Birds for Women's
Hats," Dr. Hornaday has dealt fully with the feather and plumage traffic
after it enters the brokers' hands, and has proved conclusively that the
plumes of egrets are gathered from the freshly killed birds. We may
trace the course of the plumes and feathers backward through the
tightly-packed bales and boxes in the holds of the vessels to the ports
of the savage lands whence they were shipped; then to the skilful, dark
hands of Mexican peon, Venezuelan Indian, African negro or Asiatic
Chinaman or Malay, who stripped the skin from the flesh; and finally to
the jungle or mountain side or terai where the bird gave up its life to
blowpipe, cross-bow, blunderbuss or carefully set snare.

In various trips to Mexico, Venezuela and other countries in the tropics
of the New World I have seen many such scenes, but not until I had
completed a seventeen months' expedition in search of pheasants, through
some twenty wild countries of Asia and the East Indies, did I realize
the havoc which is being wrought week by week everywhere on the globe.
While we were absent even these few months from the great centers of
civilization, tremendous advances had been made in air-ships and the
thousand and one other modern phases of human development, but evolution
in the world of Nature as we observed it was only destructive--a
world-wide katabolism--a retrogression often discernible from month to
month. We could scarcely repeat the trip and make the same observations
upon pheasants, so rapidly is this group of birds approaching
extinction.

The causes of this destruction of wild life are many and diverse, and
resemble one another only in that they all emanate from mankind. To the
casual traveller the shooting and trapping of birds for millinery
purposes at first seems to hold an insignificant place among the causes.
But this is only because in many of the larger ports, the protective
laws are more or less operative and the occupation of the plume hunter
is carried on in secret ways. But it is as far-reaching and insidious
as any; and when we add to the actual number of birds slain, the
compound interest of eggs grown cold, of young birds perishing slowly
from hunger, of the thousands upon thousands of birds which fall wounded
or dead among the thick tropical jungle foliage and are lost, the total
is one of ghastly proportions.

Not to weaken my argument with too many general statements, let me take
at once some concrete case