Nov. 12, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
777 
Early Efforts at Game Protection. 
From advance sheets of “American Game Bird Shooting.” 
Most of the efforts at restocking our covers 
with exotic birds have been carried on in an 
unintelligent and aimless way. The belief seems 
to prevail that because our native species have 
disappeared—wdiile game birds in Great Britain 
are still so abundant that good shooting can gen¬ 
erally be had—therefore these foreign species 
are more prolific and better fitted to survive than 
our native birds. People who reason in this way 
forget the widely different conditions prevailing 
in the two countries—the great size of the land 
holdings in Great Britain compared with those 
in this country, the fact that trespass laws are 
there strictly enforced, and the further fact that 
game is there regarded as the personal property 
of the owner of the land, while in the United 
States up to within a few years the game has 
been considered the property of whomsoever 
might reduce it to possession. 
On one side of the water are large estates to 
which the public is not admitted, while game birds 
are artificially reared and carefully protected 
to prevent destruction by natural enemies, as 
well as by poachers. The result of this is that 
at the end of a season a crop of game is har¬ 
vested and sold. In the United States are a 
series of small land holdings, over which, until 
within a very short time, everyone, man or boy, 
citizen or alien, was at liberty to roam freely 
and to destroy at will. The game is left to re¬ 
produce itself, is exposed to attacks by its natu¬ 
ral enemies as well as by all human beings who 
may wish to take it, and is only protected by 
laws which exist on the statute books, but are 
inefficiently enforced. Here each gunner wishes 
to shoot, and in practice may shoot, from day¬ 
light to dark, seven days in the week. Add to 
this that a large portion of the public here is 
accustomed to the use of firearms, and that we 
have the best guns and ammunition in the world, 
and it is not difficult to see why game is very 
scarce in most sections of North America. 
In the thickly settled districts of the Eastern 
and Middle States matters have gone so far that 
it is difficult to suggest a means by which a 
stock of birds for field shooting may again be 
obtained, except the one means, which gunners 
will adopt last of all, the practice of self-control 
in their shooting. One result of this state of 
things is that a considerable proportion of the 
men who formerly followed the dog afield, and 
a very large proportion of their descendants, 
have taken to shooting targets at the trap for the 
reason that within the reach of most of us there 
are no birds to be had. 
I have never advocated the introduction into 
this country of foreign species of game, believ¬ 
ing that our native species answer our require¬ 
ments better than any foreign birds, and believ¬ 
ing also that there is great danger in introducing 
exotic species into any country. I have believed 
that by the establishment of game refuges in 
various sections of the country the native game 
might be preserved and increased to such an ex¬ 
tent that it would overflow into adjacent terri¬ 
tory, and that thus in each game refuge we 
should have a permanent source of supply which 
would at least prevent the extinction of species 
for any loca’ity. T feel about the introduction 
of exotic species much as does Mr. Brewster, 
who, in his “Memoir on the Birds of the Cam¬ 
bridge Region,” says, speaking of the pheasant:' 
“From the standpoint of the naturalist the in¬ 
troduction of most exotic forms of animal life 
must be a matter of regret rather than of satis¬ 
faction, and these pheasants, despite their unde¬ 
niable beauty of form and coloring, and reported 
value as game, seem deplorably out of place in 
a New England landscape. Even if they did not 
crowd out our quail or ruffed grouse-—as it has 
been feared they may—or devastate our culti¬ 
vated crops—as they are already accused of do¬ 
ing—it would have been much wiser to expend 
the time and money which have been devoted to 
their naturalization in fostering and increasing 
our stock of native game birds.” 
The turning loose of foreign birds to take care 
of themselves in a climate to which they are un¬ 
accustomed and among conditions more or less 
different from those in which their ancestors 
have lived, is not likely soon to make much dif¬ 
ference in our shooting. A few hundred birds 
turned loose in a township or a county would 
have to increase enormously before they would 
be sufficiently numerous to make the shooting 
good. Everyone killed would reduce the breed¬ 
ing stock, the process of reproduction would be 
slow and the final results, even if favorable, 
might not be important for a generation. 
Besides this there are serious possible dangers 
in the turning loose of foreign birds. There are 
some reasons for thinking that these foreign 
birds carry with them the germs of certain 
diseases to which they themselves are immune, 
but which may be communicated to our native 
birds with fatal results. It is believed by some 
investigators that the domestic fowl carries with 
it the germs of a disease which is fatal to the 
turkey, and to our quail and grouse, although the 
young of the hen do not suffer from it. 
