for selfish reasons, we of the North should reach to southern
sportsmen a helping hand, for by and by the last of our migratory
song birds will go down into Dixie and never return.

* * * * *

Mr. Askins has fairly stated a profoundly disturbing case. The remedy
must contain at least three ingredients. The sportsmen of the South must
stop the unjustifiable slaughter of their non-migratory game birds. As a
matter of comity between states, the gentlemen of the South must pass
laws to stop the killing of northern song-birds and all crop-protecting
birds, for food. Finally, all men, North and South, East and West, must
unite in the work that is necessary to secure the immediate enactment by
Congress of a law for the federal protection of all migratory birds.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIII

EXTERMINATION OF BIRDS FOR WOMEN'S HATS[D]

[Footnote D: In the preparation of this chapter and its illustrations, I
have had much valuable assistance from Mr. C. William Beebe, who
recently has probed the London feather trade almost to the bottom.]

It is high time for the whole civilized world to know that many of the
most beautiful and remarkable birds of the world are now being
_exterminated_ to furnish millinery ornaments for women's wear. The mass
of new information that we have recently secured on this traffic from
the headquarters of the feather trade is appalling. Previously, I had
not dreamed that conditions are half as bad as they are.

It is entirely fitting that on this subject New York should send a
message to London. New York is almost a Spotless Town in plume-free
millinery, and London and Paris are the worst places in the world. We
have cleaned house. With but extremely slight exceptions, the blood of
the slaughtered innocents is no longer upon our skirts, and on the
subject of plumage millinery we have a right to be just as Pharisaical
as we choose.

Here in New York (and also in New Jersey) no man may sell, own for sale
or offer for sale the plumage of any wild American bird other than a
game bird. More than that, the plumage of no foreign bird belonging to
any bird family represented in the fauna of North America can be sold
here! There are only a few kinds of improper "millinery" feathers that
it is possible to sell here under the law. Thanks to the long and
arduous campaign of the National Association of Audubon Societies,
founded and fo