly the friends of birds and likewise their enemies will be interested in the prices at which the skins of the most beautiful birds of the world are sold in London prior to their annihilation by the feather industry. I submit the following exhibit copied from the circular of Mrs. Lewis & Pete. It is at least of academic interest. Many thoughts are suggested by these London lists of bird slaughter and loot. It will be noticed that the breast of the greep has almost wholly disappeared from the feather market and from women's heads. The reason is that there are no longer enough birds of that group to hold a place in the London market. Few indeed are the Americans who know that from 1900 to 1908 the Lake Region of Southern Oregon was the scene of the slaughter of uncountable thousands of those birds which continued until the greeps were almost exterminated. When the wonderful lyrebird of Australia had been almost exterminated for its tail feathers its open slaughter was stopped by law and the heavy fine was imposed on exportation, amounting I have been told to $250 for each offense. My latest news of the lyrebird was of the surreptitious exportation of 200 skins to the London feather market. In India the smuggling outward of the skins of protected birds is constantly going on. Occasionally an exporter is caught and fined, but that does not stop the traffic. Bird lovers must now bid farewell forever to all the birds of paradise. Nothing but the legal closing of the world's markets against their plumes and skins can save any of them. They never were numerous, nor does any species range over a wide area. They are strictly insular, and the island homes of some of them are very small. Take the great bird of paradise, Paradisia apoda, as an illustration. On October 2, 1912, at Indianapolis, Indiana, a city near the center of the United States, in three show windows within one hundred feet of the headquarters of the Fourth National Conservation Congress, I counted eleven stuffed heads and eleven complete sets of plumes of this bird displayed for sale. The prizes ranged from thirty dollars to forty-seven dollars fifty cents each, and while I looked a large lady approached, pointed a finger at the remains of a greater bird of paradise, and with grim determination said to her shopping companion, there I want one of them, and I'm going to have it too. Says Mr. James Buckland in prose and cons of the plumage bill. Quote, Mr. Goodfellow has returned within the last few weeks from a second expedition to Nagini. One can now walk, he states, miles and miles through the former hands of these birds of paradise, without seeing or hearing even the commonest species. When I reflect on this sacrilege, I'm lost in wonder at the apathy of the British public. End quote. Mr. Carl Hagenbeck wrote me only three months ago that the condors of the Andes are all being exterminated for their feathers, and these birds are now very difficult to obtain. The egret and heron plumes, known under the trade name of osprey etc. feathers, form by far the most important item in each feather sale. There are fifteen grades. They are sold by the ounce, and the prizes range all the way from twenty-eight cents per ounce for mixed heron to two hundred and twenty-five shillings, or forty-five dollars and sixty cents per ounce, for the best Brazilian short selected, on February 7, 1912. Is it any wonder that in Philadelphia the prices of finished egrets ready to be worn runs from twenty dollars to one hundred and twenty-five dollars? The plumes that run up into the big figures are the short selected, coming from the following localities, and quoted at the prices set down here in shillings and pens. Count the shilling at twenty-four cents United States money. Prizes of short selected egret and heron plumes, in London, on February 7, 1912, from Lewis & Pete's list. East in these, per ounce, one hundred and seventeen over six to two hundred and seven over six is forty-nine dollars and eighty cents max. Rangoon, per ounce, one hundred and fifty over zero to one hundred and ninety-two over six is forty-six dollars and twenty cents max. China, per ounce, one hundred and thirty over zero to two hundred and forty-five is fifty-eight dollars and eighty cents max. Brazil, per ounce, two hundred to two hundred and twenty-five is fifty-four dollars max. Venezuela, per ounce, one hundred and sixty-five to two hundred and twenty-two over six is fifty-three dollars and forty cents max. The total offering of these short selected plumes in December 1911 was six hundred and eighty-nine ounces, and in February 1912 it was two hundred and thirty ounces. Now, with these enormous prizes prevailing, is it any wonder that the egrets and herons are being relentlessly pursued to the uttermost ends of the earth? I think that any man who really knows the habits of egrets and herons and the total impossibility of any quantity of their shared feathers being picked up in a marketable state must know in his heart that if the London and continental feather markets keep open a few years longer, every species that furnishes short selected plumes will be utterly exterminated from off the face of the earth. Let the English people make no mistake about this, nor be fooled by any fairy tales of the feather trade about Venezuelan garceros, and the vast quantities of valuable plumes picked off the bushes and out of the mud. Those carefully concocted egret farm stories make lovely reading, but the reader who