256 REPORT OF ONTARIO GAME No. 52 



physique and good character, as to render him likely to prove of value 

 to the particular branch of the service into which he is placed. 



5, The number of persons authorized to sell non-resident anglers 

 licenses or hunting permits be increased sufficiently to ensure these 

 licenses and permits being very easily procurable. 



ADMINISTRATION. 



While it is possible to improve in detail the present game laws and 

 fishery regulations, they are in the main fairly satisfactory, but it is 

 in the machinery of enforcement that the principal fault lies. The 

 general system of the organization of the Department has been passed 

 down by the previous to the present administration. Improvements 

 have been made, and very much greater energy shown by the officers, 

 within the last few years, but the existing method of appointment of 

 officers of the outside service, as has already been set forth, is radically 

 wrong. Until this system is swept away the Department, in the opin- 

 ion of your Commissioner, will never reach the point of efficiency desir- 

 able for the general welfare of the Province. 



The necessity for the protection of fish and game was, of course, 

 felt in the much more thickly populated Republic to the south of us 

 long before it was felt here. In seeking for a solution to the problem 

 of efficient administration your Commissioner has given close study to 

 the evolution of fish and game protection in the United States, and to 

 the results that have followed upon the various experiments which 

 have been made in this direction by the different states. It would be 

 out of place to attempt anything approaching a history of this evolu- 

 tion in a report of this nature, but, seeing that the majority of the states 

 starting on different lines, and working under different conditions, 

 both climatic and temperamental, have converged to and arrived at a 

 fundamentally identical system of administration for the conservation 

 and development of their resources in fish and game, a short account of 

 the Commission and Warden system is herewith submitted. 



The offices of game commissioner and state game warden of the 

 present day are not the outcome of spontaneous growth, but the out- 

 come of numerous experiments and modifications necessitated by the 

 growing importance of the subject of preserving game. Originally 

 game protection was left to sheriffs and other local officers, and later, 

 after the appointment of fish wardens, was included incidentally among 

 the duties of that office. The development of the office of state game 

 warden from that of fish warden occupied nearly half a century, and 

 was marked by various experimental steps. Maine was the first state 

 to appoint an officer to protect fish, doing so in 1843, and in 1852 Maine 

 again led the way by appointing special officers to act as moose war- 



