206 PROTECTION OF ANIMAL LIFE 



become a serious nuisance to farmers and a menace to 

 home-grown food supplies, and to cause special measures 

 to be taken for their destruction under the Defence of the 

 Realm Regulations, "with a view to preventing or reducing 

 injuries to crops by game birds" (27 February, 1917). 



As it is difficult to indicate, except in general terms, the 

 effects of the Game Laws upon the numbers of the protected 

 in Scotland, I may be excused for turning to an American 

 source for a statistical account of the effects of game legisla- 

 tion, especially as the instance in question has the merit of 

 illustrating the differences in method between the slowly 

 evolved empirical laws of an old country and the scientifi- 

 cally based laws of a new. In 1906, according to Mr J. B. 

 Burnham, in Monroe County, New York, game of all kinds 

 had become so scarce that sportsmen had abandoned shoot- 

 ing. During the six years prior to 1904, 135 Chinese Ring- 

 necked Pheasants were distributed for stocking purposes, and 

 the shooting of them was totally prohibited. In 1908 they 

 had so increased in numbers that a short shooting season 

 was opened, but for cock birds only. Since that time, till the 

 present day, shooting has gone on annually, and in some 

 years more than 6000 Pheasants have been killed. Yet. 

 owing to the protection of hens, the supply is still increasing 

 at a great rate, and sportsmen are attracted to the county in 

 great numbers and from long distances. 



Apart from the direct and apparent results of the pro- 

 tection of game birds, there are more subtle but not less 

 important effects which follow in chains of circumstances. 

 Pheasants and Partridges, Black-game and the young of 

 Grouse are largely insect-eaters, and as such, benefit their 

 protectors to no small degree the crop of an Argyllshire 

 Pheasant has been found by Mr P. H. Grimshaw to contain 

 close on 2800 recognizable insects the staple food at the 

 time having been a Two-winged Fly, Bibio lepidus (the 

 maggots of which live in the ground upon roots of plants), 

 2286 specimens, and the Heather Beetle, Lochmcea sutu- 

 ra/zs, 508 specimens. Black-game also are formidable 

 enemies of the latter insect, the grubs of which destroy 

 annually hundreds if not thousands of acres of heather. 

 Much more subtle are the connecting links in the series of 

 events which, through the protection of Pheasants and the 