examines the evidence will soon decide the extent of their truthfulness. I think that they contain not even ten percent of truth, and I shall not rest until the stories of Leon Laglaz and Mayol Grisole have been put to the tests in the regions where they originated. A few plumes may be picked out of the jungle, yes, but as for any commercial quantity it is at present beyond belief. Besides, we have direct, eyewitness testimony to the contrary. It must not be inferred that the friends of birds in England have been idle or silent in the presence of the London feather trade. On the contrary, the Royal Society for the Protection of Wild Birds and Mr James Buckland have so strongly attacked the feather industry that the London Chamber of Commerce has felt called upon to come to its rescue. Mr Buckland, on its own individual account, has done yeoman service to the cause, and his devotion to the birds, and his tireless energy, are both almost beyond the reach of praise in words. At the last moment before going to press, I learn that the bird's plumage bill has achieved a triumph of a first reading in Parliament, which looks as if success is at last in sight. The powerful pamphlet that he has written, published and circulated at his own expense, entitled Pros and Cons of the Plumage Bill, is a splendid effort. What a pity it is that more individuals are not similarly inspired to make independent effort in the protection cause. But, strange to say, few indeed are the men who have either the nerve or the ability to go it alone. On the introduction and polemmed of the bill to save the birds from the feather trade, it was opposed through the efforts of the Chamber of Commerce, on the ground that if any bill against the sale of plumes should pass, and plumes could not be sold, the London business in wild bird skins and feathers would immediately be transferred to the Continent. In the face of that devastating and altogether horrible prospect, and because the London feather-dealers, quote, need the money, end quote, the bill was at first defeated, to the great joy of the Chamber of Commerce and Mr. Downham. But the cause of birds will win in the end, because it is right. The feather-dealers have been shrewdly active in the defence of their trade, and the methods they have employed for influencing public opinion have quite outshone those put forth by their brethren in America. I have before me a copy of a booklet bearing the name of Mr. C. F. Downham as the author, and the London Chamber of Commerce has loaned its good name as publisher. Altogether it is a very shrewd piece of work, even though its arguments and justification of bird slaughter for the feather market are too absurd and weak for serious consideration. The chief burden of the defender of bird slaughter for millenary purposes is on account of the destruction of egrets and herons, but particularly the former. To offset as far as possible the absolutely true charge that egrets bear their best plumes in their breeding season, when the helpless young are in the nest, and the parent birds must be killed to obtain the plumes. The feather trade has obtained from three Frenchmen, Léon Laglaise, Manuel Griseau and F. Gaye. A beautiful and plausible story to the effect that in Venezuela the enormous output of egret plumes has been obtained by picking up off the bushes and out of the water and mud the shed feathers of those birds. According to the story Venezuela is full of egret farms called Garceros, where the birds breed and mold under strict supervision and kindly drop their feathers in such places that it is possible to find them and to pick them up in a high state of preservation, and we are asked to believe that it is these very Venezuelan picked up feathers that command in London the high prize of forty-four dollars per ounce. Mr. Laglaise is especially exploited by Mr. Downham as a French traveller of high standing and well known in the zoological museums of France, but, sad to say, when Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn cabled to the Museum of Natural History in Paris, inquiring about Mr. Laglaise, the cable flashed back the once sad word, incone, unknown. I think it entirely possible that enough shared feathers have been picked up in the reeking swarms of Venezuela on the upper tributaries of the Orinoco to afford an excuse for the beautiful story of Mr. Laglaise. Any shrewd individual with money and the influence that money secures could put up just such a plant as I firmly believe has been put up by someone in Venezuela. I will guarantee that I could accomplish such a job in Venezuela or Brazil in four months time at an expense not exceeding one thousand dollars. That the great supply of immaculately perfect egret plumes that annually come out of Venezuela could by any possibility be picked up in the swarms where they were shed and dropped by the egrets is entirely preposterous and incredible. The whole proportion is denounced by several men of standing and experience, none of whom are incone. As a sweeping refutation of the fantastic statements regarding Garceras, published by Mr. Daunam as coming from Mrs. Laglaise, Grisolle and Gay, I offer the written testimony of an American gentleman who at this moment owns and maintains within a few yards of his residence a large preserve of snowy egrets and herons, the former representing the species which furnishes egret plumes exactly similar to those shipped from Venezuela and Brazil. If the testimony