vi PREFACE 
sportsman, who beats the covert in search of 
health and sport, and of the working naturalist, 
that they meet on this common ground and work 
loyally together in an effort to save our wild life 
from the extermination which threatens. The 
protection of our wild creatures, particularly 
of our game birds, seems to be the most im- 
portant question in the sportsman’s outlook 
upon the future—a question calling for much 
foresight and no little self-denial in its proper 
solution. The present generation is feeling the 
results of that selfishness of the past, so well 
summed up in its two stock arguments: ‘‘O, 
well, if I don’t kill them someone else will, and 
the game will last my time, anyhow!’’ 
Will it, you who listen to our old men’s tales 
of shooting days in the not-so-long-ago? Will 
it, you who have gunned the marsh? Where 
are the plover flocks which once swept across its 
wide expanse? Will it, market hunter and 
slayer of the wild pigeon? Will it, chicken hun- 
ter, you who left your dead to rot in August’s 
sun? Will it, hide hunter of the buffalo days? 
If the reader can look with indifference upon 
the works of these, let him permit things to take 
their ruinous course,—let him do nothing to re- 
