In India, the smuggling outward of the skins of protected birds is constantly going on.  Occasionally an exporter is caught and fined; but that does not stop the traffic.

Bird-lovers must now bid farewell forever to all the birds of paradise.  Nothing but the legal closing of the world’s markets against their plumes and skins can save any of them.  They never were numerous; nor does any species range over a wide area.  They are strictly insular, and the island homes of some of them are very small.  Take the great bird of paradise (Paradisea apoda) as an illustration.  On Oct. 2, 1912, at Indianapolis, Indiana, a city near the center of the United States, in three show-windows within 100 feet of the headquarters of the Fourth National Conservation Congress, I counted 11 stuffed heads and 11 complete sets of plumes of this bird, displayed for sale.  The prices ranged from $30 to $47.50 each!  And while I looked, a large lady approached, pointed her finger at the remains of a greater bird of paradise, and with grim determination, said to her shopping companion:  “There!  I want one o’ them, an’ I’m agoin’ to have it, too!”

Says Mr. James Buckland in “Pros and Cons of the Plumage Bill”: 

“Mr. Goodfellow has returned within the last few weeks from a second expedition to new Guinea....  One can now walk, he states, miles and miles through the former haunts of these birds [of paradise] without seeing or hearing even the commonest species.  When I reflect on this sacrilege, I am lost in wonder at the apathy of the British public.”

Mr. Carl Hagenbeck wrote me only three months ago that “the condors of the Andes are all being exterminated for their feathers, and these birds are now very difficult to obtain.”

The egret and heron plumes, known under the trade name of “osprey, etc., feathers,” form by far the most important item in each feather sale.  There are fifteen grades!  They are sold by the ounce, and the prices range all the way from twenty-eight cents per ounce for “mixed heron” to two hundred and twenty-five shillings ($45.60) per ounce for the best Brazilian “short selected,” on February 7, 1912!  Is it any wonder that in Philadelphia the prices of finished aigrettes, ready to be worn, runs from $20 to $125!

The plumes that run up into the big figures are the “short selected” coming from the following localities, and quoted at the prices set down here in shillings and pence.  Count the shilling at twenty-four cents, United States money.

PRICES OF “SHORT SELECTED” EGRET AND HERON PLUMES, IN LONDON ON FEBRUARY 7, 1912

(Lewis & Peat’s List)

East Indies per ounce, 117/6 to 207/6 = $49.80 max. 
Rangoon " " 150/0 " 192/6 = 46.20 "
China " " 130/0 " 245/0 = 58.80 "
Brazil " " 200/0 " 225/0 = 54.00 "
Venezuela " " 165/0 " 222/6 = 53.40 "