e country that these birds still resort to
hollow trees for nesting purposes. {139} There is--or was a few years
ago--a hollow cypress tree standing on the edge of Big Lake in North
Carolina which was used by a pair of Chimney Swifts, and it made one
feel as if he were living in primitive times to see these little dark
birds dart downward into a hollow tree, miles and miles away from any
friendly chimney. Some day I hope to revisit the region and find this
natural nesting hollow still occupied by a pair of unmodernized Swifts.

{140}

CHAPTER VIII

THE TRAFFIC IN FEATHERS

The traffic in the feathers of American birds for the millinery trade
began to develop strongly about 1880 and assumed its greatest
proportions during the next ten years. The wholesale milliners whose
business and pleasure it was to supply these ornaments for women's hats
naturally turned for their supply first to those species of birds most
easily procured. Agents were soon going about the country looking for
men to kill birds for their feathers, and circulars and hand bills
offering attractive prices for feathers of various kinds were mailed
broadcast. The first great onslaughts were made on the breeding
colonies of sea birds along the Atlantic Coast. On Long Island there
were some very large communities of Terns and these were {141} quickly
raided. The old birds were shot down and the unattended young
necessarily were left to starve. Along the coast of Massachusetts the
sea birds suffered a like fate. Maine with its innumerable out-lying
rocky islands was, as it is to-day, the chief nursery of the Herring
Gulls and Common Terns of the North Atlantic. This fact was soon
discovered and thousands were slaughtered every summer, their wings cut
off, and their bodies left to rot among the nests on the rookeries.

_War on the Sea Swallows._--During a period of seven years more than
500,000 Terns', or Sea Swallows', skins were collected in spring and
summer in the sounds of North and South Carolina. These figures I
compiled from the records and accounts given me by men who did the
killing. Their method was to fit out small sailing vessels on which
they could live comfortably and cruise for several weeks; in fact, they
were usually out during the entire three months of the nesting period.
That was the time of year that offered best rewards for such work, for
then the birds' {142} feathers bore their brightest lustre, and the
birds be