The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1913-05-01
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To Save Hosts of Herons.
DWIGHT ?. PALMER.

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Aigrettes. Millions of Mother Birds Need
Its Protection.
New YORK, April %, 1913. That nine
ty million Americans have broken party
lines to support the single section of the
tariff bill prohibiting the importation of
the plumes of butchered mother herons
and all other wild birds, was shown by
reports received to-day from every sec
ton of the country at the headquarters
of the National Association of Audubon
Societies in this city. In response to
kilograms of congratulation from many
of the 100, 900 members affiliated under
this association, as well as from State
game commissioners, oranges, women's
clubs, museums of natural history, bird
protective, scientific and sportsmen's
organizations all over the land, the Au-
dubon leaders. who presented this section
aimed at aigrette traffic to the trainers
of this bill, are now urging all humane
citizens to ask it's passage at the hands
of their representatives at Washington
If the bloody scalps of the birds for
whose nuptial plumes the whole globe
has been secured for tie millinery
market are barred from American shores
by this tiny tariff clause, millions of
brooding birds of the most beautiful
species will be saved from slaughter and
eventual extinction, it is declared.
Powerful opposition to the principle of
protection of bird life. which was voiced
in this section of the tariff bill in re-
Spouse to a countrywide demand for
non partisan humanitarianism, is to-day
ests that maintain armies to hunt down
the mother Egrets all over the world
and ship their scalps to miIliners here,
eacn plume captured in the slaughter.
If thu, new tariff law bans these bloody
spoils, it is admitted by the iliners
that the vogue of the aigrette, the mari
bou, the Bird of Paradise and the Goura
will yield to ostrich plumes and feathers
of domestic fowls, and the cruel traffic
in murdered mother birds will cease. In
order to defeat the selfish interests of
the few bird butchers who thrive on
aigrette import ton, the Federation of
Women's Clubs, the New York Zoologi-
cal Society and scores of other organize
tons have promised to help the National
Association of Audubon Societies present
to Congress the demand of the whole
American people for the passage of this
tariff provision.
Guarding 5000 egrets that still survive
the slaughter of plume hunters in this
country, the Audubon leaders have just
st .tioned force of wardens over thirty
colonies of these prosecuted birds in
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North
Carolina and Louisiana. If the importa-
ton of aigrettes is forbidden by law,
representative of the millinery interests
has declared to the trainers of the tariff
bill that it will not tend to stimulate the
butchery of these native members of the
species. With the abandonment of the
aigrette for millinery ornament, which
is pron ised if the bird protective clause
becomes law, ornithologists predict that
the beautiful birds that bear these
pumes will be saved from extinction
here.
The greatest opportunity of the age
to wipe out the cruel aigrette traffic alb
solutely is now presented to the Ameri
can people," said 7. Gilbert Pearson,
secretary of the National Association of
Audubon Societies, at its headquarters,
1874 Broadway, to-day. every humane
person, irrespective of political princi-
pies or party, should at once write rep
resentatives in Congress in support of
! this single provision in the tariff bill that
will save from slaughter and extinction
the worlds most beautiful bird species.
| We believe that with the exception of a
few feather dealers, all of the people of
oar country are united in support OF this
legislative reprieve for the butchered
birds"