of Mr. McKillney is not sufficient to stamp the statements of the three Frenchmen quoted by Mr. Daunam as absolute and thoroughly misleading falsehoods, then there is no such thing as this world as evidence. I suggest to peruse all of the statements of the three Frenchmen who are quoted with such confidence by Mr. Daunam and published by the Honourable Chamber of Commerce at London and then a careful reading of the following letter. Avery Island, LA, June 17, 1912 Dear Mr. Hornaday, I have before me your letter of June 8 asking for information as to whether or no egrets shed their plumes at their nesting places in sufficient quantities to enable them to be gathered commercially. I most emphatically wish to state that it is impossible to gather at the nesting place of these birds any quantity of their plumes. I have nesting within fifty yards of where I am now sitting dictating this letter, not less than twenty thousand pairs of the various species of herons and egrets, and there are fully two thousand and five hundred pairs of snowy herons nesting within my preserve. During the nesting season, which covers the months of April, May and June, I am through this heronry in a small canoe almost every day and often twice a day. I have had these herons under my close inspection for the past seventeen years, and I have not in any one season picked up or seen more than half a dozen discarded plumes. Such plumes as I have picked up I have kept on my desk and given to the people who were interested. I remember that last year I picked up four plumes of the snowy heron that were in one bunch. I think these must have been plucked out by the birds fighting. This year I have found only one plume so far. I enclose it herewith. You will notice that it is one of the shorter plumes and is badly worn at the end, as have been all the plumes which I have picked up in my heronry. I am positive that it is not possible for natural shed plumes to be guarded commercially. I have a number of times talked with plume hunters from Venezuela and other South American countries, and I have never heard of any egret feathers being guarded by their being picked up after the birds have shed them. I have heard of a number of heronries in South America that are protected by the landowners for the purpose of gathering a yearly crop of egret plumes, but this crop is guarded always by shooting a certain percentage of the birds. This shooting is done by experts with twenty-two caliber rifles, and does not materially disturb the nesting colony. I have known of two men who have been engaged in killing the birds on larger states in South America, who are paid regular salaries for their services as egret hunters. Very truly yours, E. A. MacKillney. I am more than willing to set the above against the fairy-tale of Miss Ella Glaes. Here is the testimony of A. H. Meyer, an ex-plume hunter, who for nine years worked in Venezuela. This sworn testimony was laid before the legislator of the State of New York in 1911, when the New York Milenaries Association was frantically endeavouring to secure the repeal of the Spenner-Dutcher Law. This witness was produced by the National Association of Ottoman Societies. Quote, My attention has been called to the fact that certain commercial interests in this city are circulating stories in their newspapers and elsewhere to the effect that their egrets used in the millenary trade come chiefly from Venezuela, where they are gathered from the ground in a large carceros, or breeding colonies, of white herons. I wish to state that I have personally engaged in the work of collecting the plumes of these birds in Venezuela. This was my business for the years 1896 to 1905 inclusive. I am thoroughly conversant with the methods employed in gathering egret and snowy heron plumes in Venezuela, and I wish to give the following statement regarding the practices employed in procuring these feathers. The birds gather in large colonies to rear their young. They have the plumes only during the mating and nesting season. After the period when they are employed in caring for their young, it is found that the plumes are virtually of no commercial value because of the worn and frayed condition to which they have been reduced. It is the custom in Venezuela to shoot the birds while the young are in the nests. A few feathers of the large white heron, American egret, known as the Garza Blanca, can be picked up of a morning about their breeding places, but these are of small value and are known as dead feathers. They are worth locally not over three dollars an ounce, while the feathers taken from the bird, known as live feathers, are worth fifteen dollars an ounce. My work led me into every part of Venezuela and Colombia where these birds are to be found, and I have never yet found or heard of any carceros that regarded for the purpose of simply gathering the feathers from the ground. No such condition exists in Venezuela. The story is absolutely without foundation, in my opinion, and has simply been put forward for commercial purposes. The natives of the country who do virtually all of the hunting for feathers are not provident in their nature, and their practices are of a most cruel and brutal nature. I have seen them frequently pull the plumes from wounded birds, leaving the crippled birds to die of starvation, unable to respond to the cries of their young and the nests above, which were calling for food. I have known these people to tie and prop up