482 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



chose and then left the bodies to rot and the broods to perish. 

 That was, presumably, for sport. For the same kind of sport, 

 motor boats cut circles round diving birds, drown them and let 

 the bodies float away. The North Shore people have drowned 

 myriads of moulting scoters in August ; but they use the meat. 

 Bestial forms of sport are many and vile. " C'est un plaisir 

 superbe " was the description given by some voyageurs on 

 exploring work who had spent the afternoon chasing young 

 birds about the rocks and stamping them to death. Deer were 

 literally hacked to pieces by construction gangs on new lines 

 last summer. Dynamiting a stream is quite a common trick 

 wherever it is safe to play it. Harbour seals are wantonly shot 

 in deep fresh water where they cannot be recovered, much as 

 seagulls are shot by blackguards from an ocean liner. 



And the worst of it is that all this wanton destruction is not 

 by any means confined to the ignorant or those who have been 

 brought up to it. The men from the American yacht must have 

 known better. So do those educated men from our own cities, 

 who shoot out of season down the St. Lawrence and plead, quite 

 falsely, that there is no game law below the Brandy Pots. It is, 

 of course, well understood that a man can always shoot for 

 necessary food. But this provision is shamelessly misused. Last 

 summer, when a great employer of labour down the Gulf was 

 telling where birds could be shot to the greatest advantage out 

 of season and I was objecting that it was not clean sport, he said, 

 " Oh, but Indians can shoot for food at any time — and we're all 

 Indians here ! " And what are we to think of a rich man who 

 used caribou simply as targets for his new rifle and a scientific 

 man who killed seventy-two in one morning, only to make a 

 record ? We need the true ideal of sport and an altogether 

 new ideal of conservation and we need them very badly and 

 very soon. 



We have had our warnings. The great auk and the Labrador 

 duck have both become utterly extinct within living memory. 

 The Eskimo curlew is decreasing to the danger point and the 

 Yellowlegs is following. The lobster fishing is being wastefully 

 conducted along the St. Lawrence ; so, indeed, are the other 

 fisheries. Whales are diminishing : the Cape Charles and 

 Hawke Harbour establishments are running but those at 

 L'Anse au Loup and Seven Islands are not. The whole whaling 

 industry is disappearing all over the world before the uncor- 



