238 Bird -Lore the exception of Brant, is largely to the same effect. The number of locally raised Ducks is growing larger every season. Mr. Elon H. Eaton, of Rochester, New York, sends a report which speaks of the immense number of Ducks this past spring at Conesus Lake, the unusual numbers being ascribed by sportsmen to the prohibition of spring shooting, and they predict a still greater increase under this beneficent legislation. The hereditary instinct for the home is very strong in all wild birds, and there is no reason, except that of spring shooting, why large numbers of wild fowl should not re-occupy, for breeding purposes, their ancestral homes. Mr. Nathaniel Wentworth, of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Commission, says: "If the Wood Duck and Upland Plover are not pro- tected soon, it will be but a short time when there will be none to protect; there is not one in New Hampshire today where there were twenty, thirty years ago." This is a condition that needs the active attention of the Audubon Society before it is too late to prevent the result predicted. Mr. Eugene Watrous, State Game and Fish Warden, of Oklahoma, is of the opinion that "the abolition of spring shooting will furnish a remedy for the preservation of all species of migrating water-birds ; this I am in favor of now and for all time to come." He also makes the following excellent suggestion : "I am in favor of a bag limit in the killing of game to a number which it would be reasonable to suppose could be used by the person so killing for domestic purposes only, and I favor imprisonment as a penalty for the killing, buying, selling or in any way handling game for commercial purposes." Of the thirty-five commissioners who answered our inquiry of " Are you in favor of abolishing spring shooting of all kinds, without any excep- tions ? " twenty-nine of them replied "Yes," without any qualification, although some of them added such words as "decidedly so" or "most emphatically." Of these replies, six came from the British provinces and one from Mexico. Five of the commissioners gave a modified approval, while only two replied absolutely in the negative, and one reason was because "Ducks cross our country, both fall and spring, and are shot on both sides of us, and, notwithstanding we have spring shooting up as late as April 15, there were more Ducks in our state during the fall of 1905 and the spring of 1906 than has been known here for a number of years." It is suggested that this state is receiving the benefit of the prohibition of spring shooting in other states and that it is ethically bound to help the movement by like action. It is proposed in a short time to issue a pamphlet embodying the several important questions submitted to the Game Commissioners, with their replies in detail, together with argument in favor of the stand taken by this
