tification impossible. Thus, while one afternoon seven hundred
hats were counted and on them but twenty birds recognized, five hundred
and forty-two were decorated with feathers of some kind. Of the one
hundred and fifty-eight remaining, seventy-two were worn by young or
middle-aged ladies, and eighty-six by ladies in mourning or elderly
ladies."

This was a period when people seemed to go mad on the subject of
wearing birds and feathers. They were used for feminine adornment in
almost every conceivable fashion. Here are two quotations from New
York daily papers of that time, only the names {148} of the ladies are
changed: "Miss Jones looked extremely well in white with a whole nest
of sparkling, scintillating birds in her hair which it would have
puzzled an ornithologist to classify," and again: "Mrs. Robert Smith
had her gown of unrelieved black looped up with black birds; and a
winged creature, so dusky that it could have been intended for nothing
but a Crow, reposed among the curls and braids of her hair."

Ah, those were the halcyon days of the feather trade! Now and then a
voice cried out at the slaughter, or hands were raised at the sight of
the horrible shambles, but there were no laws to prevent the killing
nor was there any strong public sentiment to demand its cessation,
while on the other hand more riches yet lay in store for the hunter and
the merchant. There were no laws whatever to protect these birds, nor
was there for a time any man of force to start a crusade against the
evil.

_The Story of the Egrets._--The most shameless blot on the history of
America's treatment of the {149} wild birds is in connection with the
White Egrets. It is from the backs of these birds that the "aigrettes"
come, so often seen on the hats of the fashionable. Years ago, as a
boy in Florida, I first had an opportunity to observe the methods
employed by the feather hunters in collecting these aigrettes which are
the nuptial plumes of the bird and are to be found on birds only in the
spring. As a rare treat I was permitted to accept the invitation
extended by a squirrel hunter to accompany him to the nesting haunts of
a colony of these birds. Away we went in the gray dawn of a summer
morning through the pine barrens of southern Florida until the heavy
swamps of Horse Hammock were reached. I remember following with
intense interest the description given by my companion of how these
birds with magnificent snowy pluma