cpr. 24.
Years ago before the war a good deal was written in many newspapers of many countries about the wanton and tragic slaughter of beautiful, wild birds. And one is under the impress that it was made illegal both in the British Dominions and America. How then does it survive, as undoubtedly it does, and that to so terrible an extent that the day of its extinction is not far off, from the simple brutal fact that there will be no more victims to slaughter for their plumage? The answer, given by Mr. H. J. Massingham in a} poignant article in the Westminster Gazette," is, smuggling and the inordinate demands of fashion. One learns that the smugglers are not Englishmen that. at least is something to the good. But to one's sorrow one reads further on that England is the greatest market in_ the} world for' feathers." No fewer than eight Bills designed to stop this hateful trade have been passed at different times by overwhelming majorities in the Commons," yet have been "blocked by the corrupt and secret influence of the traders."
The trade, Mr. Massingham says, describing it in the same breath as "untouchable," has flourished for sixty years, and the only possible explanation of it is that it arises from some incurable disease from which Western civilization is suffering.
The number of skins annually imported into England. has been reckoned at 35,000,000. Indeed, the extent of the massacre so shakes our sense of proportion that it ceases to carry its due weight of significance, 162,750 skins of the blue and chestnut Smyrnian kingfisher sold off at a single sale; 152,000 egrets (whose nuptial dorsal filaments are the " ospreys " of the trade) in two; 300,000 albatrosses (half of which. according to Professor Dill, of the U.S.A. Biological Survey, had their wings cut off and were left to die of hemorrhage) slaughtered in one raid by twenty-four hired scoundrels; 40,000 condor quills (the highest flying bird, and almost confined to the Andes) sold by one firm alone: 24,800 humming birds one item in a sale catalogue pages long—how can we grasp the hideous reality of this world-wide pillaging of living, highly developed, natural beauty? We! read Mr. E. D. Scott's account (published in England by Professor Newton) of what he saw in Florida, how everywhere he went he found huge piles of half-decayed birds of Charlotte Harbour, once so populated by white ibis that it looked "as if a big white sheet had been thrown over the mangroves "—and now "I did not see a place occupied by even a few birds." The egrets, the birds of paradise, the orange cock of the rock, numerous species of humming bird, crowned pigeons, _roseate spoonbills, and others of the most decorative species are at extinct tion's point. But they are drops in this ocean of bloodshed, since, according to the testimony of na-furalists, the traders shoot out practically "anything that wears This butchery is not only cruel beyond description. It constitutes a danger to the whole human race. Vast numbers of these birds are insectivorous, and plague and famine are the wages of their slaughter." And Professor Arthur Thomson is quoted as warning that six years without birds will bring the whole animate system of nature to an end."
It may possibly be remembered that China also is threatened with the extinction of the principal and most valuable section of her bird life. Before. the -war. (once again) we seem to recall a large meeting at the Palace Hotel, in which some of the most influential foreigners in China took part, and of a memorial to the Diplomatic Body in Peking. And we remember letters to the " North-China Daily News' from all over China and Manchuria describing on unimpeachable evidence and in the mest moving terms the awful destruction and piteous suffering of China's wild birds: " "What became of all this agitation, by which no man not utterly hardened by the Inst of money-making could fail tobe moved? We have never been able to learn exactly what happened; but there: is every reason to believe that humanity was once again. beaten by the cold-blooded greed of vested interests, and what Mr. Mas-bingham calls the secret influence of the traders.'' Not any one man but millions of men all over the world are agreed that this hateful business must stop. Tt has foiled us once in China, but that surely is only the greater reason for renewing the struggle. At least one of the causes we have heard given for the last defeat has ceased to exist. "Might not others also yield before a determined attack?
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.