THE CRUEL OSPREY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 806, 2 May 1910, Page 3

THE CRUEL OSPREY.

Even yet there arc women. who wear ospreys and egret plumes in their hats. It is true "that many of them. honestly believe them to he artificial ones, whilst others are merely careless of the suffering entailed amongst these beautiful birds in order that their hats should bristle with the plumes." It is quite likely that the only time when a real article is palmed off as an imitation is when a froman is torn by qualms of conscience and a desire for a costly hat. Then the milliner, or whoever is making tho sale, endeavours to clinch the matter by the assurance "that the'feathers are artificial." "Expensively made, of course, madame, but they never grew on a real bird." Another legend is that the feathers are used in the first place by the parent birds to line the nests, and fire taken thenco at tho end o{ the nesting season. l This ingenious notion is of course adopted from the history of eiderdown, but considerably improved in the telling. But the story would be a considerable strain of faith even to the most credulous, since it sets forth that the bird plucks the long train of feathers from its back, and that the slender, delicate plumes are fit for millinery purposes after being entangled for weeks among rough sticks of the nest and trampled on and soiled by a family of yqung birds. The truth is the story we have so often h'eard. The mother,birds are shot whilst brooding over their families, and consequently thousands of baby birds die of hunger each season.