PESTS AND THEIR TREATMENT 137 



reduced, and the sires of the herds must be 

 improved. Our advice is: For five years stop the 

 killing of male elk, and during that period kill 2,500 

 cow elk each year. This plan we believe is the only 

 solution of the elk problem that ever will prove 

 effective, and place the herds on a firm basis for 

 the future. 



A few years ago, certain interests in Penn- 

 sylvania raised a great public outcry against the 

 alleged awful destruction of fish in the streams of 

 Pennsylvania by herons. The case was made so 

 serious that the fish commissioner demanded that 

 state protection be removed from the herons and 

 certain other birds. The state game commissioners 

 were hoodwinked into accepting the charges as true, 

 and they virtually permitted the throwing of the 

 herons into the arena of slaughter. A little later 

 on, however, the game commissioners found that the 

 herons remaining in Pennsylvania were far too few 

 to constitute a pest to fish life, and furthermore, the 

 millinery interests appeared to be behind the move- 

 ment. Under the new law the milliners were 

 enabled to reopen in Pennsylvania the sale of 

 aigrettes, because those feathers came from mem- 

 bers of the unprotected Heron Family! It 

 required a tremendous state campaign to restore 

 protection to the herons and bar out the aigrettes ; 

 but it was accomplished in 1912. 



Hereafter, let no man for one moment be 

 deceived by the claim that the very few-and-far- 



