EGRETS AND LEGISLATION.
LTO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR.")
SIR,—A reply to one of the comments upon Lord Avebury's Bill made by your correspondent Whanghee " in last week's Spectator will perhaps sufficiently indicate the value of his evidence. He says: "I think it has yet to be proved, so far as the Far Eastern egrets are concerned, that the birds are really killed during the- nesting season." As every naturalist knows that the so-called " osprey " plumes for which egrets are killed are worn only at the nesting season, and therefore can be procured at no other time, not much remains to be proved. The wording of the Bill meets the argument that bats will come from the Continent ready trimmed; and the fact that ladies will not wear their hats untrimmed because a check is given to the monstrous modern fashion for bird- plumage is a guarantee that the labour market will speedily right itself.—I am, Sir, &c., L. GARDINER, 3 Hanover Square, W. Protection of Birds.
Secretary, Royal Society for the
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