r ten years directed by gallant William Dutcher, you now
see on the streets of New York very, very little wild-bird plumage save
that from game birds.

It is true that a few servant girls are now wearing the cast-off
aigrettes of their mistresses; but they are only as one in a thousand.
At Atlantic City there is said to be a fine display of servant-girl and
ladies-maid aigrettes. In New York and New Jersey, in Pennsylvania for
everything save the sale of heron and egret plumes (a privilege obtained
by a bunko game), in Massachusetts, and in many other of our States, the
wild-birds'-plumage millinery business is dead. Two years ago, when the
New York legislature refused to repeal the Dutcher law, the Millinery
Association asserted, and brought a cloud of witnesses to Albany to
prove, that the enforcement of the law would throw thousands of
operatives out of employment.

[Illustration: BEAUTIFUL AND CURIOUS BIRDS NOW BEING DESTROYED
FOR THE FEATHER TRADE--(I)
Belted Kingfisher
Victoria Crowned Pigeon
Superb Calliste
Greater Bird of Paradise
Common Tern
Cock of the Rock]

The law is in effect; and the aigrette business is dead in this state.
Have any operatives starved, or been thrown out of employment? We have
heard of none. They are now at work making very pretty hat ornaments of
silk and ribbons, and gauze and lace; and "_They_ are wearing them."

[Illustration: 1600 HUMMINGBIRD SKINS AT 2 CENTS EACH!
Part of Lot Purchased by the Zoological Society at the Regular Quarterly
London Millinery Feather Sale, August, 1912.]

But even while these words are being written, there is one large fly in
the ointment. The store-window of E. &. S. Meyers, 688 Broadway, New
York, contains about _six hundred plumes and skins of birds of paradise
for sale for millinery purposes_. No wonder the great bird of paradise
is now almost extinct! Their sale here is possible because the Dutcher
law protects from the feather dealers only the birds that belong to
avian families represented in the United States. With fiendish cunning
and enterprise, the shameless feather dealers are ferreting out the
birds whose skins and plumes may legally be imported into this country
and sold; but we will meet that with a law that will protect all
foreign birds, so far as we are concerned. Now it is time for the
universal enactment of a law which will prohibit the sale and use as
ornaments of the plumage, feathers or skins of _any_ wild bird that is
no