IMPORTATION OF PLUMES.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9160, 6 August 1908, Page 5

IMPORTATION OF PLUMES.

PROPOSED PR GHIBITION. Received, August 5, 10.15 a.m. MELBOURNE, August 5. The Federal Government has promised action in the direction of prohibiting the importation and exportation of certain |skins and plumage, in order to prevent the wholesale destruction of birds at the call of fashion. In June last the House of Lords' Select Committee on Lord Avebury's Importation of Plumes Prohibition Bill examined Colonel Charles Ryan, of Melbourne, who said that he was persuaded that Mr Deakin would take stepg to stop the present destruction of egrets. No plumes of foreign birds, except ostrich, eider duck, and wild duck used for food, will be seen on women's hats after December 31st, if Lord Avebury's Bill to prohibit importation of plumage and skins becomes law. The penalty for importation for sale or exchange is £5 on first conviction, and £25 on second and subsequent convictions, with forfeiture and destruction of the feathers. But if a woman is actually wearing prohibited plumage, when she arrives in Grpat Britain, and is not to sell it, then no offence is committed. Sneaking in the House of Lords on the Bill Lord Avebury stated:— "The idea of my Bill is to check the wholesale destruction of birds going on throughout the British Empire and other parts of the world simply to Drovido plumage for. millinery. All the ornithologists in England are behind me, and I have the whole-hearted support of the oelt:rn: r.r.d the Wild Birds' Preservation Societies. The birds to come within the Bin are the white heron, from which osprey plumes are taken, crowned pigeon, albatross, lyre birds, end birds of paradise. The birds are most beautiful at nesting time when they are mostly caught, so that when one is taken it means the destruction of a whole family. -In this way any beautiful species are gradually dying out. lam sure if ladies really | knew how cruel the traffic is they would never wear the plumes, for after all they do not look nice wearing them." One of the leading milliners in Bond street said to a London Daily Mail" representative: The Bill will mean the loss of thousands of pounds to the millinery trade in the | West End. Women will have plumage hats, and if they cannot get them in London they will go to Paris and bring them back for their own use. Nearly all the plumage and skins from different parts of the world come to the London auction rooms, and then the goods go back to the Continent to be worked up. Pass this Bill and at once these great auctions will be moved to some foreign port, and London will lose that part of the trade, as well as the shop trade of the customer." , . r At the plume auction sales in Loic*on during the last Six months of 1907 19 742 skins of birds of paradise were catalogued, 1,411 packages of the nesting plumes of the white heron representing thtt feathers ot nearly 115,000 birds, and immense numbers ot the feathers and tkina < 1 almost every known species of ornamental plumage bird. Similar legislation to that proposed is in force in the State of New York.