390 GAME BIRDS, WILD-FOWL AND SHORE BIRDS. 



otherwise acquired for the purpose, and authorizing the com- 

 missioners to take not more than one thousand acres in the 

 name of the Commonwealth. The bill was advocated by the 

 Audubon Societies and sportsmen's organizations, and was 

 passed with an appropriation of two thousand dollars for 

 carrying out its provisions. The commissioners soon secured 

 sixteen hundred acres, by donation and purchase, which has 

 now (1911) been increased to over two thousand. Fire stops 

 were made, the birds were guarded carefully and fed, and by 

 the year 1909 they had increased in number to about two 

 hundred. They then began to wander over the island, en- 

 croaching on the farms of the different towns, and from that 

 time to the present their numbers have not increased much. 

 This check to their increase, I believe, is in part owing to a 

 large number of Marsh Hawks, which apparently were feeding 

 on the young in 1909; in part to poaching by law-breaking 

 gunners, and in part to both wild and domesticated house 

 cats, which are known to be very destructive to the young 

 Heath Hens. 



The history of the Heath Hen in Massachusetts shows 

 clearly the ineffectiveness of partial and belated legislation, 

 and the effectiveness of the reservation plan, backed by law 

 enforcement, to save a species in imminent danger of extinc- 

 tion. If we expect to preserve the Heath Hen and increase its 

 numbers, however, we must do very much more than we have 

 yet done to that end. More wardens or gamekeepers must 

 be employed; other State reservations must be secured, and 

 the birds introduced and protected upon them until it becomes 

 possible to exchange birds between different localities and 

 thus add new vigor to the breeding stock. All the money 

 expended by the State authorities in rearing Pheasants and 

 other foreign game birds might far better have been used in 

 re-establishing this hardy native game bird in its original 

 haunts from Cape Cod to the Connecticut valley. 



The Heath Hen belongs to this country. It has been fitted 

 by the natural selection of centuries to maintain itself abun- 

 dantly in southern New England. It is superior in every way 

 to any foreign game bird that we are likely to introduce. 



