If game-shooting within the District is continued, on the marshes of the Eastern Branch and on the Potomac River, common decency demands the enactment of bag-limit laws and long close-season laws of the most modern pattern.

Just why it is that gross abuses against wild life have so long been tolerated in the territorial center of the American nation, remains to be ascertained.  But, whatever the reason the situation is absurd and intolerable, and Congress should terminate it immediately.  As late as 1897, and I think for two or three years thereafter, thousands of robins were sold every year in the public markets of Washington as food!  As a spectacle for gods and men, behold to-day the sale of quail, ruffed grouse, wild turkeys and other American game, half way between the Capitol and the White House!  Look at Center Market as a national “fence” for the sale of game stolen by market gunners from Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Pennsylvania.

It is time for Congress to bring the District of Columbia sharply into line; for Washington must be made to toe the mark beside New York.  The reputation of the national capital demands it, whether the gods of the cafes will consent or not.

FLORIDA: 

  Shooting shore birds and waterfowl in late winter and spring should
  be stopped.

  The sale of all native wild game should be prohibited.

  A State Game Commissioner whose term of office should be not less
  than four years, and a force of salaried game wardens, should be
  appointed.

  A general resident license should be required for hunting.

  The killing of does and fawns should be stopped, and no deer should
  be killed save bucks with horns at least three inches long.

  The bag limit of five deer per year should be two deer; of twenty
  quail, and two turkeys per day should be ten quail and one turkey.

  The open season on all game birds should end on February 1, for
  domestic reasons.

  Protection should be accorded doves, and robins should be removed
  from the game list.

In the destruction of wild life, I think the backwoods population of Florida is the most lawless and defiant that can be found anywhere in the United States.  The “plume-hunters” have practically exterminated the plume-bearing egrets, wholly annihilated the roseate spoonbill, the flamingo, and also the Carolina parrakeet.  On July 8, 1905, one of them killed an Audubon Association Warden, Guy M. Bradley, whose business it was to enforce the state laws protecting the egret rookeries.  The people really to blame for the shooting of Guy Bradley, and the extermination of the egrets by lawless and dangerous men, are the vain and merciless women who wear the “white badges of cruelty” as long as they can be purchased!  They have much to answer for!