PROTECTION TO GAME AND BIRDS IN THE 

 UNITED STATES x 



The question of game protection and the preservation 

 of useful birds has of late years assumed much interest. 

 It has always been the custom to lock the stable door af- 

 ter the horse is gone. Our ancestors found the land east 

 of the Ohio covered with a dense forest, the rivers full of 

 fish, and the woods filled with game. 



The first necessity was to destroy the forest so as to 

 make way for the farms. 



The abundance of wild life made it seem that the supply 

 could never be exhausted. 



For more than three hundred years destruction was 

 called "improvement" and it has only in recent years 

 come to the attention of the people generally that the 

 American people were like spendthrift heirs wasting their 

 patrimony. 



The public conscience has become quickened, and the at- 

 tempt to preserve and restore some of the wild life of 

 America is no longer looked upon as a fad or idle senti- 

 ment. A halt has been called upon the wanton waste of 

 the forests, and more than a hundred millions of acres of 

 public forest lands have been reserved by law for pos- 

 terity. 



i John F. Lacey in Boston Transcript. 



Mr. Lacey is the author of much valuable legislation on game and bird 

 protection. He is the author of the Yellowstone Park act of 1891 on this 

 subject; the Wichita Preserve act; the Alaska game laws; bill setting apart 

 bird breeding grounds on certain public islands in the Gulf of Mexico and 

 the Lakes; the "Lacey Act," forbidding interstate commerce in game and 

 birds killed in violation of law; and, also, many other valuable national 

 laws on this subject. — Editor Boston Transcript. 



