[Footnote G:  The observations which furnished this valuable chapter were made by Mr. Beebe in 1911 while conducting an expedition in southern Asia, Borneo and Java for the purpose of studying in life and nature all the members of the Pheasant Family inhabiting that region.  The results of these studies and collections will shortly appear in a very complete monograph of the Phasianidae.—­W.T.H.]

In chapter XIII, treating of the “Extermination of Birds for Women’s Hats,” Dr. Hornaday has dealt fully with the feather and plumage traffic after it enters the brokers’ hands, and has proved conclusively that the plumes of egrets are gathered from the freshly killed birds.  We may trace the course of the plumes and feathers backward through the tightly-packed bales and boxes in the holds of the vessels to the ports of the savage lands whence they were shipped; then to the skilful, dark hands of Mexican peon, Venezuelan Indian, African negro or Asiatic Chinaman or Malay, who stripped the skin from the flesh; and finally to the jungle or mountain side or terai where the bird gave up its life to blowpipe, cross-bow, blunderbuss or carefully set snare.

In various trips to Mexico, Venezuela and other countries in the tropics of the New World I have seen many such scenes, but not until I had completed a seventeen months’ expedition in search of pheasants, through some twenty wild countries of Asia and the East Indies, did I realize the havoc which is being wrought week by week everywhere on the globe.  While we were absent even these few months from the great centers of civilization, tremendous advances had been made in air-ships and the thousand and one other modern phases of human development, but evolution in the world of Nature as we observed it was only destructive—­a world-wide katabolism—­a retrogression often discernible from month to month.  We could scarcely repeat the trip and make the same observations upon pheasants, so rapidly is this group of birds approaching extinction.

The causes of this destruction of wild life are many and diverse, and resemble one another only in that they all emanate from mankind.  To the casual traveller the shooting and trapping of birds for millinery purposes at first seems to hold an insignificant place among the causes.  But this is only because in many of the larger ports, the protective laws are more or less operative and the occupation of the plume hunter is carried on in secret ways.  But it is as far-reaching and insidious as any; and when we add to the actual number of birds slain, the compound interest of eggs grown cold, of young birds perishing slowly from hunger, of the thousands upon thousands of birds which fall wounded or dead among the thick tropical jungle foliage and are lost, the total is one of ghastly proportions.