The Queen of England has lately expressed the wish that no lady shall come into her presence wearing osprey plumes in her hat. This act of hers should be most heartily welcomed, for the bird world is being destroyed in a way of which only a few experts have any idea. If our ladies only knew that whole species of birds have become extinct, thanks to the fashion of wearing hats trimmed with birds’ feathers, doubtless they would no longer pay allegiance to this destructive fashion. The massacre of birds is carried on in some such way as this. The leading firms agree to make this or that bird fashionable. It is thus that the death-sentence of many rare species of birds is pronounced. The traders scattered all over the world give the hunters who engage in this kind of business directions, for instance, to bring in osprey feathers. And how are they obtained? The royal heron, a timid and beautiful bird, is not easy to stalk. But the businesslike hunter knows what to do. He simply kills the herons in thousands and thousands _at their nesting-places_. Love for its offspring brings the beautiful creature within range of the gun-barrel of the lurking hunter, who kills thousands of the birds in cold blood when they are gathered together in the breeding season. Countless thousands must be killed, countless thousands more of young helpless nestlings, bereft of the parent birds, must starve to death before enough of these little plumes has been collected to make a load heavy enough to be put on the bearers’ shoulders. And now the dealers of the whole civilised world lay in a stock, so that full provision may be made for a form of fashion-mania that may probably last only a few months. Even in the farthest swamps of America, in the lands beyond the Caspian, and wherever the royal heron breeds, one can follow the bird hunter, and see him at his horrible and murderous work. The end is everlasting silence. A rare species is soon utterly destroyed. In the last century alone about two dozen species of birds became extinct. And in these days nearly a dozen more species of birds are threatened with extinction! According to the Reports of the Smithsonian Institute this is notably the case in America with regard to quite as many species. The wonderful birds of paradise are going; the latest “trimming” for the hats of American ladies, these dwellers in remote islands of the Southern Seas are to be threatened in a more serious degree, and probably to a great extent exterminated. Everywhere we have the same lamentable facts! It is certainly high time to interfere effectively. I myself think that the best results would follow from appeal to all noble-minded women.