PROTECTIVE MEASURES. 21 



tion of the wolves or in an important reduction in their number, the 

 bounty system should be encouraged, but if it merely begets fraud 

 and yields a perpetual harvest for the support of a floating class of 

 citizens, other means should be adopted. 



The failure of bounties to accomplish their proposed object was 

 clearly shown by Dr. T. S. Palmer in 1896.'' Under the heading 

 ' What have bounties accomplished ' he says : 



Advocates of the bounty sj'stem seem to think that almost any species can be 

 exterminated in a short time if the premiums are only high enough. Extermi- 

 nation, however, is not a question of months, but of years, and it is a mistake 

 to suppose that it can be accomplished rapidly except under extraordinary 

 circumstances, as in the case of the buffalo and the fur seal. Theoretically, a 

 bounty should be high enough to insure the destruction of at least a majority 

 of th^ individuals during the first season, but it has alreadj^ been shown that 

 scarcely a single State has been able to maintain a high rate for more than a 

 few months, and it is evident that the higher the rate the greater the danger of 

 fraud. Although Virginia has encouraged the killing of wolves almost from 

 the first settlement of the colony, and has sometimes paid as high as $25 apiece 

 for their scalps, wolves were not exterminated until about the middle of this 

 century, or until the rewards had been in force for more than two hundred 

 years. Nor did they become extinct in England until the Tieginning of the 

 sixteenth century, although efforts toward their extermination had been begun 

 in the reign of King Edgar (959-975). France, which has maintained boun- 

 ties on these animals for more than a century, found it necessary to increase 

 the rewards to $30 and $40 in 1882, and in twelve years expended no less than 

 $115,000 for nearly 8,000 wolves. * * * 



The larger animals are gradually becoming rare, particularly in the East, 

 but it can not be said that bounties have brought about the extermination of a 

 single species in any State. * * * 



New Hampshire has been paying for bears about as long as Maine, but in 

 1894 the State treasurer called attention to the large number reported by four 

 or five of the towns, and added that should the other 234 towns " be equally 

 successful in breeding wild animals for the State market, in proportion to 

 their tax levy, it would require a State tax levy of nearly $2,000,000 to pay the 

 bounty claims." Even New York withdrew the rewards on bears in 1895, not 

 because they had become unnecessary, but because the number of animals killed 

 increased steadilj^ each year. 



MARKING FOR BOUNTIES. 



Wolf skins are often ruined by the requirements of bounty laws, 

 especially when the head, feet, or ears are cut off. The importance 

 of preserving the skins in condition to bring the highest market price 

 is as great gis that of making it impossible to collect bounties twice. 

 A slit in the skin can be sewed up so that it will never show on the 

 fur side, but can not be concealed on the inside. A single longitudi- 

 nal or vertical slit, or double or cross slits 4 inches long, in the 

 center where the fur is longest, would serve cA^ery purpose of the 

 law without seriously impairing the market value of the skin. 



a Extermination of noxious animals by bounties, Yearbook U. S. Dept. of 

 Agriculture, 1896, p. 64-66. 



