I am now going to ask both the true sportsman and the people who do not
kill wild things to awake, and do their plain duty in protecting and
preserving the game and other wild life which belongs partly to us, but
chiefly to those who come after us. Can they be aroused, before it is
too late?

The time to discuss tiresome academic theories regarding "bag limits"
and different "open seasons" as being sufficient to preserve the game,
has gone by! We have reached the point where the alternatives are _long
closed seasons or a gameless continent;_ and we must choose one or the
other, speedily. A continent without wild life is like a forest with no
leaves on the trees.

The great increase in the slaughter of song birds for food, by the
negroes and poor whites of the South, has become an unbearable scourge
to our migratory birds,--the very birds on which farmers north and south
depend for protection from the insect hordes,--the very birds that are
most near and dear to the people of the North. _Song-bird slaughter is
growing and spreading_, with the decrease of the game birds! It is a
matter that requires instant attention and stern repression. At the
present moment it seems that the only remedy lies in federal protection
for all migratory birds,--because so many states will not do their duty.

We are weary of witnessing the greed, selfishness and cruelty of
"civilized" man toward the wild creatures of the earth. We are sick of
tales of slaughter and pictures of carnage. It is time for a sweeping
Reformation; and that is precisely what we now demand.

I have been a sportsman myself; but times have changed, and we must