Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 March 1894 — Bird Butchery. [ARTICLE]

Bird Butchery.

Over five million birds are massacred each yeajr to plume the hats of womankind. Terns from Cape Cod, black partridges, hoopoes, golden orioles and blue jays, pretty kitiwakes from Sunday Island, egrets and herons from our southland and bobolinks and rail birds from our own fields and woods are murdered to feed the female passion for display. The women of the period will hoot at the Tamil and the Sinhalese for slitting their nostrils for the insertion of jewelry, but they will kill and mutilate harmless carolers that plumes may dance from their bonnets. In the case of the kittiwake, the plumage is taken at a season when the birds have hardly learned to fly, and it is usual to tear off the wings while the bird lives. Then there is another side to the question. A great deal of arsenic is used in the preparation of these feathers, and the eyes and nostrils of the wearers are exposed to danger. A more important aspect of the case is that all life depends on vegetable life, and Michelet declares there can be no vegetable life without bird life.— [Washington Star.