172 



ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



close terms of several years have been established. The following table 

 showing the first close seasons, close terms and bag limits has been 

 slightly modified from Palmer's compilation: 2 



Laws prohibiting deer-hunting by firelight were first passed as fol- 

 lows: South Carolina, 1769; North Carolina, 1777; Georgia, 1790; 

 Virginia, 1792; Mississippi, 1803; Alabama, 1822; Florida, 1828; 

 Maryland, 1830. 



The tabulation on pages 170-171 of open and close seasons has been 

 compiled from Game Laws for the Season ip 27- 19 28, 3 open seasons for 

 members of the deer family (except caribou), mountain sheep and 

 mountain goats usually applying only to adult males, and game com- 

 missions having power in some cases temporarily to open seasons on 

 some completely protected species. (The bulletin for 1929-1930, re- 

 ceived since the table was compiled, would make a few minor modifica- 

 tions.) 



Hunters in nearly all civilized countries now are required to obtain 

 licenses from the proper authorities. The chief purpose of this, in the 

 United States at least, is to obtain funds for game protection and 

 propagation, on the theory that the hunters should themselves pay for 

 the protection of their game. That was not the purpose of the earliest 

 license laws, which, in America, had their inception in a Virginia 

 statute of 1691 in relation to "free trade with the Indians," forbid- 

 ding hunting far from the English plantations without a "lycense and 

 permission" from certain officers, in order to prevent "such mischeifes 

 as have frequently happened at huntings, commonly called fire-hunt- 

 ings, and other huntings remote from the plantations." 4 In 1745 North 



2 Palmer, U. S. Biol. Surv. Bull. No. 41, p. 16, 1912. 

 8 Game laws for the season 1927-1928, Farmers' Bull., No. 1550. 

 4 Palmer, Hunting licenses and their history, objects and limitations, U. S. Biol. 

 Surv. Bull. No. 19, 1904; summary of laws by states on pp. 19-66; many changes 



