202 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



important, it should be supplemented by the owners 

 of private preserves. 



There is little danger that we in the United 

 States will fall into the error that England has 

 made in allowing three-fourths of her land to be 

 owned by one-fourth of her population. Neither 

 is it likely that we shall become a nation of sports- 

 men to the same extent that the English have. 

 But if by state and individual effort we can, in the 

 next generation or two, increase our song-birds, 

 our game-birds and water-fowl, as has been done 

 in England, the economic results to the consumers 

 of farm products, in the lower prices of game food 

 and the love of nature that must accompany an 

 interest in and knowledge of these things, will prove 

 among our important national assets. 



The Beginning of Private Game Preserves in 

 America. From the earliest colonial times there 

 have been game preserves in this country, both of 

 the fenced and unfenced types; and there are 

 records of estates attempting to stock with English 

 pheasants, European gray and red-legged par- 

 tridges, extending back more than a hundred years. 

 Perhaps the most interesting among the early 

 game preserves was Bohemia Manor in Cecil 

 County, Maryland, where Augustine Hermann 

 established, in 1661, a walled deer-park of consider- 

 able size. The game preserves of the early period 

 were found chiefly in Virginia and Maryland, and 

 to a lesser extent in the Atlantic States to the south 



