FASHION’S DEATH KNELL

Waipa Post, Volume 52, Issue 3705, 10 January 1936, Page 11

FASHION’S DEATH KNELL

HOW EGYPT IS SAVING THE EGRET. FLOCKS IN THE NILE VALLEY. ( From a Correspondent.) One of the most interesting and successful experiments in bird preservation of recent times is the attempt to save the small egret (ardea garzetta) from complete extinction in Egypt. This small white bird, which belongs to the heron family, has been indigenous in the cultivated fields of the Nile Valley from time immemorial, which is proved by the fact that carvings of it occur on the bas-reliefs in some ancient Egyptian tombs. The bird is an insect-feeder entirely, and as the cotton, millet, and maize crops of Egypt are subject' to attacks by a variety of worms and caterpillars the egret was undoubtedly the best friend the fellah possessed. Unfortunately, the female egret in the nesting season produces a long, delicate plume known as the aigrette, and when the tender-hearted ladies of England, who have so much to say at meetings of the local R.S.P.C.A. decided that this feather was a very suitable and fashionable addition to a hat, they signed the death warrant of the egret.» The desired feather is only produced during the breeding season, therefore, every feather sent to England and Europe meant, not only the death of the mother bird, but the whole of her young as well, and so extinction was very rapid. THE INCONSISTENT FEMALE. The inconsistency of the female of the human species over cruelty to animals is inexplicable to the ordinary male mind. The average woman is so. very tender-hearted, and is readily moved to tears by the sight of a neglected dog or cow deprived of its calf. Clad in furs removed from the body of some rare animal from Siberia, and wearing lizard-skin shoes and an aigrette in her hat, almost any woman will urge her not-too-robust husband to risk an encounter with a burly gipsy over the question cf an underfed lurcher, or will hold up the traffic in a busy street to argue about the load drawn by a horse. But she wears cheerfully, as garments or other forms of adornment, skins and feathers the procuring of which has caused the death of wild animals and birds, and apparently saves her conscience by readily believing the saleswoman’s assurance that they are a synthetic product or are painlessly removed from the living creature —who is only too glad to be rid of them. It is not quite certain when the war against the egret in Egypt started, but it reached its intensity in the early part of the twentieth century, and by 1912 the process of extermination was practically complete. I n the fields that were once white with flocks of these birds not a single specimen exisited, and so far as Egypt was concerned the egret was extinct. Luckily, Mr Flower, the Director of the Cairo Zoological Gardens at that time, managed to obtain a few specimens which he installed in the gardens in 1912, in which year the Egyptian Government passed a law protecting the egret. These few survivors nested in one of the big trees of the Zoo, and every day set out for their feeding grounds in the cotton fields by the Nile, returning at night to their roosting place. By 1918 the numbers had increased to such an extent that they were “encouraged ” to go out into the world and find other roosting places, the en-

couragement taking the form of smoke fires under their trees. This | action was dictated, not only by the fact that it was desired to encourage the birds to spread out over the Nile Valley, but rather because one of the drawbacks of the egret is that his sleeping quarters become insanitary, not to say noisome, so that not only does the tree die in course of time, but it is definitely unpleasant to live in the vicinity. FLOCKS ON THE NILE. Seven years later the egret had reestablished himself the whole length of the Nile Valley, and to-day has spread out over every stretch of cultivated land in Egypt, flocks now existing in the Oases of Kharga and Dakhla and in the fields around Suez, while odd specimens have taken up their quarters in the few scattered gardens of the Sinai Desert. The situation now is that not only ** has the egret entirely regained his old strength in Egypt, but he is becoming something of a pest owing to the destruction of trees in a country that produces no natural woodland. It is, however, always difficult to strike the happy medium, and the fact that there has been no serious invasion of cotton worm since the egret was re-established may certainly be credited to his account. K It is seldom, when Nature has been abused to the extent that was the case over the egret extermination, that a few years of protection will once again repair the damage that has been done, and the rehabilitation of this eminently useful bird in the fields of Egypt stands out as a marked and entirely unexpected success. —Observer, London.