the bare feet of the half-grown boys, and the halfbreed bird dogs
are busier than they were even in winter. The young rabbits are
killed before they get out of the nest, and the quail eggs must be
hidden rarely well that escape both the eyes of the boys and the
noses of the dogs. After all it is not surprising that but three
bevies remained of the sixty. Doubtless they would not, except that
nature is very kind to her own in the sunny South.

Not every white man in the South is a sportsman or even a shooter;
many are purely business men who have said let the "nigger" do as he
likes so long as he raises cotton and buys our goods. But Dixie has
her full share of true men of the out-of-doors and they have sworn
in downright Southern fashion that this thing has got to end.
Nevertheless their problem is deep and puzzling. In Alabama they
made an effort and a beginning. They asked for a law requiring every
man to obtain written permission before entering the lands of
another to hunt and shoot; they asked for a resident license law
taxing every gun not less than five dollars a year; for a shortened
season, a bag limit, and a complete system of State wardens.
Unfortunately, a lot of white farmers were in the same range as the
blacks, and being hit, too, they raised a great outcry. The result
was that the Alabama sportsmen got everything they asked for except
the foundation of the structure they were trying to build, the high
resident license or gun tax which alone could have shut out three
dollar guns and saved the remnant of the game. Under the new law the
sale of game was forbidden, neither could it be shipped out of the
State alive or dead; the ever popular non-resident license was
provided for; the season was shortened and the bag limited; the
office of State game warden was created with deputies to be paid
from fines; hunting upon the lands of another without written