﻿238 Bird -Lore 



the exception of Brant, is largely to the same effect. The number of locally 

 raised Ducks is growing larger every season. 



Mr. Elon H. Eaton, of Rochester, New York, sends a report which 

 speaks of the immense number of Ducks this past spring at Conesus Lake, 

 the unusual numbers being ascribed by sportsmen to the prohibition of 

 spring shooting, and they predict a still greater increase under this beneficent 

 legislation. The hereditary instinct for the home is very strong in all wild 

 birds, and there is no reason, except that of spring shooting, why large 

 numbers of wild fowl should not re-occupy, for breeding purposes, their 

 ancestral homes. 



Mr. Nathaniel Wentworth, of the New Hampshire Fish and Game 

 Commission, says: "If the Wood Duck and Upland Plover are not pro- 

 tected soon, it will be but a short time when there will be none to protect; 

 there is not one in New Hampshire today where there were twenty, thirty 

 years ago." 



This is a condition that needs the active attention of the Audubon 

 Society before it is too late to prevent the result predicted. 



Mr. Eugene Watrous, State Game and Fish Warden, of Oklahoma, is 

 of the opinion that "the abolition of spring shooting will furnish a remedy 

 for the preservation of all species of migrating water-birds ; this I am in favor 

 of now and for all time to come." 



He also makes the following excellent suggestion : "I am in favor of a 

 bag limit in the killing of game to a number which it would be reasonable 

 to suppose could be used by the person so killing for domestic purposes only, 

 and I favor imprisonment as a penalty for the killing, buying, selling or in 

 any way handling game for commercial purposes." 



Of the thirty-five commissioners who answered our inquiry of " Are 

 you in favor of abolishing spring shooting of all kinds, without any excep- 

 tions ? " twenty-nine of them replied "Yes," without any qualification, 

 although some of them added such words as "decidedly so" or "most 

 emphatically." Of these replies, six came from the British provinces and 

 one from Mexico. Five of the commissioners gave a modified approval, while 

 only two replied absolutely in the negative, and one reason was because 

 "Ducks cross our country, both fall and spring, and are shot on both sides 

 of us, and, notwithstanding we have spring shooting up as late as April 15, 

 there were more Ducks in our state during the fall of 1905 and the spring 

 of 1906 than has been known here for a number of years." It is suggested 

 that this state is receiving the benefit of the prohibition of spring shooting 

 in other states and that it is ethically bound to help the movement by like 

 action. 



It is proposed in a short time to issue a pamphlet embodying the several 

 important questions submitted to the Game Commissioners, with their 

 replies in detail, together with argument in favor of the stand taken by this 



