160 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



the future. I do not see why it should not be possible through your 

 influence to have the provincial governments declare such places as 

 heronries bird sanctuaries where guns would not be allowed, where 

 special penalties would be enforced on any person going with a gun. 

 As a rule the few places in which these heronries now exist are places 

 where the neighbours are favourable to the birds because, if that were 

 not so, they would not have lasted nearly so long. 



I am sorry that the subject of bird protection has been so wide that 

 I have not been able to enter much into details. May I assure you 

 that if I or the Mcllwraith Ornithological Club of London, which in 

 a way I represent in this bird campaign, can be of any service to the 

 Commission at any time, we shall be only too pleased, and I sincerely 

 hope the members of the Fisheries and Game Committee will feel it 

 within the scope of their activities to urge upon local governments the 

 importance of this matter of bird protection. Feeling as I do that, 

 while the economic side of the question is of value, the aesthetic side 

 really is of considerably more value, I wish to emphasize the fact that 

 the combined value of the two aspects is very great indeed. 



Dr. Murray: Mr. Saunders' paper strikes me as having been 

 of quite unusual interest and I hope we shall have the pleasure of 

 hearing him in this Committee many times hereafter. He has 

 brought forward many good points for the Committee to take into 

 consideration and among the ideas that have been put forward this 

 afternoon there is one that seems to me to be eminently practical. The 

 Commission of Conservation should in some cases constitute itself into 

 a Committee of Extermination; in order to secure the preservation of 

 the birds, we shall have to secure the extermination of the domestic 

 cat. Mr. Millar left me with the impression that, in order to secure 

 the preservation of game in the western provinces, we should have to 

 secure the extermination of the Stoney Indians. I do not know 

 exactly what the arguments against that might be and what force 

 might attach to them ; he intimated that that was something we might 

 look for in the natural order of things. 



I noticed that both Mr. Millar and Mr. Vreeland complimented the 

 province of New Brunswick very highly in certain respects and have 

 given it quite a good advertisement in the matter of moose and other 

 game. I should also like to call attention to the fact that in Nova 

 Scotia there is a good field for the sportsman who wishes to get moose, 

 and that caribou, which have become almost extinct in all other parts 

 of the Dominion, are still to be found in small numbers in portions of 

 Nova Scotia and that they are being carefully preserved. 



