and the Maritime Provinces. 351 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



Game and pisH IN Massachusetts. 



Although densely populated and teeming with manufacturing and 

 other industries of large magnitude, Massachusetts to-day possesses a 

 variety of game and fish that is excelled by that of hardly any other State 

 in the Union, and the number of sportsmen and anglers who refuse to 

 avail themselves of the tempting offers which other sections present, and 

 take their recreation in our own covers and upon our home waters, is larger 

 than most people suppose. 



With the exception of a few deer in Plymouth county — the killing of 

 which, however, is forbidden by law — she has no large game, but, in con- 

 sequence of her great topographical diversity, varying, as it does, from the 

 hills of Berkshire and other western counties, to the great areas of level 

 forest-lands in Plymouth and other eastern counties, and the vast stretches 

 of marshes, meadows and sandy beaches which line almost the entire coast 

 from Newburyport to Rhode Island, she provides a permanent habitat for 

 a great variety of species, and a stopping-place for many others as they 

 pass to and fro in their migrations. 



Among our game birds, the ruffed grouse or partridge stands pre- 

 eminent. It is our principal game bird just as it is the chief among those 

 of the other eastern States. 



Every patch of woodland in every portion of the State contains more 

 or less of these birds, and the aggregate number which our coverts contain 

 would, if it could be displayed, prove surprising. 



It is a bird that generally seems able to take care of itself, so far as 

 the sportsman is concerned, for in consequence of the pertinacity with 

 which it is pursued, it is, in all sections of the State, wild and unapproach- 

 able, and the hunter who succeeds in bagging three or four brace in a day's 

 outing is not only fortunate in the extreme, but is one who maybe classed 

 as a skilful sportsman. 



It is not from the gun, therefore, that the numbers of our ruffed 

 grouse are in serious danger of depletion, for undoubtedly twenty birds are 

 killed by the snare in this State, to one that falls before the sportsman. 

 Our law which permits the snaring of the partridge by the owner of land, 

 or "by members of his family" is shamefully abused, and it should be 

 stricken from our statutes, in which it should never have found a place. 



