| Hummingbirds sold by Lewis & Peat, London, February, 1911 | 24,800 |
| Hummingbirds sold by Lewis & Peat, London, May, 1911 | 6,250 |
| Hummingbirds sold by Hale & Sons, London, October, 1911 | 10,040 |
| ------- | |
| Total | 41,090 |
It is useless for anyone to assert that these birds were merely "offered," and not actually sold, as Mr. Downham so laboriously explains is the regular course with hummingbird skins; for that will deceive no intelligent person. The statement published above comes to me direct, from an absolutely competent and reliable source.
Undoubtedly the friends of birds, and likewise their enemies, will be interested in the prices at which the skins of the most beautiful birds of the world are sold in London, prior to their annihilation by the feather industry. I submit the following exhibit, copied from the circular of Messrs. Lewis & Peat. It is at least of academic interest.
Many thoughts are suggested by these London lists of bird slaughter and loot.
It will be noticed that the breast of the grebe has almost wholly disappeared from the feather market and from women's hats. The reason is that there are no longer enough birds of that group to hold a place in the London market! Few indeed are the Americans who know that from 1900 to 1908 the lake region of southern Oregon was the scene of the slaughter of uncountable thousands of those birds, which continued until the grebes were almost exterminated.
When the wonderful lyre-bird of Australia had been almost exterminated for its tail feathers, its open slaughter was stopped by law, and a heavy fine was imposed on exportation, amounting, I have been told, to $250 for each offense. My latest news of the lyre-bird was of the surreptitious exportation of 200 skins to the London feather market.
In India, the smuggling outward of the skins of protected birds is constantly going on. Occasionally an exporter is caught and fined; but that does not stop the traffic.