95 
Suggestions regarding the Enactment and Enforcement of 
Legislation against Excessive Hunting and Shooting . 
Twenty-five correspondents urge the enforcement of the 
laws now on the statute books as the sovereign remedy for 
all ills now apparent. These statutes are certainly wise in 
the main, but some of them are not sustained by public sen- 
timent, and therefore are not respected. Such is the law 
forbidding Sunday fishing. Sunday hunting also is quite 
freely indulged in, in localities where the deputies of the 
Fish and Game Commission are not at hand to enforce the 
law. Local authorities do little to enforce the game laws. 
Legislatures, while giving fish and game commissions full 
authority to enforce the law, usually hamper its enforcement 
by granting inadequate appropriations ; so that such commis- 
sions are obliged to depend much on the services of unpaid 
officers, who can devote comparatively little time to their 
ungracious and thankless task. Notwithstanding this handi- 
cap, the officers of the Massachusetts Fish and Game Com- 
mission secured fifty-five arrests in 1904 for infractions of 
the Sunday law. The fines paid amounted to six hundred 
and ten dollars, and only nine cases were discharged or filed. 
Notwithstanding the fact that the Massachusetts commis- 
sioners have been very efficient, and are now enforcing the 
law better than ever before, fifty-eight persons report that 
the laws are either indifferently enforced, or not enforced at 
all, in their sections; fifty-seven, however, report that they 
are well enforced ; thirty-two say “ fairly well ; ” and nine- 
teen “ as well as possible under the circumstances.” Some 
report that the laws are “ respected ” in many of the country 
towns. The farming population of Massachusetts is gen- 
erally a law-abiding class; hut the laws would he better 
respected if better known. If every farmer in the Com- 
monwealth could have mailed to him a printed copy of the 
bird and game laws, there would he fewer infractions of 
these statutes by the rural population. Probably not one 
person in ten knows these laws. All hope of any better 
enforcement of the bird laws by this commission lies in the 
direction of making the force of wardens larger and more 
