arliament of the bill to save the birds from the
feather trade, it was opposed (through the efforts of the Chamber of
Commerce), on the ground that if any bill against the sale of plumes
should pass, and plumes could not be sold, the London business in
wild-bird skins and feathers "would immediately be transferred to the
continent!"

In the face of that devastating and altogether horrible prospect, and
because the London feather dealers "need the money," the bill was at
first defeated--to the great joy of the Chamber of Commerce and Mr.
Downham; but the cause of birds will win in the end, because it is
Right.

The feather dealers have been shrewdly active in the defense of their
trade, and the methods they have employed for influencing public opinion
have quite outshone those put forth by their brethren in America. I have
before me a copy of a booklet bearing the name of Mr. C.F. Downham as
the author, and the London Chamber of Commerce has loaned its good name
as publisher. Altogether it is a very shrewd piece of work, even though
its arguments in justification of bird slaughter for the feather market
are too absurd and weak for serious consideration.

The chief burden of the defender of bird slaughter for millinery
purposes is on account of the destruction of egrets and herons, but
particularly the former. To offset as far as possible the absolutely
true charge that egrets bear their best plumes in their breeding season,
when the helpless young are in the nest and the parent birds must be
killed to obtain the plumes, the feather trade has obtained from three
Frenchmen--Leon Laglaize, Mayeul Grisol, and F. Geay--a beautiful and
plausible story to the effect that in Venezuela the enormous output of
egret plumes has been obtained _by picking up, off the bushes and out of
the water and mud, the shed feathers of those birds!_ According to the
story, Venezuela is full of _egret farms_, called "garceros,"--where the
birds breed and moult under strict supervision, and kindly drop their
feathers in such places that it is possible _to find them_, and to _pick
them up_, in a high state of preservation! And we are asked to believe
that it is these very Venezuelan picked-up feathers that command in
London the high price of _$44 per ounce_.

[Illustration: THE FIGHT IN ENGLAND AGAINST THE USE OF WILD BIRD'S
PLUMAGE IN THE MILLINERY TRADE
Sandwich-men Employed by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds,
that Patroled Lond