wounded egrets on the marsh where they would attract the attention of other birds flying by. These decoys they keep in this position until they die of their wounds or from the attacks of insects. I have seen the terrible red ants of that country actually eating out the eyes of these wounded, helpless birds that were tied up by the plume hunters. I could write you many pages of the horrors practised in gathering egret feathers in Venezuela by their natives for the millenary trade of Paris and New York. To illustrate the comparatively small number of dead feathers which are collected, I will mention that in one year I and my associates shipped to New York 80 pounds of the plumes of the large heron and 12 pounds of the little recurved plumes of the snowy heron. In this whole lot there were not over five pounds of plumes that had been guarded from the ground, and these were of little value. The plume birds have been nearly exterminated in the United States and Mexico, and the same condition of affairs will soon exist in tropical America. This extermination will come about because of the fact that the young are left to starve in the nest when the old birds are killed, any other statement made by interested parties to the country notwithstanding. I am so incensed at the ridiculously absurd and misleading stories that are being published on this question that I want to give you this letter, and before delivering it to you, shall take oath to its truthfulness." Here is a testimony of Mr. Casper Whitney of New York, formerly editor of Outing magazine and Outdoor America. During extended travel throughout South America, from 1903 to 1907 inclusive, I journeyed on three separate occasions by canoe, 1904 to 1907, on the lower Orinoco and at Pure Rivers, and their tributaries. This is the region, so far as Venezuela is concerned, in which is the greatest slaughter of white herons for their plumage, or more specifically for the marital plumes which are carried only in the mating and breeding season, and are known in the millenary trade as Egrets. There is literally no room for question. The snowy herons are killed exactly as I describe. It is the custom of all those who hunt for the millenary trade, and is recognized by the natives as a usual method." Here is a testimony of Mr. Julian A. Dimmock of Pikamuz, New York, the famous Outdoor photographer and illustrator of Florida enchantments. I know a goodly number of the plume hunters of Florida. I have camped with them, and talked to them. I have heard their tales, and even full accounts of the shooting up of an Egret rookery. Never has a man in Florida suggested to me that plumes could be obtained without killing the birds. I have known the wardens and have visited rookeries after they have been shot up, and the evidence all pointed to the everlasting use of the gun. It is certainly not true that the plumes can be obtained without killing the birds bearing them. Nineteen years ago I visited the Cuthbert rookery with one of the men who discovered the birds nesting in that lake. He and his partner had sold the plumes gathered there for more than a thousand dollars. He showed me how they hid in the bushes and shot the birds. He even gave me a chance to watch him kill two or three birds. I know personally the man chiefly responsible for the slaughter of the birds at Alligator Bay. He laughed at the idea of getting plumes without killing the birds. I well know the man who shot the birds up Rogers River, and even saw some of the empty shells left on the ground by him. I have camped with seminels, wights, blacks, outlaws, and those within the pill, connected with plume hunting, and all tell the same story. The birds are shot to get the plumes. The evidence of my own eyes and the action of the birds themselves convinces me that there is not a shadow of doubt concerning this point. This warm testimony from Mr. T. J. Ash of Key West, Florida is very direct and to the point. I've seen many molted and dropped feathers from wild plumed birds. I've never seen a molted or dropped feather that was fit for anything. It is the exception when a plumed bird drops feathers of any value while in flight. Whatever feathers are so dropped are those that are frayed, worn out, and forestiled by the process of molting. The molting season is not during the hatching season, but is after the hatching season. The shedding or molting takes place once a year, and during this molting season the feathers after having the hard usage of the year from wind, rain, and other causes when dropped are of absolutely no commercial value. Mr. Arthur T. Wayne of Mount Pleasant, South Carolina relates in sworn testimony his experience in attempting to secure egret plumes without killing the birds. It is utterly impossible to get 50 egret plumes from any colony of breeding birds without shooting the birds. Last spring I went twice a week to a breeding colony of American and snowy egrets from early in April until June 8. Despite the fact that I covered miles of territory in a boat, I picked up but two American egret plumes which I now have, but not a single snowy egret plume that I see, nor did my companion, who accompanied me on every trip. I saw an American egret plume on the water and left it purposely to see whether it would sink or not. Upon visiting the place a few days afterwards the plume was not an evidence, undoubtedly having sunk. The plumes are chiefly shed in the air while the birds are going to or coming from their