The Dickinson press., 1890-02-22
THE BIRDS ON THE HATS
A RATHER BITTER ARRANGEMENT OF
A FAD AND ITS FRIENDS.

TAU ANU us
butcherlnE Hundreds Of Thousands Of Birds
TO Secure Their Plumsge-Extracts from
Different Sources to Show What the
Practice Means.
One of your esteemed contemporaries
had an article recently on Bird Plum
age on Women's Heads" which is SO mis-
leading and SO favorable to the interests
OF The feather dealers that, if it had been
dictated by n of those gentlemen, it
could hardly have been more so.
Dead birds mean dollars to the feather
dealer, and lie would stile tho gush of
song in the throat Of the bobolink with
as little compunction as he would crush
a mosquito. 1t is not to be supposed
that these men are going to volunteer
any information that will injure their
trade; on the contrary, it is their part to
suppress all unpleasant facts, and to
soothe and put to sleep the. conscientious
scruples of women on the subject of
dead bird millinery. With your kind
permission l will mention a few facts for
the benefit of your readers which will
rather disprove somep previous statements.
To affirm that the domestic canary is
never used for millinery purposes is UNI
true. The writer saw a hat only n short
time sincew with five canaries upon it, ar
ranged in such fantastic attitudes as to
suggest the idea that the wearer was a
tit subject for the lunatic asylum. Either
we must believe what the feather dealers
tell us, and distrust the evidence of u
own senses, or we must believe what the
leading ornithologists of the country
tell us, and for my part l prefer to be-
lieve the latter. In 1886 the rage for
dead bird millinery had reached a climax,
and the ornithologists published a report
showing the appalling destruction of our
song birds to satisfy the demands of a
barbarous and demoralizing fashion.
The report says: "From carefully gath
cred statistics it is proved that on the
most moderate calculation 6, 1000, 900 song
birds are annually required to fill the
demand for the o~rnamentation of the
hats of American women. The slaughter
is not confined to song birds; everything
that wears feathers is a target for the
bird butcher. In a single season 40, 900
terms were killed at Cape Cod for ex-
portation, and the swamps and marshes
of Florida have been depopulated of
their egrets and herons. In one month
100000 bobolinks have been killed
near Philadelphia, and from a single
Long Island village 10000 song birds
were supplied in a short time to New
York dealers for millinery purposes"
The above are only a few extracts
from the report, but enough to show
what the slaughter has been; and if
song birds Are not used SO much now on
hats as formerly, it is owing to the re-
straining influence of the Audubon SO.
ciety. This society is an outgrowth Of
the committee on bird protection of the
American Ornithologists' union, and has
members today in every state in the
union and in Canada.
Probably if the wearers of the plumes
of the Florida egrets knew at what cost
these plumes are obtained, there would
be less demand for them, and as women
as often sin i'll this matter from ignor-
ance and want of thought as from want
of heart, it is only right they should
know. A correspondent of The Audu-
bon Magazine (see July number, 1857
writes from Pinecastle, Fla, as follows:
Through my meanderings I watched
closely for birds and deer. saw but a
few hundred birds, where formerly I had
seen from 10000 to 10000. met plenty
of hunters with buggies and wagons
loaded with bird plumes. The birds are
killed at a season of the year when they
are rearing their young. On passing the
rookeries where the hunters had been a
few days previous, the screams and calls
OF the starving young birds were pitiful
to hear. Some were just fedged, while
others were so young that they could
make but little noise. But all nut ill.,
evitably starve to death. I cannot de-
scribe the horror it gave mo to hear
the pitiful screams Of the dying little
BIRDS"
think your esteemed contemporary
has got rather mixed up in his ornithol-
ogy when he speaks Of the cedar bird as
the rice bird which does so much injury
to the crops in the south, so that its de-
struction is rather a benefit than other
wise. But I quite understand his descrip-
ton of "bird effects" The way the birds
are torn up, and the different parts dis
tributed upon hats, would be quite in &C.
cordance with the fitness of things in the
mind of a savage, but it is an insult to the
taste and feeling of a civilized people.
On one hat is a breast without head or
body, on another a decapitated head
with glass eyes stares out from between
legs, or the bird is smashed fiat, as if killed
with a stone-more the position it would
take in its dying agonies than any pose
it could possibly in life. Still,
the outlook is not so discouraging as it
might be, and people are beginning to
realize the necessity of more rigid laws
to protect birds other than those for food.
read in The Savannah News of a re-
cent date: "The raj is pursued vigor-
ously by the hunter, who finds a ready
market for the plumage, as the snow
white feathers are popular with the wo-
men of fashion. Plumage dealers in New
York hav6hunters regularly employed at
a salary in the south, Florida, and along
the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of the penin-
sula, and all through the almost impene-
trable lagoons and bayous of the Ever
glades, who keep up the warfare upon the
birds of plumage and song all through
the winter. And this fact has led to the
agitation Of the question whether a rigid
law should not be passed to punish by
fines and penalties all who are convicted
of shooting any birds excepting those
which are edible."-Letter in New York
| Sun.