The chief reason why it has been so difficult
{160} to induce educated and cultivated women of this age to give up
the heartless practice of wearing feathers seems to be the fact that
the desire and necessity for adornment developed through the centuries
has become so strong as to be really an inherent part of their natures.
It is doubtful if many people realize how strong and all-powerful this
desire for conforming to fashion in the matter of dress sits enthroned
in the hearts of tens of thousands of good women.

[Illustration: An Egret, bearing "aigrettes," in attendance on her
young]

There was a time when I thought that any woman with human instincts
would give up the wearing of feathers at once upon being told of the
barbaric cruelties involved in their acquisition. But I have learned
to my amazement that such is not the case. Not long ago I received one
of the shocks of my life. Somewhat over two years ago a young woman
came to work in our office. I supposed she had never heard, except
casually, of the great scourge of the millinery trade in feathers.
Since that time, however, she has been in daily touch with all the
important efforts made in this country and abroad to {161} legislate
the traffic out of existence, to guard from the plume hunters the
colonies of Egrets and other water birds, and to educate public
sentiment to a proper appreciation of the importance of bird
protection. She has typewritten a four-hundred-page book on birds and
bird protection, has acknowledged the receipt of letters from the
wardens telling of desperate rifle battles that they have had with
poachers, and written letters to the widow of one of our agents shot to
death while guarding a Florida bird rookery. In the heat of campaigns
she has worked overtime and on holidays. I have never known a woman
who laboured more conscientiously or was apparently more interested in
the work. Frequently her eyes would open wide and she would express
resentment when reports reached the office of the atrocities
perpetrated on wild birds by the heartless agents of the feather trade.
Recently she married and left us. Last week she called at the office,
looking very beautiful and radiant. After a few moments' conversation
she approached the subject which {162} evidently lay close to her
heart. Indicating a cluster of paradise aigrettes kept in the office
for exhibition purposes, she looked me straight in the face and in the
most frank and g