souri, Iowa and
California.

In many localities, the old-world pheasants have come to stay. The rise
and progress of the ring-neck in western New York has already been
noted. It came about merely through protection. That protection was
protection in fact, not the false "protection" that shoots on the sly.
It is the irony of fate that full protection should be accorded a
foreign bird, in order that it may multiply and possess the land, while
the same kind of protection is refused the native bob white, and it is
now almost a dead species, so far as this state is concerned.

In looking about for grievances against the ring-necked and English
pheasant, some persons have claimed that in winter these birds are
"budders," which means that they harmfully strip trees and bushes of the
buds that those bushes will surely need in their spring opening. On
that point Dr. Joseph Kalbfus, Secretary of the Pennsylvania Game
Commission, sent out a circular letter of inquiry, in response to which
he received many statements. With but one exception, all the testimony
received was to the effect that pheasants are _not_ bud-eaters, and that
generally the charge is unfounded.

The introduction of old-world pheasants, and the attempted introduction
of the Hungarian partridge, are efforts designed first of all to furnish
sportsmen something to shoot, and incidentally to provide a new food
supply for the table. The people of this country are not starving, nor
are they even very hungry for the meat of strange birds; but as a
food-producer, the pheasant is all right.

It disgusts me to the core, however, to see states that wantonly and
wickedly, through sheer apathy and lack of business enterprise, have
allowed the quail, the heath hen, the pinnated grouse and the ruffed
grouse to become almost exterminated by extravagant and foolish
shooters, now putting forth wonderfully diligent efforts and spending
money without end, in introducing _foreign_ species! Many men actually
take the ground that our game "can't live" in its own country any
longer; but only the ignorant and the unthinking will say so! Give our
game birds decent, sensible, _actual_ protection, stop their being
slaughtered far faster than they breed, and _they will live anywhere in
their own native haunts_! But where is there _one species_ of upland
game bird in America that has been sensibly and adequately protected?
From Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon there is _not one,--not