516 GAME BIRDS. WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



New York, Philadelphia and Boston are now the greatest game 

 markets in this country. Dr. Hornaday states that from 

 October 20 to March 1, inclusive, there were shipped from 

 Currituck Sound to northern markets, via Norfolk, Va., be- 

 tween fourteen hundred and fifteen hundred Wild Geese, and 

 from the Sound and its tributaries, approximately two hundred 

 thousand Ducks were shipped by the same route. The main 

 cause of the depletion of water-fowl is not far to seek. Dr. 

 Hornaday says truly that the greatest value to be derived 

 from any game bird lies in seeing it, photographing it and en- 

 joying its living company. "Who," he says, "will love our 

 forests when they become destitute of wild life.^" 



Probably less than one per cent, of the people are able to 

 buy game in the market. Laws that permit the sale of wild 

 game, that belongs to all the people, are directly against the 

 interests of the great majority. The principle of the law that 

 wild game belongs to the State has long been established. 

 How much longer will the American people allow the wild 

 game, which belongs to them, to be exploited for the interest 

 of the few who hunt, kill and sell it.'^ 



The sale of all or a part of the native wild game is now 

 (1911) prohibited in forty-three States and Territories, and 

 in nearly all the Provinces of Canada. If the markets of 

 New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago could be closed 

 to the sale of wild game, many of the market hunters of the 

 south and west would be driven out of business, and millions 

 of birds would be saved yearly to rear young. 



The export of game from one State to another should not 

 be permitted, for this makes it easy to evade the law by kill- 

 ing game legally in one State where its sale is prohibited, and 

 selling it in another where its sale is legal. The prohibition 

 of export saves the game of a State for the people of that 

 State, and conserves the supply. 



Spring Shooting. 



In emphasizing the destructiveness of spring shooting it is 

 well to reiterate here the fact that when North America was 

 first settled, wild-fowl bred more or less numerously through- 



