ten-gage (which is accurate), in others prohibiting the use of any gun excepting those "fired from the shoulder in the ordinary manner." There are persons who could probably swing a four-gage. Eight-gage is common on the Chesapeake Bay. There are laws forbidding the use of sink-boxes and batteries which are in force in nearly all of the Northern States, excepting, however, certain counties where, as on Long Island, the influence of market gunners has prevailed; laws prohibiting night shooting, or shooting more than one hour before sunrise or after sunset; laws against snaring and trapping; laws prohibiting the use of dogs to run deer, elk, and antelope, and the use of the jack-lantern or any artificial light, and prohibiting the placing of blinds or the use of any concealment on the open water where wild fowl are feeding or resting, and forbidding the pursuit of these birds with steamboats, sail-boats, or any electric or motor boats. There are laws against trespass, requiring the permission (often in writing) of the owner to shoot on his land, and providing for the posting of the farms, with the result that the signboards reading "No shooting on this farm" have multiplied, and now mean something.

In North Carolina it is unlawful for any person to leave any landing before sunrise in the morning for the purpose of hunting wild fowl, or to put decoys or nets into the water before sunrise, or to continue to shoot wild fowl after dark. It is also unlawful "to sail, row, or propel a boat over Currituck Sound on the Lord's day for the purpose of locating wild fowl for a future day." This I regard as the highwater mark of game legislation. It would seem necessary for a sportsman sailing the waters of Currituck on Sunday to close his eyes in order not to see what the ducks are doing. This, from the same author, is refreshing in both matter and grammar: Sec. 7. It shall be unlawful for any person hired or employed to lay around, sail around, or stop anywhere near any citizen who may be gunning or fishing, for the purpose of keeping them from shooting or damage his shooting." What better illustration could we have of the careful detail of the legislation of to-day?

Within the memory of the older sportsmen there was not a game preserve in America. To-day the sportsman who does not belong to a club may have to go a long way to obtain any shooting. This is specially true of duck-shooting, nearly every available marsh in the country being owned or controlled by a club, where gamekeepers closely guard the birds and exclude poachers. This has given rise to much bad feeling, which resulted in vindictive legislation in Ohio and homicide in Illinois, while Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas prohibit non-residents from shooting within their borders.1 About the St. Francis River, in Arkansas, there are famous shooting-grounds, which have been occupied by clubs of sportsmen from Memphis, St. Louis, and other cities. The marshes were bought and the club-houses erected for the shooting only. The shooting being prohibited, they become worthless, and the passage of the law amounts to a confiscation of the property. The courts have held that the States have the right to tax non-resident sportsmen and to prohibit them from shooting.

In Ohio the club occupation of the vast marshes about Lake Erie is complete, and a law (urged, it is said, by the men who used to shoot over the grounds now closed) was passed prohibiting the shooting of geese, ducks, snipe, woodcock, and the other wading-birds until November 10, at which time the marshes are usually frozen over and the birds gone. Here we have game preservation literally with a vengeance.2 The battle between the poachers and gamekeepers of the Tolleston Club, near Chicago, resulted in loss of life and much expensive litigation.

I was sketching in the Ottawa marshes (near Sandusky, Ohio) last October, and, but partly concealed behind a wind-break of rushes and wild rice, I saw hundreds of mallards, fat, lazy, and tame, which came to the little pond before me, where they were fed by a gamekeeper. There were many snipe, even more tame, diligently probing the mud along the shore. As I have observed, the Ohio law absolutely prohibited the shooting, and it occurred to me it was a very fine thing for the birds;

but when I observed the closed shutters of the club-house and the other fine dormitories and boat-houses at Winous Point, my sympathies were with the clubmen.

There are records of immense bags of birds at these clubs, kept in club registers. Eight thousand six hundred and twentytwo birds have been killed in a season at Winous Point, and there are many records of over five thousand birds. The ducks continue, however, to come there in great numbers, and, with the exception of certain varieties, such as the wood-duck, the teal, and the canvasback, are nearly as abundant as they were some years ago. The diminution shown in the varieties named is not due, I am satisfied, to the shooting on the club grounds, but to other causes, such as the partial destruction of the feedinggrounds by the rooting of the carp (a most undesirable fish, which has multiplied amazingly since its unfortunate introduction), and the immense slaughter of the birds when they reach the Southern States, where, as a rule, they have no protection. A St. Louis paper recently records the killing of thirteen hundred and seventy-two ducks in two days at Lake Bistineau, Louisiana, by three persons whose names are given. A complaint comes from Oregon that the carp also have destroyed the wappato (the Indian name for a bulbous root upon which the canvasbacks feed), and that the birds are no longer so abundant on the club grounds, or so good to eat. These highly prized ducks come to the preserves of all the clubs in diminished numbers.

