re beautifully white. In the nesting season, when many birds are
allowed some special attraction in the way of plumage, bunches of long,
slender, graceful plumes grow on their backs between the shoulders and
curl up over the tail.

"In an evil moment some woman, imitating the savages, used a bunch of
these feathers to make a tuft upon her headgear. From that day the
spotless bird was doomed to martyrdom. Egrets, as the plumes are called
like the birds themselves, became a fashionable trimming for bonnets and
have continued so to this day, in spite of law and argument; for many
women seem to be savages still, notwithstanding their fine clothes and
other signs of civilization.

"These Herons only wear their beautiful plumes in the nesting season,
when it is the height of cruelty to kill birds of any kind, and this is
what happens: When the nests, which are built of sticks in bushes and
trees above the lagoons, are filled with young, as yet too feeble to
take care of themselves, and the beautiful parents are busy flying to
and fro, attending to the wants of their helpless nestlings, the
plume-hunters glide among them noiselessly, threading the watercourses
in an Indian dug-out or canoe, and when once within the peaceful
colony, show themselves with bold brutality. For well they know that the
devoted parents will suffer death rather than leave their young in such
danger.

"Shot upon shot rings out in repeated volleys, each followed in turn by
the piteous cries of wounded birds, till the ground is strewn with
hundreds of the dead and dying. Then the cruel hunters tear off the
plume-tuft from the back of each victim, as the savage does a human
scalp, and move on in search of another heronry, to repeat this inhuman
slaughter of the innocents.

"But this is not all--what becomes of the young birds? They must either
perish slowly of hunger, or be swallowed by the snakes that infest such
places and are attracted to the nests by the clamoring of the starving
orphans. Now do you wonder that I call this beautiful Snowy Egret the
Bonnet Martyr?"

"I never, never will wear any kind of bird's feathers again," said Dodo;
"and when I go back to school I am going to make a guild for people who
will promise not to either. Are Ostriches killed for their feathers,
Uncle Roy? Because my best winter hat has a curly row all round the
crown."

"No. Ostrich plumes are a perfectly harmless decoration, for the bird
earns his own and his mas