524 AMERICAN GAME BIRD SHOOTING 
which have been devoted to their naturalization in fos- 
tering and increasing our stock of native game birds.” 
The turning loose of foreign birds to take care of 
themselves in a climate to which they are unaccustomed 
and among conditions more or less different from those 
in which their ancestors have lived, is not likely soon to 
make much difference in our shooting. A few hundred 
birds turned loose in a township or a county would 
have to increase enormously before they would be suf- 
ficiently numerous to make the shooting good. Every- 
one killed would reduce the breeding stock, the process 
of reproduction would be slow and the final results, even 
if favorable, might not be important for a generation. 
Besides this, there are serious possible dangers in 
the turning loose of foreign birds. There are some 
reasons for thinking that these foreign birds carry with 
them the germs of certain diseases to which they them- 
selves are immune, but which may be communicated to 
our native birds with fatal results. It is believed by 
some investigators that the domestic fowl carries with 
it the germs of a disease which is fatal to the turkey, 
and to our quail and grouse, although the young of the 
hen do not suffer from it. 
Many examples might be cited of the danger of intro- 
ducing into a new land an animal, harmless in its own 
home, but which when transported to a country where 
conditions are especially favorable to its existence and it 
finds few or no enemies, has increased to such an ex- 
tent as to become a nuisance, if not a public menace. 
The cases of the rabbit in Australia, of the English spar- 
