Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation by William Temple Hornaday
page 126 of 733 (17%)
page 126 of 733 (17%)
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Pennsylvania, New Jersey and I know not how many other states. The Bayne
law stopped all that business, abruptly and forever; and if the ruffed grouse, quail and ducks of the Eastern States are offered for sale in Chicago, Cincinnati, Baltimore and Washington, the people of New York and Massachusetts can at least be assured that they are not to blame. Those two states now maintain no "fences" for the sale of game that has been stolen from other states. They have both set their houses in order, and set two examples for forty other states to follow. The remedy for all this miserable game-stealing, law-breaking business is simple and easily obtained. Let each state of the United States and each province and Canada _enact a Bayne law, absolutely prohibiting the sale of all wild native game_, and the thing is done! But nothing short of that will be really effective. It will not do at all to let state laws rest with merely forbidding the sale of game "protected by the State;" for that law is full of loop-holes. It does much good service, yes; but what earthly _objection_ can there be in any state to the enactment of a law that is sweepingly effective, and which can not be evaded, save through the criminal connivance of officers of the law? By way of illustration, to show what the sale of wild game means to the remnant of our game, and the wicked slaughter of non-game birds to which it leads, consider these figures: DEAD BIRDS FOUND IN ONE COLD STORAGE HOUSE IN NEW YORK IN 1902. Snow Buntings 8,058 Grouse 7,560 Sandpipers 7,607 Quail 4,385 |
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