Page 288 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

266 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
law, and of the traffic in wild birds' plumage on women's hats through theDutcherlaw. To-day,inthisstate,wefindninty-ninewomenoutof every one hundred wearing flowers, and laces, and plush and satin on their hats, instead of the heads, bodies and feathers of wild birds that were the regular thing until three years ago. The change has been a powerful commentary on the value of good laws for the protection of wild life. The Dutcher law has caused the plumage of wild biids almost wholly to disappear from the State of New York!
We shall here point out the plain duty of each state; and then it will be up to them, individually, to decide whether they can stand the blood- test or not.
A state or a nation can be ungentlemanly, unfair or mean, just the same as an individual. No state has a right to maintain shambles for the slaughter of migratory game or song birds that belong in part to sisterstates. Everystateholdsitsmigratorybirdlifeintrust,forthebenefit of the people of the nation at large. A state is just as responsible for its treatment of wild life as any individual ; and it is time to open books of account.
It is robbery, as well as murder, for any southern state to slaughter the robins of the northern states, where no robins may be killed. No southern gentleman can permit such doings, after the crime has been pointed outtohim! IntheNorth,themenwhoarecaughtshootingrobinsare instantlyhaledtocourt,andfinedorimprisoned. IfweoftheNorth should kill^ for food the mockingbirds that visit us, the people of the South instantly would brand us as monsters of greed and meanness ; and they would be perfectly justified in so doing.
Let us at least be honest in "agreeing upon a state of fact," as the lawyerssay,whetherweactsensiblyandmercifullyornot. Justsolong as there remains in this land of ours a fauna of game birds, and the gunners of one-half the states are allowed to dictate the laws for the slaughter of it, just so long will our present protection remain utterly absurdandcriminallyinadequate. Lookattheseabsurdities:
New York, New Jersey and many other northern states rigidly prohibit the late winter and spring shooting of waterfowl and shore birds, and limit the bag; North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and other southern states not only slaughter wild fowl and shore birds all winter and spring, without limit, but several of them kill certain non-game birds besides!
All the northern states protect the robin, for the good that it does; but in North Carolina, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and some other southern states, thousands of robins are shot for food. Minnesota has stopped spring shooting; but her sister state on the south, Iowa, obsti- nately refuses to do so.
The United States at Large.—There are two great measures that should be carried into effect by the governing body of the United States. One is the enactment of a law providing federal protection for all migratory