gun specially adapted to concealment
should be not less than $50 fine or two months imprisonment at hard
labor, and the carrying of such weapons concealed should be $100 or four
months at hard labor.

Incidentally, we wonder what will be the next devilish device for the
destruction of wild life that American inventive genius will produce.

[Illustration: THE "SUNDAY GUN!"
A Deadly Combination of Concealable Rifle-and-Shot-Gun.]

[Illustration: THE WILDERNESS OF NORTH AMERICA (SHADED) AND THE ARCTIC
PRAIRIES, WELL STOCKED WITH BIG GAME]

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVI

THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF NORTH AMERICAN BIG GAME

The subject of this chapter opens up a vast field of facts and
conclusions, quite broad enough to fill a whole volume. In the space at
our disposal here it is possible to offer only a summary of the subject,
without attempting to prove our statements by the production of detailed
evidence.

To say that all over the world, the large land mammals are being
destroyed more rapidly than they are breeding, would not be literally
true, for the reason that there are yet many areas that are almost
untouched by the destroying hand of civilized man. It is true, however,
that all the unspoiled areas rapidly are growing fewer and smaller. It
is also true that in all the regions of the earth that are easily
penetrable by civilized man, the wild life is being killed faster than
it breeds, and of necessity it is disappearing. This is why the British
are now so urgently bestirring themselves to create game preserves in
all the countries that they own.

It is one of the inexorable laws of Nature, to which I know of not one
exception, that large hoofed animals which live on open plains, on open
mountains, or in regions that are thinly forested, always are easily
found and easily exterminated. All such animals have a weak hold on
life. This is because it is so difficult for them to hide, and so very
easy for man to creep up within the killing range of modern, high-power,
long-range rifles. Is it not pitiful to think of animals like the
caribou, moose, white sheep and bear trying to survive on the naked
ridges and bald mountains of Yukon Territory and Alaska! With a modern
rifle, the greatest duffer on earth can creep up within killing distance
of any of the big game of the North.

The gray wolf is practically the only large animal that is able to hide
successfully and survive in the t