breeding grounds. If that millenary plume law is repealed, the fate of the American and snowy egrets is sealed for the few birds that remain will be shot to the very last one. Any man who ever has been in an egret rookery and I have knows that the above testimony is true. The French story of the beautiful and smoothly running egret farms in Venezuela is preposterous, save for a mere shadow of truth. I do not say that no egret plumes could be picked up, but I do assert that the total quantity obtainable in one year in that way would be utterly trivial. No, the ospreys of the British feather market come from slaughtered egrets and herons, killed in the breeding season. Let the British public and the British parliament make no mistake about that. If they wish the trade to continue, let it be based on the impracticable ground that the merchants want the money, and not on a fantastic dream that is too silly to deceive even a child that knows birds. The use or disuse of wild birds plumage as millenary ornaments is another of those wild love subjects regarding which there is no room for argument. To assert that the feather dealers want the business for the money it brings them is not argument. We have seen many a steamroller go over truth and right and justice by main strength and red hot power, but truth and right refuse to stay flat down. There is on this earth not one wild animal species, mammal, bird or reptile, that can long withstand exploitation for commercial purposes. Even the whales of the deep sea, the walrus of the Arctic regions, the conlers of the Andes, and alligators of the Everglade, Morassus, are no exception to the universal rule. In Mr. Downham's book there is much fallacious reasoning and many conclusions that are not borne out by the facts. For example, he says that no species of birds of paradise has been diminished in number by slaughter for the feather trade, that Florida still contains a supply of egrets, that a decrease in bird life should be charged to the spread of cities, towns, and farms, and not to the trade, that the trade was in no way responsible for the slaughter of 300,000 girls and albatrosses on Lays and Island. I have space to notice one other important erroneous conclusion that Mr. Downham publishes in his book on page 105. He says, quote, the destruction of birds in foreign countries is something that no trade can direct or control. End quote. This is an amazing declaration, and absolutely contrary to experience. Let me prove what I say by a fresh and incontestable illustration. Prior to April 1911, when Governor Dix signed the Bane Law against the sale of wild native game in the state of New York, Curtis County, North Carolina was a vast slaughter pen for wildfowl. No power or persuasion had availed to induce the people of North Carolina to check or regulate, or in any manner mitigate, that slaughter of geese, ducks, and swans. It was estimated that 200,000 wildfowl were annually slaughtered there. We, who advocated the Bane Law, said, close the New York markets against Kurdtuck birds, and you will stop a great deal of the slaughter. We cleaned our Aegean stable. The greatest game market in America was absolutely closed. Last winter, 1911, the annual killing of wildfowl was fully 50% less than during previous years. In one small town, 20 professional duck shooters went entirely out of business, because they couldn't sell their ducks. The dealers refused to buy them. The result was exactly what we predicted it would be, and this year it is reported over and over that ducks are more plentiful in New England than they have been in 20 years previously. The result is wonderful because so quick. Beyond all question, the feather merchants of London, Paris, and Berlin absolutely control the bird killers of Venezuela, China, New Guinea, Mexico, and South America. Let the word go forth that their trade is no longer permitted to buy and sell egret and heron plumes, skins of birds of paradise, and condo feathers, and presto, the killing industry falls dead the next moment. Yes indeed, members of the British Parliament, it is easily within your power to wipe out at a single stroke fully one half of the bird slaughter for fancy feathers. It can be done just as we wiped out one half the annual duck slaughter in wickedly wasteful North Carolina. The feather trade absolutely does control the killing situation. Now, will the people of England clean house by controlling the feather trade? If a hundred species of the most beautiful birds of the world must be exterminated for the feather trade, let the odium rest elsewhere than on the people of England. The bird lovers of America may rest assured that the bird lovers of England, a mighty host, are neither careless nor indifferent regarding the wild birds plumage business. On the contrary, several bills have been brought before Parliament intended to regulate or prohibit traffic, and a measure of vast importance to the birds of the world is now before the House of Commons. It is backed by Mr. Percy Olden MP, by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, by the Silburn Society, and by Mr. James Buckland, a host in himself. For years past that splendidly equipped and well managed Royal Society has waged ceaseless warfare for the birds. Its activity has been tremendous, and its membership list contains many of the finest names in England. The address of the Honorary Secretary Frank E. Lemon, Esquire, is 23 Queen Anne's Gate, London, South