ing assembled on their nesting grounds they could easily be
shot in great numbers. After the birds were killed the custom was to
skin them, wash off the blood stains with benzine, and dry the feathers
with plaster of Paris. Arsenic was used for curing and preserving the
skins. Men in this business became very skilful and rapid in their
work, some being able to prepare as many as one hundred skins in a day.

Millinery agents from New York would sometimes take skinners with them
and going to a favourable locality would employ local gunners to shoot
the birds which they in turn would skin. In this way one New York
woman with some assistants collected and brought back from Cobbs'
Island, Virginia, 10,000 skins of the Least Tern in a single season.

In the swamps of Florida word was carried that the great millinery
trade of the North was bidding high for the feathers of those plume
birds which gave life and beauty even to its wildest regions. It was
not long before the cypress fastnesses were echoing {143} to the roar
of breech-loaders, and cries of agony and piles of torn feathers became
common sounds and sights even in the remotest depths of the Everglades.
What mattered it if the semi-tropical birds of exquisite plumage were
swept from existence, if only the millinery trade might prosper!

The milliners were not content to collect their prey only in obscure
and little-known regions, for a chance was seen to commercialize the
small birds of the forests and fields. Warblers, Thrushes, Wrens, in
fact all those small forms of dainty bird life which come about the
home to cheer the hearts of men and women and gladden the eyes of
little children, commanded a price if done to death and their pitiful
remains shipped to New York.

[Illustration: Terns, Formerly Sought by the Feather Trade]

Taxidermists, who made a business of securing birds and preparing their
skins, found abundant opportunity to ply their trade. Never had the
business of taxidermy been so profitable as in those days. For
example, in the spring of 1882 some of the feather agents established
themselves at points {144} on the New Jersey coast, and sent out word
to residents of the region that they would buy the bodies of freshly
killed birds of all kinds procurable. The various species of Terns,
which were then abundant on the Jersey coast, offered the best
opportunity {145} for profit, for not only were they found in vast
numbers, but they were compar