When speaking of cruel pastimes, I referred to the value of the term “blood-sports” in the many controversies which we waged. Just as the fortunes of a book may be affected by its title, so in ethical and political discussions there is often what may be called a winning word; and where none such is found ready to hand, it is advisable to invent one. Thus the League made good play with “flagellomania,” as used by Mr. Bernard Shaw in one of his lectures; and “brutalitarian” (an invention of our own, I think) did us yeoman service, as will be seen in a later chapter. “Murderous Millinery,” another term which has gained a wide circulation, was first used as a chapter-heading in my _Animals’ Rights_; and though it rather shocked some zoophilists of the older school, who presumably thought that only a human being can be “murdered,” it served a useful purpose, perhaps, in drawing attention to the revolting cruelty that underlies the plumage trade. In its condemnation of these barbarities, as in other matters, the Humanitarian League was a pioneer; its pamphlet on “The Extermination of Birds,” written by Miss Edith Carrington, and published nearly thirty years ago, played a marked part in the creation of a better public opinion; and a Bill drafted by the League in 1901, to prohibit the use of the plumage of certain rare and beautiful birds, attracted very wide public attention, and was the basis of subsequent attempts at legislation. But here it must be added that the man who has done more than all the Societies together to insure the passage of a Plumage Bill is Mr. James Buckland. Nothing in the humanitarian movement has been finer than the way in which Mr. Buckland forced this question to the front and made it peculiarly his own. Every whit as savage as the feather-trade is the fur-trade, responsible as it is for some most horrible methods of torture--the steel-trap, which inflicts shocking injuries on its victim; the spring-pole, which jerks both trap and captive high in air, there to hang till the trapper next comes on his rounds; the terrible “dead-fall” used for bears and other large animals; the poisoning of wolves with strychnine; and the abominations in the butchery of seals. Even the fashionable people who wear furs (in a climate where there is not the least need of such clothing) would hardly be able to continue the habit if they knew how their “comforts” were provided; as it is, the Feather-Headed Woman is not a commoner sight in our streets than the Ass in the skin of the (Sea) Lion. It would seem that fur-wearers are almost unconscious that their sables and sealskins are the relicts of previous possessors, and, like the heroines of modern drama, have very decidedly had “a past”; or, if they do not wholly forget this fact, they think it quite natural that _they_ should now have their turn with the skin, as the animal had before. Thus Pope, in a well-known couplet: