THE BIRDS' CHARTER

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17460, 22 May 1922, Page 11

THE BIRDS' CHARTER

The Plumage Act, which cafno into oporation on April Ist, is an example of legislation forced upon the conscience of Parliament by the efforts of men of letters and men of science, says the "Manchester Guardian." Fifty years ago Buskin and Morris were denouncing the barbarous fashions that were destroying the most beautiful birds in the world to fill the shop windows of Bond street. In modern times writers like Galsworthy and Hudson have been reinforced by men of science like Sir Harry Johnston and Professor Thomson, who pointed out that the world would pay sooner or later for all this vandalism and cruelty by the spread of famine and disease. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, founded in 1889, issued literature and promoted bills for putting an end to the slaughter of these birds, and in the same year Lord Wolseley gave orders that osprey plumes wore no longer to be worn in the army. From the year 1908 successive bills have been introduced in the two Houses, and in 1914 Mr Asquith's Govorament introduced an official bill which was in charge of Sir Charles Hobhouse. The Act that is now on the Statute Book was the result of the efforts of a Small group known as the Plumage Bill group, and its strange adventures in the House of Commons are fresh in the public memory. Th<!_ schedule to the Dill made two exceptions to the general prohibition of the importing of plumage—the African ostrich and the eider-dnck—but the bill set up an Advisory Committee, on which tlio feather trade was represented, to consider applications for extensions of the schedule. Lord Crewe has been chairman of this committee, and it is understood that the friends of this reform will have every reason to bo satisfied with tho results of its discussions, and that the additions to the schedule will- be slighi and unimportant. , Those of us whose feolings are outraged in the streets by the sight of birds of paradise and egrets in (Women's hats have the satisfaction of knowing that these-birds are safe for the future.