The nest is built upon the mangrove bushes or upon the broken reeds and rushes in the swamps, and is said to be rather more carefully and compactly built than are the herons' nests. The eggs are three or four, rarely five in number, and are laid about May 1 in many localities, later in others. They appear large for the bird. In shape they are usually rather long ovate, and in color are gray or ashy-blue, irregularly and rather heavily blotched and spotted with reddish and umber browns of various shades. Some specimens are very pretty. The story of their great abundance, persecution, rapid decline, and almost death, if written, would read like some horrible nightmare. Confident in the apparent security of their ancestral gathering-places, they fell an easy prey to the avaricious plume-hunter who, from some vantage-point, used his almost noiseless light rifle or air-gun with deadly effect, tallying his victims by the hundred daily. We are sometimes led to wonder if there is anything so sacred as money. We might be able to derive some comfort from the thinning ranks of many of our birds, perhaps, if we could be sure that when these were gone the work of extermination would cease. But when one species disappears another, less attractive before, will be set upon, and thus the crusade, once begun, will finally extend to each in turn. This is not theory but fact. Nor will the work of extermination cease with the demand for plumes. Not until repeated refusals of offered plumes have impressed upon the mind of the hunter the utter futility of further activity in this line will he seek some other occupation. It is a shame upon us that killing birds should ever have become an occupation of anyone. A strong public sentiment against feather adornments will yet save from destruction many of our native birds. Can we not arouse it? THE HELPLESS. ELANORA KINSLEY MARBLE. As the nesting-season of our feathered friends approaches the mind naturally reverts to the grief in store for so many of them. Notwithstanding the efforts of the several Audubon societies, the humane journals, and in rare instances earnest pleas from the pulpit, fashion decrees that the wearing of bird plumage, and the birds themselves, is still _de rigueur_ among women. The past season, certainly, showed no diminution of this barbarous fashion--a humiliating thing to record--and so the beautiful creatures will continue to be slaughtered, not by hundreds or thousands, but by millions upon millions, all for the gratification of woman's vanity and a senseless love of display.