Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Humming Birds
It is not the naturalist alone, however, who has been attracted by the wonderful beauty of Humming Birds. The demand for them is great for purely ornamental purposes, and though this has vastly added to their destruction it has, as a fortunate recompense, enabled naturalists to become better acquainted with them, the immense num ber of specimens often contained in milliners' and taxidermists' stocks frequently yielding species which otherwise would scarcely have become known to science. Both Frenchmen and Belgians, says Mr. Gould, have proceeded to South America to procure supplies of these birds, and dealers from those countries have established themselves in some of the cities of that part of the world for the like purpose. From Sta. F� de Bogota alone many thousands of skins are annually sent to Lon don and Paris, and sold as ornaments for the drawing-room and for scientific purposes. The Indians readily learn the art of skinning and preserving, and, as a certain amount of emolument attends the collect i ng of these objects, they often traverse great distances to p ocure them; districts more than a hundred miles on either side of Bogota are strictly searched and hence it is that from these places alone we receive not less than seventy species of these birds. In like manner the residents of many parts of Brazil employ their slaves in collecting, skinning, and preserving them for European markets, and many then sands are annually sent from Rio de Janeiro, Bahia, and Pernambuco. They also supply the inmates of the convents with many of the more richly colored species for the manufacture of artificial feather-?owers. Vast numbers are' also used by the natives of Mexico improducing the wonderful feather pictures for which the descendants of the Aztecs are famous.
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