100 
many difficulties in the way of enacting or enforcing such 
laws. 
The use of the automatic gun should be tabooed. ISTo one 
who regards the protection of game as important should ever 
use one. 
Those who wish to forbid all shooting by boys and aliens 
are right ; unquestionably this should be done. There 
should be an age limit for shooters, and the aliens who, 
boylike, shoot at nearly every wild thing they see, should 
be stopped from carrying arms altogether. 
Hunting Licenses. — Possibly both these classes might be 
shut out largely by licensing all shooters. Apparently the 
license has now come to this country to stay. In a recent bul- 
letin, entitled “ Hunting Licenses, their History, Objects and 
Limitations,” 1 Hr. T. S. Palmer of the United States Bio- 
logical Survey gives a history of the hunting license in this 
and foreign countries. The license not only furnishes money 
for the enforcement of the law by paid wardens, but it also 
increases the interest of the citizen in its enforcement. A 
man who has paid a liberal license fee is not likely to encour- 
age others in hunting without a license. The amount re- 
ceived from licenses may be considerable. Maine collected 
in 1903 more than twenty-five thousand dollars; Wiscon- 
sin, ninety thousand dollars ; and Illinois, nearly one 
hundred thousand dollars. 2 Massachusetts might in time 
exceed these figures, and she might succeed in preventing 
hunting or shooting by many non-citizens and non-residents 
through a high-license system discriminating against them. 
Here, again, we are met by the objection that such an 
act might be unconstitutional; but this is a question to be 
decided by the courts. The imposition of a license is noth- 
ing new. One of the earliest license laws passed in this 
country was enacted in Virginia in April, 1691. In the 
early part of our history such laws were few and perhaps 
unnecessary; but within the last twenty-five years their 
necessity seems to have become apparent, and within ten 
1 Bulletin No. 19, United States Department of Agriculture, Division of Biological 
Survey. 
2 Since the above was written, the receipts from license laws have increased enor- 
mously. 
