THIRD BIENNIAL STATEMENT 145 



clined to think the limit is not too high if it were adhered 

 to. The trouble is that when the flight is heavy and the 

 shooting good, very few of the hunters pay any attention 

 to the limit. I know of a number of kills that were made 

 last fall exceeding one hundred ducks per gun in one day. 



"I will say, however, that there are a good many more 

 real sportsmen among the shooters now than there were 

 ten years ago, and I believe the efforts of the protective 

 associations are having real effect." 



In Europe it has been proven over and over that private 

 owners of large hunting grounds have preserved sport for 

 centuries. The deer forests and the grouse moors prove it. 

 But that game has not been cursed by millions of free 

 shooters, each one asserting the rights of a sovereign, and 

 sometimes quite able to defy owners while trespassing on 

 fenced and posted lands. In "free" America our laws 

 against trespass on fenced property are a howling farce. 

 They are a disgrace to a civilized nation. They represent 

 the fetich of "personal liberty" brutally thrusting aside the 

 most fundamental of all property rights, — the right to enjoy 

 peaceable possession. 



It is high time that every state should protect the fenced 

 property of its citizens against armed and dangerous, and 

 sometimes defiant, game-hunting trespassers. 



I have said all that I have to say. 



Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn, author of "The Age of 

 Mammals," now solemnly says: "We are now at the end of 

 the Age of Mammals!" 



It is my fear that man's rapacity and greed for wild 

 life now is so great that nothing will avail to save for the 

 next century anything more of it than mere tattered rem- 

 nants of a once glorious fauna, — rats, mice and English 

 sparrows. 



