270 THE IMPORTANCE OF BIRD LIFE 



the State are excellent and advanced. Although 

 the bag-limit is the same, the open season for 

 ruffed grouse extends for two months ; there are 

 scarcely any grouse left on Long Island and there 

 should be an indefinite closed season. Instead of 

 four days, the shooting season for ring-necked 

 pheasants lasts for two months, and the bag- 

 limit is four cock-pheasants a day, or thirty for 

 the season. Pheasants are nowhere numerous 

 except in the immediate environs of the State 

 game farm at Middle Island and on a few private 

 preserves. They never will be unless they are 

 given a chance to spread, an impossibility under 

 the present law. 



Unlike the rest of the State, Long Island still 

 permits her quail to be shot. The birds are still 

 numerous in a few localities, but under the present 

 two-month open season they will not be for long. 

 A five-year closed season before it is too late 

 would bring them back to their numbers of twenty 

 years ago; but a certain type of "sportsman" 

 who believes in shooting now, without regard to 

 future sport, has blocked all efforts to bring such 

 a closed season about. To prove his point he 

 makes such absurd statements as this, that 

 coveys of quail, when shot into, scatter, and there- 

 fore populate a wider stretch of territory than 

 before! And, because he is a "sportsman" and 

 is supposed to know something of the habits of 

 bob-white, he is believed by some people. Of 



