In February, 1909, President Roosevelt issued an executive order creating the Hawaiian Islands Reservation for Birds.  In this are included Laysan and twelve other islands and reefs, some of which are inhabited by birds that are well worth preserving.  By this act, we may feel that for the future the birds of Laysan and neighboring islets are secure from further attacks by the bloody-handed agents of the vain women who still insist upon wearing the wings and feathers of wild birds.

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CHAPTER XV

UNFAIR FIREARMS, AND SHOOTING ETHICS

For considerably more than a century, the States of the American Union have enacted game-protective laws based on the principle that the wild game belongs to the People, and the people’s senators, representatives and legislators generally may therefore enact laws for its protection, prescribing the manner in which it may and may not be taken and possessed.  The soundness of this principle has been fully confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Geer vs.  Connecticut, on March 2, 1896.

The tendency of predatory man to kill and capture wild game of all kinds by wholesale methods is as old as the human race.  The days of the club, the stone axe, the bow and arrow and the flint-lock gun were contemporaneous with the days of great abundance of game.  Now that the advent of breech-loaders, repeaters, automatics and fixed ammunition has rendered game scarce in all localities save a very few, the thoughtful man is driven to consider measures for the checking of destruction and the suppression of wholesale slaughter.

First of all, the deadly floating batteries and sail-boats were prohibited.  To-day a punt gun is justly regarded as a relic of barbarism, and any man who uses one places himself beyond the pale of decent sportsmanship, or even of modern pot-hunting.  Strange to say, although the unwritten code of ethics of English sportsmen is very strict, the English to this day permit wild-fowl hunting with guns of huge calibre, some of which are more like shot-cannons than shot-guns.  And they say, “Well, there are still wild duck on our coast!”

Beyond question, it is now high time for the English people to take up the shot-gun question, and consider what to-day is fair and unfair in the killing of waterfowl.  The supply of British ducks and geese can not forever withstand the market gunners and their shot-cannons.  Has not the British wild-fowl supply greatly decreased during the past fifteen years?  I strongly suspect that a careful investigation would reveal the fact that it has diminished.  The Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire should look into the matter, and obtain a series of reports on the condition of the waterfowl to-day as compared with what it was twenty years ago.