heir wings and tails look always as bright as if
kept in a bandbox. They have, indeed, just reason to be proud of
themselves, for they are very beautiful.

Hunters by scores were after them with bag and gun mercilessly killing
them for the New York millinery houses. The slaughter was terrible,
and made more easy for the hunters by reason of the poor birds flocking
together so closely in such large numbers when they alighted in circles
as is their habit. As they came down in dense droves to get their
food, the red dots on their wing tips almost overlapping those of their
fellows, dozens were slain by a single shot. They were very fond of
the berries of the cedar trees, and after the other foods were gone
they hovered there in great numbers. Here too, the hunters followed
them and made awful havoc in their ranks. One man made the cruel boast
that the winter previous he had killed one thousand cedar-birds for hat
trimmings.

Many of our family had located for a time near the coast, but here too,
on these sunny plains, the death messengers followed us and slew us by
the thousands.

We learned that one bird man handled thirty thousand bird skins that
season. Another firm shipped seventy thousand to the city, and still
the market called for more and yet more. The appetite of the god could
not be appeased.

I am sure this account of the loss of bird life must have seemed
appalling to my mother, for I heard her moan sadly when it was talked
about.

It was during my stay in the Southern islands that I first saw the
white egret, whose beautiful sweeping plumes, like the silken train of
a court lady, have so long been the spoils of woman, that the bird is
almost extinct. As these magnificent feathers appear upon the bird
only through the mating and nesting season, the cruelty of the act is
still more dastardly. The attachment of the parent birds for their
young is very beautiful to witness, yet this devotion, which should be
their safeguard, is seized upon for their destruction, for so great is
the instinct of protecting love they refuse to leave their young when
danger is near, and are absolutely indifferent to their own safety.

Never shall I forget one sad incident which occurred while I was there.
Overhanging the water was an ancestral nest belonging to a family of
egrets which had occupied it for some seasons. Unlike the American
human species, in whom local attachment is not largely developed, and
who take