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efficient. The Fish and Game Commissioners are authorized, 
empowered and directed to enforce the fish and game laws 
of the State; this they are now doing as well as they can, 
with the limited means at their command. 
Six reports advocate giving the officers of the commission 
a right to search suspected persons in the field without pro- 
curing a warrant. Such an enactment may not be constitu- 
tional, but is greatly needed. Every citizen who believes 
in the protection of our game birds and song birds should 
favor such a law. It would help greatly to stop ferreting, 
killing game birds out of season, and the shooting and trap- 
ping of the smaller birds by boys and foreigners. 1 
A large number of correspondents demand more stringent 
laws than those now on the statute books. A close season 
of from three to ten years on all game birds, ducks and 
shore birds, as advocated by twelve correspondents, would 
undoubtedly help the birds ; this is the only certain way to 
check the extirpation of the shore birds. But this plan 
would be opposed by nearly all shore shooters, and there is 
little hope of its adoption until such time as the danger of 
exterminating the birds shall become patent to every one. 
Shorter open seasons no doubt would help; but unless the 
season is made of uniform length for all game birds, it is 
rather ineffectual to shorten the season on one species, for 
when men are in the field with guns in their hands, all game 
birds will be shot. 
Five correspondents advise the stopping of all spring 
shooting. This is the most important measure yet proposed 
which seems to have any hope of success. If all spring 
and summer shooting could he stopped throughout the United 
States and Canada, we should be nearer the solution of the 
problem of bird protection than we shall be likely soon to 
get in any other way. The laws of Massachusetts already 
protect the partridge, woodcock, quail, wood duck, black 
duck, teal, plover, snipe, rail and marsh or beach birds in 
spring; but plover, snipe, rail and marsh or beach birds 
may be killed after July 15. This summer shooting must 
1 Since the above was written, a law allowing arrest without a warrant has been 
passed. (See page 116.) 