West. Naturally, these influences are posed by the textile trade section of the London Chamber of Commerce, and their only argument consists of the plea that if London doesn't get the money out of the feather trade, the continent will get it. A reasonable, logical, magnificent, and convincing excuse for a wholesale bird slaughter, truly. Mr. Buckland has been informed from the continent that the people of France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium are waiting and watching to see what England is going to do with the question to slaughter or not to slaughter. For England has no monopoly of the bird's plumage trade, not by any means. Says Mr. Buckland, in prose and cons of the plumage bill, page 17, quote, As regards the vast majority of fancy feathers used in millinery, the continent receives its own supplies. The feathers of the hundreds of thousands of albatrosses which are killed in the North Pacific all go to Paris. Of the untold thousands of magpies, ales, and other species which come from Peru, not one skin or feather crosses the channel. The white herons of the upper Senegal and the Niger are being rapidly exterminated at the instigation of the feather merchants, but not one of the plumes reaches London. Paris receives direct a large supply of egrets from South America and elsewhere. The millions of swallows and other migratory birds which are killed annually as they pass through Italy, France and Spain on their way north supply the millinery trade of Europe with an incredible quantity of wings and other plumage, but none of it is distributed from London. London, as a distributing centre, has no monopoly of the trade in raw feathers, end quote. Mr. Buckland's green-covered pamphlet is a powerful document, and both his facts and his conclusions seem to be unassailable. The author's address is Royal Colonial Institute, Northumberland Avenue, London, WC. The duty of the civilized nations of Europe is perfectly plain. The savage and bloody business in feathers torn from wild birds should be stopped completely and forever. If the commons will not arise and reform the odious business out of existence, then the kings and queens and presidents should do their plain duty. In the suppression of a world crime like this, it is clearly a case of noblesse oblige. End of Chapter 13 Chapter 14 of Our Vanishing Wildlife This is a LibriWalks recording. All LibriWalks recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriWalks.org Our Vanishing Wildlife by William T. Hornaday Chapter 14 The Bird Tragedy on Lasan Island This chapter is a curtain dropper to the preceding chapter. As a clearly cut concrete case, the reader will find it unique and unsurpassed. It should be of lively interest to every American, because the tragedy occurred on American territory. In the faraway North Pacific Ocean, about 700 miles from Honolulu, West by North, lies the small island of Lasan. It is level, sandy, poorly planted by nature and barren of all things likely to enlist the attention of predatory man. To the harassed birds of mid-ocean, it seemed like a secure haven, and for ages past, it has been inhabited only by them. There, several species of sea birds, large and small, have found homes and breeding places. Until 1909, the inhabitants consisted of the Lasan albatross, black-footed albatross, sooty turn, gray-backed turn, naughty turn, hawaiian turn, white turn, bone-in-petrel, two sheer waters, the red-tailed tropic bird, two boobies, and the man of war bird. Lasan island is two miles long by one and one-half miles broad, and at times, it has been literally covered with birds. Its bird life was first brought prominently to notice in 1891 by Henry Palmer, the agent of honorable Walter Rothschild, and in 1902 and 1903, Walter K. Fisher and W. A. Bryan made further observations. Ever since 1891, the bird life on Lasan has been regarded as one of the wonders of the bird world. One of the photographs taken prior to 1909 shows a vast plain, apparently a square mile in area, covered and crowded with Lasan albatrosses. They stand there on the level sand, serene, bulky, and immaculate. Thousands of birds appear in one view, a very remarkable sight. Naturally, ma'am, the ever greedy, began to cast about four ways by which to convert some product of that feathered host into money. At first, guano and eggs were collected. A tramway was laid down and small box cars were introduced, in which the collected material was piled and pushed down to the packing place. For several years, this went on, and the birds themselves were not molested. At last, however, a tentacle of the feather-trade octopus reached out to Lasan. In an evil moment in the spring of 1909, a predatory individual of Honolulu and elsewhere, named Max Schlemmer, decided that the wings of those albatrosses, gulls and thorns, should be torn off and sent to Japan. Whence, they would undoubtedly be shipped to Paris, the special market for the wings of seabirds slaughtered in the North Pacific. Schlemmer the slaughterer bought a cheap vessel, hired 23 phlegmatic and cold-blooded Japanese laborers, and organized a raid on Lasan. With the utmost secrecy, he sailed from Honolulu, landed his bird killers upon the seabird wonderland, and turned them lose upon the birds. For several months, they slaughtered diligently and without mercy. Apparently, it was the ambition of Schlemmer to kill every bird on the island. By the time the bird butchers had accumulated between three and four