Page 16 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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X PREFACE
The great increase in the slaughter of song birds for food, by the negroes and poor whites of the South, has become an unbearable scourge to our migratory birds,—the very birds on which farmers north and south depend for protection from the insect hordes,—the very birds that are most near and dear to the people of the North. Song-bird slaughter is growing and spreading, with the decrease of the game birds It is a matter that requires instant attention and stern repression.
At the present moment it seems that the only remedy lies in federal pro- tection for all migratory birds,—because so many states will not do
their duty.
We are weary of witnessing the greed, selfishness and cruelty of "civilized" man toward the wild creatures of the earth. We are sick oftalesofslaughterandpicturesofcarnage. Itistimeforasweeping Reformation; and that is precisely what we now demand.
I have been a sportsman myself; but times have changed, and we rnust change also. When game was plentiful, I believed that it was right for men and boys to kill a limited amount of it for sport and for the table. But the old basis has been swept away by an Army of De- struction that now is almost beyond all control. We must awake, and arouse to the new situation, face it like men, and adjust our minds to thenewconditions. Thethreemilliongunnersofto-daymustnolonger expect or demand the same generous hunting privileges that were right for hunters fifty years ago, when game was fifty times as plentiful as it is now and there was only one killer for every fifty now in the field.
The fatalistic idea that bag-limit laws can save the game is to-day the curse of all our game birds, mammals and fishes! It is a fraud, a delusionandasnare. Thatmiserablefetichhasbeenworshippedmuch toolong. Ourgameisbeingexterminated,everywhere,byblindinsist- ence upon "open seasons," and solemn reliance upon "legal bag-limits." If a majority of the people of America feel that so long as there is any game alive there must be an annual two months or four months open season for its slaughter, then assuredly we soon will have a gameless continent.
The only thing that will save the game is by stopping the killing of it In establishing and promulgating this principle, the cause of wild-life protectiongreatlyneedsthreethings:money,labor,andpublicity. With the first, we can secure the second and third. But can we get it, and get it in time to save f
This volume is in every sense a contribution to a Cause ; and as such it ever will remain. I wish the public to receive it on that basis. So much important material has drifted straight to it from other hands that this unexpected aid seems to the author like a good omen.
The manuscript has received the benefit of a close and critical read- ing and correcting by my comrade on the firing-line and esteemed friend, Mr.MadisonGrant,throughwhichthetextwasgreatlyimproved. But for the splendid encouragement and assistance that I have received from
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