Many examples might be cited of the danger 
of introducing into a new land an animal, harm¬ 
less in its own home, but which, when trans¬ 
ported to a country where conditions are espe¬ 
cially favorable to its existence and it finds few 
or no enemies, has increased to such an extent 
as to become a nuisance, if not a public menace. 
The cases of the rabbit in Australia, of the Eng¬ 
lish sparrow in North America, and of the mon¬ 
goose in some of the West Indian Islands, sug¬ 
gest themselves at once. 
Happily, within the past two or three years, 
the experiment of hand rearing some of our 
native game birds has apparently advanced well 
along the road to success.' If it cannot be said 
that any of the public establishments for rear¬ 
ing such birds have been successful in any great 
degree, it is yet true that they hatch and partly 
rear many birds. Almost always it has hap¬ 
pened that before the birds reached maturity, cer¬ 
tainly before they had reached the breeding age, 
death in some form or other has overtaken 
them. It was left to a private individual, a pro¬ 
fessor in a New England university, to take up 
this matter of rearing native birds as a hobby 
and to succeed in it beyond the expectation of 
anyone, possibly beyond his own hopes. Certain 
it is that Prof. C. F. Hodge, of Clark Univer¬ 
sity, at Worcester, Mass., has succeeded in rear¬ 
ing from the egg a considerable number of 
ruffed grouse and quail, which birds are no 
more timid and fearful of the members of their 
owner’s family than they are of their fellow 
birds. Not only are they tame in this way, but 
they manifest no fear whatever of strangers. 
Within their inclosures they carry on the opera¬ 
tions of their daily life with the same uncon¬ 
cern that they would manifest if they were hid¬ 
den in the depths of one of their native swamps, 
and this whether human beings are in the vicinity 
or not. Broods of quail which Prof. Hodge has 
reared and turned out to shift for themselves 
will come at his whistle, flying from all direc¬ 
tions, expecting to be fed. 
Gradually legislators are awakening to the in¬ 
creasing scarcity of bird life about us, and to a 
comprehension of the invaluable services per¬ 
formed by the birds for agriculture. It has taken 
the public a long time to begin to comprehend 
what these services mean, and it is yet, standing 
only at the threshold of this knowledge. But 
having made this small beginning our faith may 
be strong that this interest will increase, and 
that before long the birds will be generally recog¬ 
nized as a natural resource of this country which 
should be conserved. 
In a number of the States and Provinces the 
law now provides that there shall be no spring 
shooting; that non-game birds shall not be killed 
nor their nests and eggs disturbed, and that the 
shooting seasons shall be short—not more than 
two, or at most three months. In some States 
the laws provide that only a limited number of 
birds may be taken during one day or during 
one season. This provision should obtain every¬ 
where, as well as the now very generally accepted 
view that game birds shall not be sold. In many 
States we have excellent laws which, however, 
lack something of satisfactory enforcement. 
Our Friend the Fox. 
No doubt it would surprise most sportsmen 
to be told that fox hunting depends on mice. 
Nevertheless this is true. The vast population 
of mice in England—it has been calculated that 
there is a mouse to every square yard in the 
country—form the staple food of all beasts and 
birds of prey. 
Every carnivorous animal from the fox to the 
shrew preys upon the mouse, but with the pos¬ 
sible exception of the owl the fox is the keenest 
mouser of them all. In his infancy the fox 
learns to hunt by the pursuit of field mice, which 
the vi£en partly maims for the purpose, and all 
through his life the fox makes mice one of the 
staples of his diet. 
He hunts them as much by the keenness of 
his hearing as by the acuteness of his nose. A 
faint rustle in the leaves, a tiny squeak scarcely 
perceptible to our duller ears, a lightning 
pounce and the prey is secured, to be devoured 
there and then, or in the breeding season to 
be carried back to, the cubs. 
It is commonly thought that foxes live on 
rabbits, fowls and pheasants, but these are but 
'a small part of the dietary of the fox. Indeed, 
if foxes were as destructive as they have the 
credit of being in the poultry yard and the 
game preserve it would be difficult to keep 
fowls or to preserve pheasants at all. 
If, as is calculated, jj, 000 foxes are killed by 
hounds every year in Great Britain and at least 
as many more are destroyed by keepers and 
other enemies, it is probable that in September 
in each year there are something like 50,000 
foxes in the country.—Baily’s Magazine. 
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regularly. 