carloads of wings, and the carnage was half finished, William Ibrahim, professor of zoology in the College of Honolulu, heard of it, and promptly wired the United States government. Without the loss of a moment, the secretary of the navy dispatched the revenue-cutter Titus to the shambles of Lasan. When Captain Jacobs arrived, he found that in round numbers about 300,000 birds had been destroyed, and all that remained of them were several acres of bones and dead bodies, and about three carloads of wings, feathers, and skins. It was evident that Schlemmer's intention was to kill all the birds on the island, and only the timely arrival of the Titus frustrated the bloody plan. The 23 Japanese poachers were arrested and taken to Honolulu for trial, and the Titus also brought away all the stolen wings and plummage, with the exception of one shed full of wings that had to be left behind on account of lack of carrying space. That old shed, with one in torn out and supposed to contain nearly 50,000 pairs of wings, was photographed by Professor Dill in 1911 as shown here with. 300,000 albatrosses, gulls, turns, and other birds were butchered to make a Schlemmer holiday. Had the arrival of the Titus been delayed, it is reasonably certain that every bird on Lasan would have been killed to satisfy the wolfish capacity of one money-grubbing white man. In 1911, the Iowa State University dispatched to Lasan a scientific expedition in charge of Professor Homer R. Dill. The party landed on the island on April 24 and remained until June 5, and the report of Professor Dill, U.S. Department of Agriculture, is consumedly interesting to the friends of birds. Here is what he has said regarding the evidences of bird slaughter. Our first impression of Lasan was that the poachers had tripped the place of bird life. An area of over 300 acres on each side of the buildings was apparently abandoned. Only the sheer waters moaning in their burrows, the little wingless rail skulking from one grass to soft to another, and the saucy finch remained. It is an excellent example of what Professor Nutting calls the survival of the inconspicuous. Here on every side are bones bleaching in the sun, showing where the poachers had piled the bodies of the birds as they stripped them of wings and feathers. In the old open Guano shed were seen the remains of hundreds and possibly thousands of wings which were placed there but never cured for shipping, as the marauders were interrupted in their work. An old system back of one of the buildings tells a story of cruelty that surpasses anything else done by these heartless sanguinary pirates, not accepting the practice of cutting wings from loving birds and leaving them to die of hemorrhage. In this dry system the living birds were kept by hundreds to slowly starve to death. In this way the fatty tissue lying next to the skin was used up and the skin was left quite free from grease so that it required little or no cleaning during preparation. Many other revolting sites such as the remains of young birds that had been left to starve and birds with broken legs and deformed beaks were to be seen. Killing clubs, nets and other implements used by these marauders were lying all about. Hundreds of boxes to be used in shipping the bird skins were packed in an old building. It was very evident they intended to carry on their slaughter as long as the birds lasted. Not only did they kill and skin the largest species but they caught and cage the finch, honey eater and miller bird. Cages and material for making them were found. Report of an expedition to Laysam Island in 1911 by Homer R. Dill page 12. The report of Professor Brian contains the following pertinent paragraphs. This wholesale killing has had an appalling effect on the colony. It is conservative to say that fully one half the number of birds of both species of albatross that were so abundant everywhere in 1903 have been killed. The colonies that remain are in a sadly decimated condition. Over a large part of the island in some sections a hundred acres in a place that 10 years ago were thickly inhabited by albatrosses not a single bird remains. While heaps of the slain lie as mute testimony of the awful slaughter of these beautiful, harmless and without doubt beneficial inhabitants of the high seas. While the main activity of the plume hunters was directed against the albatrosses they were by no means averse to killing anything in the bird line that came in their way. Fortunately, serious as were the depredations of the poachers their operations were interrupted before any of the species had been completely exterminated. But the work of the evil genius of Lasan did not stop with the slaughter of 300,000 birds. Mr. Schlemmer introduced rabbits and guinea pigs and these rapidly multiplying rodents now are threatening to consume every plant on the island. If the plants disappear many of the insects will go with them and this will mean the disappearance of the small insectivorous birds. In February 1909 President Crusewell issued an executive order creating the Hawaiian Islands Reservation for Birds. In this are included Lasan and 12 other islands in Greece some of which are inhabited by birds that are well worth preserving. By this act we may feel that for the future the birds of Lasan and neighboring islets are secure from further attacks by the bloody-handed agents of the Wayne women who still insist upon wearing the wings and feathers of wild birds. End of chapter 14