Page 139 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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EXTERMINATION FOR WOMEN'S HATS 117
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 en- actment 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 wilder- nesses of the earth, and steadily is drawing in the "skins " and "plumes and " quills " of the most beautiful and most interesting unprotected birds oftheworld. Theextentofthiscold-bloodedindustry,supportedby vain and hard-hearted women, will presently be shown in detail. Paris is the great manufacturing center 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 numbers 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-killers 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 in- dustry is willing to spend money in fighting to retain its strangle-hold 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 to-day being bought and sold in large quantities every year in London. To the birds of the world this list is of deadly import, for it spells extermination.
The reader will notice that it is the way of the millinery octopus to reach out to the uttermost ends of the earth, and take everything that it can use. From the trackless jungles of New Guinea, round the world both ways to the snow-capped peaks of the Andes, no unprotected bird is safe. The humming-birds 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 millinery trade. The case is far more serious than the world at large knows, or even suspects. But for the profits, the birds would be safe; and no un- protected wild species can long escape the hounds of Commerce.
But behold the list of rare, curious and beautiful birds that are to- day in grave peril