THE ETHICS OF FIELD SPORTS. 573 



are restrained, utter extermination must soon follow in 

 those countries where game is beginning to grow scarce. 

 The wild animals in any country belong to the State, and it 

 is only by sufferance that the State allows anyone to kill 

 them; hence the right of the commonwealth to protect the 

 wild animals within its borders is as unquestioned as is 

 its right to protect its treasure in its vaults. 



On this important subject, civilization may learn some- 

 thing valuable from savage life. When the great prairies 

 were first visited by the white man, they fairly swarmed 

 with great herds of Bison, and so they continued till they 

 were exterminated by the white man's rifle. As late as 

 1840, I saw large collections of their bones on the Illinois 

 prairies, still in a good state of preservation; and two miles 

 up the south branch of the Chicago River, at a place now 

 within the heart of the City of Chicago, for more than half 

 a mile the whole surface of the ground was covered with 

 Buffalo- wallows, so that it was difficult to drive a wagon, 

 except at a very slow rate, over the surface. Other large 

 game was equally abundant throughout this great valley at 

 an early day, and so it had undoubtedly been for untold 

 ages. During all this time, large tribes of Indians inhab- 

 ited every part of it, whose principal subsistence was the 

 game they killed and the fish they caught; but they wasted 

 none, they only killed to supply their wants, and the 

 result was that the game was never depleted, but continued 

 as abundant year after year, and century after century, 

 as it had ever been. While this could not continue 

 in a country densely settled by civilized man, there 

 are large districts of country where the conditions are 

 such as to be well adapted to the well-being of every 

 species of wild animal known to the country, if the 

 white man, who seeks them, would only kill enough to 

 supply his wants. The smaller game, such as grouse and 

 water-fowl, are still with us, and would be in great abun- 

 dance forever, were they but reasonably protected, and no 

 more killed than enough to supply the legitimate needs of 

 those who hunt them, and at the proper seasons. Let us, 



