No. 4.] BIRD PROTECTION. 407 



protect our game birds we have been clipping away at the twigs too 

 long. Let us now take up the axe. The laws which have been passed 

 regulating the sale and transportation of game are useful under pres- 

 ent conditions, but there is one statutory provision alone which will 

 strike at the root of the evil and check the slaughter of game birds 

 by taking away the incentive for pothunting ; and that is the prohibi- 

 tion of the sale of all game birds. 



It would be for the interest of the marketman were this enacted, 

 for he is now constantly hampered by restrictions and harassed by 

 legal requirements. It would not, in the end, injure his business, 

 for he would then sell turkeys, chickens, geese, ducks, pigeons, squabs, 

 guineas and possibly pheasants in place of the game he now sells. 

 Such a law would be better for the farmer and poultry raiser, who 

 would be called upon to supply more domesticated birds to take the 

 place of the wild ones now sold. It would be better for the sportsman, 

 who sees himself prohibited from shooting certain wild fowl and other 

 migrating game birds here in certain months only to have them shot 

 by market gunners in other States and sold in our own as well as other 

 markets. Such a law would injure no one except the man who pursues 

 birds for a living, — the man who kills the goose that lays the golden 

 egg, — the man who exterminates the birds. The time is gone by in 

 Massachusetts and in the east when any man should be allowed to 

 live by the killing of birds and game. This should be stopped, for 

 the benefit of the whole people. We should no longer be allowed to 

 exterminate, and thus deprive posterity of its birthright in the birds 

 and game. 1 



The market hunter or pothunter is often a good and worthy citizen, 

 but his day is past and he must adopt some other calling. More 

 than forty States now prohibit the sale of all or a part of their game. 

 Massachusetts should have been among the leaders in this move- 

 ment. 



Next in importance to the elimination of the market hunter comes 

 the bag limit. Some so-called sportsmen are nearly as destructive 

 as the market hunter, but many who now kill so long as their am- 

 munition lasts would respect a legal limit to the number of birds to 

 be killed in a day or in a season. 



Right of Search. 

 The Commissioners on Fisheries and Game and their deputies 

 should be given the power to search without a warrant. This power 

 can be exercised without abuse as it now is in other States. There 

 can be little hope of thorough enforcement of the law until the officers 

 who enforce it have this power. 2 



1 If at any time the artificial propagation of game birds becomes successfully estab- 

 lished as an industry, the sale of certain species that can be artificially reared in great 

 numbers may be allowed. 



2 Since the above was written a law has been passed which gives the game officers the 

 right to arrest without a warrant any hunter who fails to exhibit his game on demand. 



