Page 383 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES 361
GULF OF MEXICO
MAP OP MARSH ISLAND AND ADJACENT WILD-FOWL PRESERVES
duced, Potamogeton pectinatus and perfoliatus. The area of the island is twenty square miles. Besides being a great winter resort for ducks, its sandy, pine-covered ridges and jungles of palme to and live oak afford fine haunts and feeding grounds for deer. Those jungles contain two species of white-tailed deer {Odocoileus louisiana and osceola), and Dr. Pierce has introduced the Indian sambar deer and Japanese sika deer (Cervus sika), both of which are doing well. We are watching the prog- ress of those big sambar deer with very keen interest, and it is to be recorded that already that species has crossed with the Louisiana white- tailed deer.
During the autumn of 1912', pubHc attention in the United States was for a time focused on the purchase of Marsh Island, Louisiana, by Mrs. Russell Sage, and its permanent dedication to the cause of wild- life protection. This delightful event has brought into notice the Louisiana State Game Preserve of 13,000 acres near Marsh Island, and its hinterland (and water) of 11,000 acres adjoining, which con- stitutes the Ward-Mcllhenny Wild Fowl Preserve. These three great preserves taken together as they lie form a wild-fowl sanctuary of great size, and of great value to the whole Mississippi Valley. Now that all duck-shooting therein has been stopped, it is safe to predict that they shortly will be inhabited by a wild-fowl population that will really stagger the imagination.
Duck-Shooting "Preserves."—A ducking "preserve" is a large tract of land and water owned by a few individuals, or a club, for the purpose of preserving exclusively for themselves and their friends the best possible opportunities for killing largo numbers of ducks and