PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 203 



and north, where the English royalists and other 

 wealthy foreigners had founded estates. There 

 were no early game preserves in New England, 

 doubtless owing to the temper of the colonists. 



The Atlantic coast from New Jersey southward 

 was originally the best preserved section of Amer- 

 ica. As a matter of custom the farmers and 

 planters of the southern states have reserved the 

 shooting on their lands for themselves and their 

 friends, and that system still is in vogue, except 

 that in many instances the owners of the lands have 

 leased the shooting rights to wealthy sportsmen. 

 In the Carolinas, for example, hundreds of thou- 

 sands of acres of quail lands are leased to individ- 

 uals and clubs, a large part of whose membership 

 is drawn from the northern and western states. 

 Clubs and individuals have also acquired the wild- 

 fowl shooting-rights along the bays, sounds and 

 rivers of the Atlantic coast, and to an equal extent 

 the best localities on the Pacific coast, chiefly in the 

 great state of California. Along the northern bor- 

 der of the United States, particularly on the Great 

 Lakes, many of the best wild- fowl marshes are simi- 

 larly controlled, and there has also been extensive 

 development of preserves for the shooting of wild 

 fowl throughout the Mississippi River states and 

 westward to the Pacific coast. 



Important Private Game Preserves in the 

 United States. In 1858 Judge John Dean Caton, 

 who subsequently wrote an authoritative work on 



