sacrifice much for this millinery luxury.

There were at that time to be found in Florida many hundreds of
colonies of these beautiful birds, but their feathers commanded a large
price and offered a most tempting inducement for local hunters to shoot
them. Many of the men of the region were poor, and the rich harvest
which awaited them was very inviting. At that time gunners received
from seventy-five cents to one dollar and a quarter for the "scalp" of
each bird, which ordinarily contained forty or more plume feathers.
These birds were not confined to Florida, but in the breeding season
were to be found in swampy regions of the Atlantic Coast as far north
as New Jersey, some being discovered carrying sticks for their nests on
Long Island.

Civilized nations to-day decry any method of warfare which results in
the killing of women and children, but the story of the aigrette trade
deals with the slaughter of innocents by the slow process of {153}
starvation, a method which history shows has never been followed by
even the most savage race of men dealing with their most hated enemies.
This war of extermination which was carried forward unchecked for years
could mean but one thing, namely, the rapid disappearance of the Egrets
in the United States. As nesting birds, they have disappeared from New
Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia, and also those States of the central
Mississippi Valley where they were at one time to be found in great
numbers.

_Amateur Feather Hunters._--Quite aside from the professional millinery
feather hunter there should be mentioned the criminal slaughter of
birds which has been indulged in by individuals who have killed them
for the uses of their own lady friends. I know one Brown Pelican
colony which was visited by a tourist who shot four hundred of the big,
harmless, inoffensive creatures in order to get a small strip of skin
on either side of the body. He explained to his boatmen, who did the
skinning for him, that he was curious to see if these strips of skin
with their feathers would not {154} make an interesting coat for his
wife. The birds killed were all caring for their young in the nests at
the time he and his hirelings shot them.

There was a few years ago, in a Georgia city, an attorney who accepted
the aigrette "scalps" of twenty-seven Egrets from a client who was
unable to pay cash for a small service rendered. He told me he had
much pleasure in distributing these among his lady