94 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



If we accept this principle as a rule of action, we 

 can apply it literally as a blood test, in any locality 

 on earth, and ascertain precisely the line of policy 

 that is necessary to-day. In any given locality, ask 

 the old residents this question: Is your game as 

 plentiful as it was twenty years ago? This question 

 is readily answered; and throughout the United 

 States there are very, very few localities in which 

 it can be answered truthfully in the affirmative. 

 Whenever and wherever it is answered in the nega- 

 tive, there hunting should be suspended for five 

 years on every species that is vanishing. 



The logic of this proposition is quite unassail- 

 able ; and yet, so reckless, so greedy and so destruc- 

 tive is the great mass of the army of life-takers, 

 the immediate enforcement of this principle would 

 produce throughout our country a roar of dis- 

 approval and protest that could be heard almost 

 around the world. It is this strange and unreason- 

 ing state of fact that renders the task of the bird 

 and mammal protectors so difficult. 



The case of small game in America, and of the 

 men who pursue it, is particularly serious, because 

 of the fact that there are so very, very few localities 

 in which the birds are not being killed far faster 

 than they are breeding. The quail, grouse and 

 shore-birds are in a very desperate state. I know of 

 but one locality in which even a single species of 

 upland game-bird is breeding faster than it is being 

 killed. In the deserts of southern Arizona, Gam- 



