1912 AND FISHERIES COMMISSION. 297 



ing an appreciation of the value of fish, game and birds, and of the fact 

 of their rapid diniimition in numbers, they developed an understand- 

 ing b}^ the people of the loss they themselves were sustaining through 

 the slaughtering and depredations carried on by aliens and foreigners, 

 and from this understanding grew the desire to protect the public 

 property, and to exact some monetary compensation, at least, for that 

 which was destroyed for the amusement or benefit of the alien or non- 

 resident. The desire bore fruit in the imposition of alien and non-resi- 

 dent hunting licenses. The advantages of such taxes, both as revenue 

 producers and indirect protectors of game and birds, were so obvious 

 that the principle spread rapidly over the Avhole continent. The collec- 

 tion, however, of these taxes was no easy matter, for no game warden 

 can be expected to know every resident of a state or province, and men 

 cannot be obliged to produce certificates of identification and residence, 

 except when called on by law to produce such identification in the form 

 of a license. 



Consequently, the imposition of the alien and non-resident licenses 

 was directly responsible for the birth of the idea of a resident license, 

 and this idea matured rapidly and assumed concrete shape, not only for 

 the sake of assisting the administration of the non-president and alien 

 laws, but because of a growing conviction in the public mind that those 

 w^ho gain recreation and amusement from the protection of fish and 

 game cannot fairly claim that an injustice is being done in asking them 

 to pay for at least a portion of the protection afforded by the state to 

 their favourite sport, an argument, indeed, which has been constantly 

 advanced by persons of all classes to your Commissioner in the pursuit 

 of his present inquiries. 



In the United States the policy of a resident hunting license has 

 been adopted by one state after another, until to-day it is in force, in 

 some shape or form, in over thirty of the states of the Union, and it 

 may also be noted that in the recent session of the Legislature of the 

 Province of Saskatchewan the new schedule of licenses enacted includes 

 a |1.00 Bird License for residents of cities, towns and villages. 



In Ontario there exists to-day a resident license of |2.00 for the 

 hnnting of deer, but further than this the idea has not been carried. 



The danger to human life through the promiscuous carrying of fire- 

 arms has already been referred to, and, although the enactment of a 

 resident hunting license would not be so great a preventative of this 

 evil as the imposition of a gun license, nevertheless it would undoubt- 

 edly prove a powerful factor in that direction, while at the same time 

 be less likely to arouse the active antagonism of the gun manufacturers 

 and hardware merchants. The value of such measure in the protection 

 of game and birds, the economic worth of which, as an attraction to 

 tourists and as farmers' best friends, has already been pointed out in 

 a previous section of this repf>rt, would also plainly be enormons. 



The third great advantage of a resident hunting license is its reve- 



