It is obvious that effectively to protect the big game at large there must be localities where hunting shall be absolutely forbidden.  That any species of big game will rapidly increase if absolutely protected is perfectly well known; and in the Yellowstone Park we have ever before us an object lesson, which shows precisely what effective protection of game can do.

It is little more than twenty years since the first efforts were made to prevent the killing of game within that National Reservation, and only about ten years since Congress provided an effective method for preventing such killing.  He must be dull indeed who does not realize what that game refuge has done for a great territory, and of how much actual money value its protection has been to the adjoining States of Montana and Idaho, and especially of Wyoming.  The visit of President Roosevelt to the National Park last spring made these conditions plain to the whole nation.  At that time every newspaper in the land gave long accounts of what the President saw and did there, and told of the hordes of game that he viewed and counted.  He saw nothing that he had not before known of, nothing that was not well known to all the members of the Boone and Crockett Club; but it was largely through the President’s visit, and the accounts of what he saw in the Yellowstone Park, that the public has come to know what rigid protection can do and has done for our great game.

Since such a refuge can bring about such results, it is high time that we had more of these refuges, in order that like results may follow in different sections of the West, and for different species of wild game; as well for the benefit of other localities and their residents, as for that wider public which will hereafter visit them in ever increasing numbers.

A bill introduced at the last session of Congress authorized the President, when in his judgment it should seem desirable, to set aside portions of forest reserves as game refuges, where no hunting should be allowed.  The bill passed the Senate, but failed in the House, largely through lack of time, yet some opposition was manifested to it by members of Congress from the States in which the forest reserves are located, who seemed to feel that such a law would in some way abridge the rights and privileges of their constituents.  This is a narrow view, and one not justified by the experience of persons dwelling in the vicinity of the Yellowstone National Park.

If such members of Congress will consider, for example, the effect on the State of Wyoming, of the protection of the Yellowstone Park, it seems impossible to believe that they will oppose the measure.  Each non-resident sportsman going into Wyoming to hunt the game—­much of which spends the summer in the Yellowstone Park, and each autumn overflows into the adjacent territory—­pays to the State the sum of forty dollars, and is obliged by law to hire a guide, for whose license he must