66 PROBLEMS IN WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



fact that it did not consider the fundamental distinction between 

 qualified ownership in game and the perfect nature of owner- 

 ship in other property, and thus overlooked the authority of the 

 state over property in game killed within its confines, and the 

 consequent power of the state to follow such property into what- 

 ever hands it might pass with the conditions and restrictions 

 deemed necessary for the public interest. 



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The sole consequence of the provision forbidding the trans- 

 portation of game, killed within the state, beyond the state, is to 

 confine the use of such game to those who own it, the people 

 of that state. The proposition that the state may not forbid 

 carrying it beyond her limits involves, therefore, the contention 

 that a state cannot allow its own people the enjoyment of the 

 benefits of the property belonging to them in common, without 

 at the same time permitting the citizens of other states to par- 

 ticipate in that which they do not own. 



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The power of a state to protect by adequate police regulations 

 its people against the adulteration of articles of food (upheld 

 in Plumley v. Mass., 155 U. S. 461) although in doing so com- 

 merce might be remotely affected, necessarily carries with it the 

 existence of a like power to preserve a food supply which belongs 

 in common to all the people of the state, which can only become 

 the subject of ownership in a qualified way, and which can never 

 be the object of commerce except with the consent of the state 

 and subject to such conditions as it may deem best to impose for 

 the public good. 



Upon the second question, whether a state could prohibit 

 the importation during the closed season of game legally 

 taken during the open season in some other state, the state 

 courts fortunately were in agreement. The Supreme Court 

 of Missouri in State v. Heger 46 pointed out that in the Geer 

 case, the United States Supreme Court had based its de- 



46 194 Mo. 707, 93 S. W. 252 (1906). 



