Show WHY SHE DOES T WEAR THEM Below Belo Is 18 rather a long extract for the editorial page It Is the tho story of a wo woman woman woman man who had worn egret plumes be because rae cause she shared the feminine love of t y 1 l the s and ri n h a adornment Tot Tob To Ta Ii t b r with uth her hu hUbaud huband band who hunted with a camera Instead of a gun she I traveled through the rookeries of the far south And this Is the simple story of I her conversion The next rookery we visited was on an island and though the air was again thick thiel with flying Hying birds as we approached there were no egrets Our guides declared that the man who had shot over this rookery the year before had cleared more than 1000 One On guide assured us that only three weeks before he had passed the island Wand and seen a dozen egrets hovering over oyer the mangroves After Arter several other unsuccessful expeditions expeditions expeditions we tri tried d th the s rookery on Cuth Cuthbert Cuthbert Cuthbert bert lake Here we had our first glimpse of oC egrets Among the cloud of birds that rose on our approach two were wearing plumes beautiful wonderful plumes A At first sight It seemed almost Impossible Impo to believe them a natural part of the birds Wn We Ve visited the rookery and soon found foun l la a nest with the nestlings a few days out of the shell sheil Our camp was pitched In Inthe Inthe the vicinity and my husband and I spent four days day photographing the birds and studying their habits At the end of that time we set out for tor another rookery at which our guides thought there was a good chance of finding egrets We were away three days das On return returnIng returnIng returning Ing at my special lal request we again land landed landed landed ed at the Cuthbert rookery At our ap approach approach preach the birds again filled the air but we looked in vain for our two plumed friends I looked at my husband then glanced at the more experienced of our two taro guides who shook his head I was almost running toward the nest when I stopped rooted to the ground The Th Tilt most meat plaintive sound soend that I ever heard struck my ears It was repeated but oh so faintly We Ve found only one of the nestlings alive aUve the other had apparently just breathed its last On the ground be beneath beneath beneath neath the nest neat there were some empty cartridge shells and a frog dead and baked from lying in the sun Our guides pointed this th l out as proof positive that one of the birds had been killed while in inthe Inthe inthe the act of dropping food into the mouths of her babies I insisted on taking the young biri back beck to camp with us although the guides assured me that it was too far gone to live We fed it the best beat we could but It never repeated that heart heartbreaking heartbreaking heartbreaking breaking call for food lood and it died that night i Nothing could ever induce me now to wear an egret plume not if the most beautiful plume in the world were ever eer given to me The cry of that starving nestling calling to Its dead mother for food killed forever my desire for such an ornament and ended all my sympathy for the hunters of plumage birds Our g guide pointed out the tree In which he d sat satin bene believe ed the hunter had sat waiting welting for or the return of the bird to its nest with food for its babies That sort of thing will have hae its Us in influence Influence influence fluence No matter how much a woman may love hove beautiful drees dress she is not sav savage savage savage age enough to want baby birds to starve that she may wear we r a certain kind of plume And the plain fact Is that egret I plumes can an be secured only at that price k I |