ly through the
influence of a great conservation Governor, John A. Dix, and the State
Conservation Commission proposed and created by his efforts. In these
days of game destruction, when our country from Nome to Key West is
reeking with the blood of slaughtered wild creatures, it is a privilege
and a pleasure to be a citizen of a state which has thoroughly cleaned
house, and done well nigh the utmost that any state can do to clear her
bad record, and give all her wild creatures a fair chance to survive.
The people of the Empire State literally can point with pride to the
list of things accomplished in the discharge of good-citizenship toward
the remnant of wild life, and toward the future generations of New
Yorkers. That we of to-day have borne our share of the burden of
bringing about the conditions of 1912, will be a source of satisfaction,
especially when the sword and shield hang useless upon the walls of Old
Age.

New York began to protect her deer in 1705 and her heath hens in 1708.
In 1912 she stopped the killing of female deer, and of bucks having
horns less than three inches in length. Spring shooting was stopped in
1903. A comprehensive law protecting non-game birds was enacted in 1862.
New York's first law against the sale of certain game during close
seasons was enacted in 1837.

In 1911 New York enacted, with only one adverse vote, a law prohibiting
the sale of all native wild game throughout the state, no matter where
killed, and providing liberally for the encouragement of game-breeding,
and the sale of preserve-bred game.

In 1912 a new codification of the state game laws went into effect,
through the initiative of Governor Dix and Conservation Commissioners
Van Kennen, Moore and Fleming, assisted (as special counsel) by Marshall
McLean, George A. Lawyer and John B. Burnham. This code contains many
important new provisions, one of the most valuable of which is a clause
giving the Conservation Commission power, at its discretion, to shorten
or to close any open season on any species of game in any locality
wherein that species seems to be threatened with extermination. This
very valuable principle should be enacted into law in every state!

In 1910, William Dutcher and T. Gilbert Pearson and the National
Association of Audubon Societies won, after a struggle lasting five
years, the passage of the "Shea plumage bill," prohibiting the sale of
aigrettes or other plumage of wild birds belonging to the sam