National Portrait Gallery, London 
Partridge 
In 1770, George III regulated shoot- 
ing periods pertaining to game birds, 
restricting hunting hours to from one- 
half hour before sunrise to one-half 
hour after sunset — violators earned a 
penalty of six months imprisonment 
and a public whipping. The same king 
established a period of “six calendar 
months” during which any person who 
had bought or sold game could be 
prosecuted. 
The problem of game poaching pre- 
occupied George IV. The preamble 
to the statute that he formulated on 
the subject began: “Whereas the Prac- 
tice of going out by night for the pur- 
pose of destroying game has very 
much increased of late years, and has 
in very many instances led to the com- 
mission of murder. . . It was decided 
that an appropriate penalty for vio- 
lation would be three years hard labor 
or, alternatively, fourteen years in 
North America. 
On October 5, 1831, William IV 
produced a statute that summarized 
and clarified the game legislation that 
had been devised during the previous 
five centuries, including novelties 
never before put into effect. In its 
forty-eight sections, the statute dealt 
with such things as hunting on Sun- 
days, the use of poison, dealing in 
game, hunting licenses, court proce- 
dure, trespass in search of game, and 
ownership of game. In common with 
virtually all its predecessors, it did 
not mention habitat management, 
habitat preservation, or some of the 
other issues that in recent times have 
been grouped under the broad head- 
ing of conservation. 
With Victoria came the zenith of 
conservation consciousness in Eng- 
land; in no other single reign were 
so many statutes on that subject cre- 
ated. From 1 860 to 1 892, eight distinct 
acts of Parliament dealing with game 
licenses, poaching prevention, sea bird 
preservation, wild bird protection (two 
acts), wildfowl protection, ground 
game, and hares were put into effect. 
But as England stepped into the 
twentieth century, despite hundreds 
of statutes and ordinances, major com- 
ponents of the sphere of conservation 
remained unaddressed. Whereas there 
were laws relating to seventy-one spe- 
cies of birds (not including hawks), 
several species of mammals, and a 
few species of fish, not yet noticed 
was the plight of nongame animals, 
including most fish and all reptiles 
and amphibians. There were laws re- 
lating to trees, which were marketable, 
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