A Nefarious and Abominable Trade.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIX, Issue 21, 21 May 1913, Page 6

A Nefarious and Abominable Trade.

Lord Curzon, whose worst enemy could not accuse him of sentimentality, is among the latest to recognise that ■nothing short of police force can regulate the conduct of women or persuade them into any deference to public wel--fare. So he asks for a law to prohibit the importation into England of humming birds, birds of paradise, and egrets. In 1911 the sales were 41,000 humming-birds, 20,700 birds of paradise and 129,000 egrets, described by Lord Curzon as the most beautiful and innocent things in the created world which was '"ransacked ami ravaged in order to gratify this nefarious and abominable trade.” Of course, remonstrances are not of the slightest value. The average fashionable woman would murder a baby with the same unconcern that she would murder an egret if she thought that she could in the least enhance her attractiveness .by doing so. There is no such foolish cant as the talk about woman’s humanity. ■■