How Aigrettes Are Obtained

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 16, 1914

How Aigrettes Are Obtained

(This is not a pretty story, but it should be read and remembered by every woman.)

SHE was a remarkably pretty girl—a girl of breeding, obviously. Her frock was dainty and simple. The brown-tanned man at the next table in the big dining room looked at her. One of his three companions spoke of the girl.

"You've not seen many of the real American girls where you've been I presume?" he asked.

The eye of the brown-tanned man narrowed, and he shook his head.

"No. Would you call her a typical American girl?" he asked.

"Yes; one of the nicest type," one of the others answered.

"Then the American girl's education has been badly neglected," said the traveler. "I mean as regards the hat—or rather the feathers on it," he explained.

The others looked at him curiously.

"Don't you know those feathers?" he asked, as he leaned forward over the table. "Don't you know that behind that light, gossamer ornament on that girl's hat is a story that, for wanton cruelty, in all the term suggests, cannot be equaled in the world today?"

He read the skepticism in his friends' eyes.

"Let me tell you the story," he went on. "That girl doesn't know it either, for if she did—being a girl and a nice girl—she couldn't bear the sight of those feathers, much less wear them."

His friends, who knew him as a man who had bored deep into the heart of things in all corners of the world, listened eagerly.

"Those feathers," he began, "are what are called 'aigrettes.' That means that they were torn from the living, quivering body of a white heron—torn from her at the season when she had but one idea: how she could make herself most attractive to the male heron. The aigrette is the heron's symbol of the nuptial season; it is the plumage of her love instinct. Like that very girl over there, the white heron dons her prettiest clothes for the courting. That brilliant plumage continues to grow while the eggs are laid and hatched, and reaches its greatest beauty—its commercial value, if you please—at about the time the little ones begin to peck through the shells. It's then the man with the gun appears.

"Now the parental instinct—you men know this—is as strong in birds as it is in human beings. As a result the approach of a man with a gun doesn't operate to drive the mother heron from the nest and her young, as it would at other times, but, on the contrary, finds her there, just to help the baby herons.

"Ask any game warden. He'll tell you tales that will make your own blood boil—even you men—of finding hundreds of young birds starved to death in the nests; of wounded female herons, ravished and mangled, struggling to get back to the nests to die there with their little ones; of other birds hung up by their necks with the delicate love plumage ripped, skin and all, from the still quivering bodies."

"Hold on," said one of his hearers. "A feather dealer told me once that most of the aigrettes and paradise plumes are just picked up—"

He got no further. A cold, hard smile sent the lips of the world traveler.

"Yes; we travelers know that tale. You talk to Meyer—A. H. Meyer, who lives, or did recently, down on Staten Island," was the reply. "Meyer used to collect bird plumes for the market himself; did for nine or ten years. Wait a minute. Let me read you what he says."

From an old, worn leather wallet the traveler took a letter, and, spreading it out, read:—

"It is the custom to shoot the mother birds while the young are in the nests. A few of the feathers of the American egret—or large white heron—can be picked up in the morning about the breeding places, but these 'dead feathers' are only worth $3 an ounce, while the 'live feathers' are worth $15 an ounce. My work led me into every part of Venezuela and Colombia where these birds are found, and I have never discovered or heard tell of any breeding places that were guarded simply for the purpose of gathering the feathers from the ground. The story is absolutely without foundation, and has simply been put forth for commercial reasons. The natives of the country, who do virtually all of the hunting for feathers, are most cruel and brutal. I have frequently seen them pull the plumes from the wounded birds, leaving the crippled creatures to die of starvation, unable to respond to the starving cries of their young. I have known them to tie and prop up wounded birds on the marsh where they would attract the attention of other birds flying by. These unfortunate living decoys are kept in that position until they die of their wounds or from the attacks of insects. I have seen the terrible red ants of that country actually eating out the eyes of the mangled yet still living birds."

"Meyer himself wrote that," he said quietly.

"Now a step further. There's not only bird murder behind those delicate ornaments," he added, "but human murder, too."

"How do you mean?" one of his friends asked.

"Well, there's the case of Guy Bradley," was the reply. "He was a game warden down on the Cape Sable district of southern Florida—and a good one. He was protecting the heron rockeries down there; it interfered with the bird-butchering business of the natives, so one day they ambushed Bradley as he rowed along in his skiff, and shot him. His body drifted about in the open boat for five days. That was in 1905. The Audubon Society is taking care of his widow now, and glad to do it. Then there was C. G. McLeod, another warden around Charlotte Harbor, Florida. He was doing his work of bird protection too well for the miserable hunters, so one November day, in 1908, a bird hunter split his head open with an ax. It's a pretty story—isn't it?—the story behind the aigrette a woman wears on her hat."

"But she doesn't know," some one suggested.

"That's just it," said the traveler, "for if she did there's not a woman in America who would

deliberately permit herself to be made an accessory after the fact to murder."

"Do you mind if I write this all out?" asked the younger of the men across the table. "I'd like to see if I can get it published."

"Write it. I only hope you will get it printed," was the answer.

Here, then, is what was written; and it is published in the earnest hope that the girl whose plumage called it forth may read it—and all other women who "do not know"—to the end that the aigrette and the paradise plume may be banished from the hats of women. For, after all, whether this bird butchery and this manslaughter are to continue is absolutely in the hands of the women of America.

They can stop it by a very simple rule: NEVER BUY AN AIGRETTE OR A PARADISE PLUME.—Ladies' Home Journal.