ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN. 



531 



GREAT HORNED OWL. 

 With "horns" laid back in anger. 



THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICT. 



The warfare for the protection of wild life 

 should be just as constant and unremitting as is 

 the manufacture of cartridges. If anyone who 

 reads the literature of the wild-life protection- 

 ists is impressed by the repetition of the argu- 

 ments and exhortations set forth, let him re- 

 member that the men who make guns and car- 

 tridges work constantly, and know no such thing 

 as weariness. A competent authority has esti- 

 mated that in the United States there are sold 

 each year about 500,000 shot-guns and 7,000,- 

 000 loaded cartridges! 



More than this, every year sees new and more 

 deadly guns invented and placed upon the mar- 

 ket, for the more rapid and effective slaughter 

 of wild creatures. The great desire of the gun- 

 maker is to give the game absolutely no chance 

 to escape. To-day the perfection of long-range 

 sporting rifles is so great it is difficult to find a 

 man or twelve-year-old boy so unskillful that he 

 cannot go out into the haunts of big game and 

 kill a good "bag." Several American women 

 have killed huge elephants in Africa, and many 

 a boy in his early teens has killed his moose in 

 Maine, Canada or New Brunswick, — all through 

 the deadly perfection of modern repeating rifles. 



EASTERN RUFFED GROUSE. 



The finest gallinaceous game bird of the northeastern United 

 States. Still fairly abundant in the Adirondacks, and the 

 wilder portions of the Catskill region. It is much in need 

 of a ten-year per'od of absolute protection. 



BOB-WHITE. 