As in the Eastern States, so it is in Oregon and Washington: nearly every available marsh in the valleys of the Columbia and the Willamette and their tributaries is now controlled by clubs of sportsmen, many of whom reside in Portland. The clubs are equally numerous in California. One of the finest duck-grounds I ever visited is situated in the valley of the Illinois River, where there are miles of marshes and many small lakes and ponds. A magazine a short time since published the following from a Chicago man: "I concluded to revisit my old hunting-ground on the Illinois, where I used to shoot when the United States was a free country. Every place where a duck might possibly alight had been bought or leased. When I came away, I saw four hundred

and seventy mallards put on the train, and all the birds had been killed in one day by three shooters on a 'preserve.' When they butchered a few days previous, they got only three hundred and twenty mallards. A dozen sportsmen left on the same train with me, and there were not ten ducks in their combined bag. They had no money to invest in swamp-land. I should like to see the marshes open to rich and poor alike." There is no law in Illinois limiting the size of the bag, and it would seem. from the above that there should be. One of the clubs in Pennsylvania, the Blooming Grove Park Association, has recently advanced the idea that the members can shoot game out of season on the preserve. Some of the members violated not only the State law but the Lacey Law in addition, and the matter is now in the United States courts.

The growth of the club idea in America has been marvelous. Besides the clubs which control the marshes, there are clubs which own large tracts of land where the larger game animals are preserved, and there are many clubs whose chief interest is in the upland birds, such as the Nittany Club in Pennsylvania, which has a handsome club-house and a membership of two hundred, and which controls a game preserve of twenty thousand acres, over thirty square miles, extending from the Bald Eagle Mountain on the north to the Nittany Mountain on the south. This club was organized in 1897, and in the fall of that year and in the following spring liberated four thousand partridges (or quail, as they are still called in Pennsylvania). The grounds are continually restocked, which is necessary not so much on асcount of the shooting as on account of the severity of the winters in those mountains. The place is not as suitable for partridges as places of less altitude, and the best of partridge-grounds are to be found farther south. There are to-day in the Southern States many preserves for partridges owned by clubs and individuals, and the number increases rapidly. There are also many insular clubs, from the Robbins Island, in Peconic Bay, to the great and famous Jekyl Island, off the coast of Georgia, and these preserve the upland birds, and guard as their own the sea-fowl and shore-birds as well. The grouse of the open country are protected in vast Western

stubbles, and woodland birds are guarded in clubs from Maine to Oregon.

Besides the clubs organized to provide shooting-places for their members, there are many others organized from a less selfish motive by men interested in game preservation in a more general way and in legislation and the proper execution of the game laws, such as the Cuvier Club at Cincinnati, which has a very large membership, resident and non-resident, a handsome club-house, containing one of the best game-bird collections in America, and a sportsman's library. Clubs of this character are located in the cities, and have for the entertainment of their members card-rooms and libraries, where sportsmen gather to play whist or some other game, and to discuss the ways and means of stopping the destruction of the birds. They usually have a committee on game laws, and employ legal counsel and detectives to aid in the discovery and punishment of evil-doers and to urge the passage of good laws and their amendment from time to time as occasion demands.

I once defended a young man charged with the killing of a number of quail, and urged his acquittal upon the ground that there are no longer any quail in America, the ornithological union having determined. that bob-white is a partridge. Truly we live in an iconoclastic age when the idol of the gormand, "quail on toast," is shattered! It is such matters which invite the attention of the game-protection clubs, and which are brought by them to the attention of lawmakers.

The League of American Sportsmen is a national association with a very large membership throughout the United States, organized on the lines of the American Wheelmen. As the latter urges good roads and takes a general interest in cycling matters, so does the League of Sportsmen take an interest in all matters pertaining to field sports, and urge the passage and execution of good game laws.

There are now, in thirty-three States, State officers (usually a board of commissioners) who have charge of the game, and there are local wardens to see that the laws are observed. The few laws of former years were, in the absence of officers to enforce them, little more than appeals to

1 Ohio has abandoned the breeding of pheasants. to be liberated in that State.

the conscience of market gunners, who had none, and of sportsmen, who were too often sadly deficient.

Under the present conditions the game is well cared for throughout many States and on the preserves, as a rule (the Blooming Grove Park and the Illinois preserve incidents are, I am satisfied, exceptions), and the clubs often supplement the laws with club rules still further restricting the sport and the size of the bag.

The game is being restored to the denuded fields, and many foreign birds are being added to our fauna, such as the pheasants from China and England, the great capercaillie from Norway and Sweden, the blackcock from Scotland, and some of the European partridges. In Oregon, where the Mongolian pheasants were first introduced, they are abundant, and are shot by sportsmen with the other game-birds only ten of each kind in a day, however, except ducks, of which the bag may be fifty. I have seen the pheasant fairly abundant at some of the clubs, and heard recently that they were shooting them at one club from the trap, like pigeons. This would indicate a return to the barbarism of a decade ago, when the prairie-grouse were so misused.

I have had occasion to say at another time that more attention should be paid to the restoration of our native birds, in the States where they have been exterminated, than to the importation of foreign birds and their propagation in State hatcheries. Our native prairie-grouse, for example, now extinct from New England to Kentucky, lie better to the dog and are in every way better game-birds than the pheasants, which are runners. Our wild turkey is the largest and best gallinaceous bird in the world, and superior in every way to the capercaillie.

In looking over the American game fields to-day, I observe with satisfaction that our birds are now in some places holding their own; in a few they may be said to show an increase. The same may be said of the big game, and there are many attempts made to restore the animals and the birds to the woods and fields, and carefully to guard them in the future as a heritage for posterity.

Much remains to be done, more especially the stopping of the spring shooting. New Jersey has bought a thousand dozen partridges