Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 March 1911 — Sacrificed to Fashion. [ARTICLE]

Sacrificed to Fashion.

What devastations of bird life are being wrought at the dictates of fashion are set forth in a vivid manner by an expert who has- devoted years of study to the question. Among ornamental ( feathers assumed for show during the courting season the strangely, beautiful tail of the lyre-bird of Australia is unequaled A few years, ago over four hundred lyre-birds were killed in one district to supply the Lopdon plumage market. It „is not so long ago since some sordid vandals surrounded a patch of scrub in whieh some representatives of this Tast-disapptearing genus were known to be breeding, and setting fire to it Bhot_ down those avian marvels as they struggled through one pitiless ring of fire only to meet their death in another. The lyrate plumes having been cut off, the bodies were thrown aside to rot. The result of .-such ruthless butchery is seen in the fact that fifty-two tails only were catalogued for the past year’s feather sales in London. The egret has been practically exterminated in North America and in China, and is now soscarce that the best selected plumes are fetching forty dollars an ounce.