CONSERVATION OF GAME BIRDS. 561 



abundant in our markets we must adopt some modification, 

 at least, of tlie system that has been in successful operation in 

 England for centuries. 



The game in this country was amply sufficient for the wants 

 of the red men. It furnished them an abundance of animal 

 food. Only the tribes of Mexico and Central America, which 

 were somewhat civilized and lived in cities, found it necessary 

 to add to their meat supply by domesticating animals; but 

 as conditions changed after the advent of the Europeans, and 

 as civilization advanced, the people introduced foreign domes- 

 tic animals to provide a meat supply, and foreign plants for a 

 vegetable and fruit supply, but still depended upon nature to 

 furnish a sufficient quantity of wild game for a vast and grow- 

 ing population. At the end of the nineteenth century we were 

 less advanced in the propagation of game than was any other 

 civilized country. We are hardly beginning yet to realize 

 that the only way to produce a plentiful supply of game, 

 sufficient for the needs of all, in a settled country is to en- 

 courage the individual ownership and propagation of game. 

 If our people had elected to depend on the natural supply of 

 native wild animals and plants for food the country never 

 would have been settled as it is to-day. Even the Indians 

 found it necessary to cultivate and store corn to tide them over 

 times of famine in winter. It is only by the individual owner- 

 ship and cultivation of plants and the propagation of domestic 

 animals and birds for food that we have been able to feed our 

 own people, and in the future we must look largely to indi- 

 vidual ownership and propagation to supply our increasing 

 population with game. When it is made legal and profitable 

 for men to raise game and sell it in the markets, a supply will 

 be forthcoming as regularly as the crops of corn or potatoes, or 

 as the annual supply of shell-fish, eggs, poultry, hogs or cattle. 



We are now sending millions of dollars to other countries 

 for game that easily might be produced here, and many 

 wealthy American sportsmen go abroad and pay enormous 

 sums for their shooting. An economic problem that we now 

 face is "how to keep at home the vast sum of money that 

 goes abroad for shooting rights and game." 



