THE GAME BREEDER 



45 



tection" proposed by the bird society, 

 which in effect makes criminal the prac- 

 tical protection of quail which is quite 

 necessary to make and keep the birds 

 plentiful. It does not contemplate the 

 planting of berry bushes and other briars 

 and the purchase of stock birds for 

 breeding purposes which we have found 

 effective. 



Professor Pearson, secretary of the 

 Audubon Society, in a letter which we 

 published, said he believed farmers and 

 land owners should have the same right 

 to produce game birds for profit as they 

 have to produce a pig. Protection laws 

 such as are proposed by the bird society 

 destroy the right to produce quail for 

 food, for sport or for profit and undoubt- 

 edly they tend to decrease the value of 

 the land ; to prevent some people from 

 living in the country. I was perfectly 

 sincere in saying I would not live on a 

 country place where it is illegal to shoot, 

 eat, or sell a game bird. There are many 

 people who can be induced to live in the 

 country where there is no danger of ar- 

 rest for producing food on the farm. 

 There are plenty of country places in 

 America where no game occurs at pres- 

 ent which can be utilized to produce a 

 big head of game. 



As to birds nesting quite close together 

 there is nothing new in the idea. The 

 gray partridges are fighters but there are 

 thousands of records of partridge nests 

 in the hedges and in corn quite close 

 together; the pheasants are known fight- 

 ers but there are plenty of similar rec- 

 ords of pheasant nests close together. 

 We have succeeded in inducing quail to 

 nest quite close together in safe places 

 and. all people who preserve game know 

 that wild pheasants and partridges often 

 lay eggs in the same nest. There has 

 been much discussion about this in the 

 English books and magazines. We re- 

 cently had a big lot of quail eggs hatched 

 for us under hen quails which nested in 

 a wild state, quite close together. 



We can readily understand how it is 

 that people, who put in their time pro- 

 curing long petitions and forwarding 

 them to the Conservation Commission 

 urging laws preventing the production of 



quails by proper methods, do not have 

 any time to study the habits of birds 

 made abundant under favorable condi- 

 tions, when it pays to create such con- 

 ditions. Audubon and all the other orni- 

 thologists praise the quail highly as an 

 article of food. We endorse their opin- 

 ions. There can be no doubt that the 

 quail whistles for a short time in the 

 breeding season but we believe and know 

 there will be ten quails whistling on the 

 fences where there are one or none to- 

 day when the farmers are told how easy 

 and how profitable it is to have an abun- 

 dance of quail. 



We do not object to the activities of 

 the bird societies when applied to public 

 lands. We are aware that some of them 

 take in more money every season than 

 some of the smaller game farmers do. 

 All that we ask is that when they stam- 

 pede the legislature (as they too often 

 are able to do, having vast revenues at 

 their disposal) into enacting closed sea- 

 sons when no food can be taken, sold, 

 shipped or eaten, that they provide in 

 their prohibitive laws that nothing in 

 them shall affect honest game farmers 

 who would like to produce food on their 

 farms or even sportsmen who would like- 

 to keep their country places sufficiently 

 attractive to induce their boys to spend 

 part of the time in the country. 



The historian Lecky well says that 

 field sports tend to keep people in the 

 country and form a sufficient counter- 

 poise to the pleasures of the town. Dr. 

 Sweeney, when he was state game officer 

 of Indiana, wrote to us that it was far 

 better to provide sport for our young 

 men in the country than to drive them 

 to the town saloons for recreation. 



It is a very easy matter to get long 

 petitions signed on any subject when 

 plenty of money is expended for plausi- 

 ble solicitors. 



We do not think, however, that our 

 laws should be made exclusively by bird 

 societies even if they spend a lot of 

 money getting signatures to petitions 

 which too often are obtained under false 

 pretenses, since suppresio veri is as bad 

 as sioggcstio falsi, as the writers on 

 equity say — the holding back of the truth 



