ALBERTA.—­The worst feature of the Alberta laws is the annual open season on antelope, two of which may be killed under each license.  This is entirely wrong, and a perpetual close season should at once be enacted.  Duck shooting in August is wrong, and the season should not open until September.  It is not right that duck-killing should be made so easy and so fearfully prolonged that extermination is certain. All killing of cranes and shore birds should be absolutely stopped, for five years.  No wheat-producing province can afford the expense to the wheat crops of the slaughter of shore birds, thirty species of which are great crop-protectors.

The bag limit of two sheep is too high, by 50 per cent.  It should immediately be cut down to one sheep, before sheep hunting in Alberta becomes a lost art. Sheep hunting should not be encouraged—­quite the reverse!  There are already too many sheep-crazy sportsmen.  The bag limit on grouse and ptarmigan of 20 per day or 200 in a season is simply legalized slaughter, no more and no less, and if it is continued, a grouseless province will be the quick result.  The birds are not sufficiently numerous to withstand the guns on that basis.  Alberta should be wiser than the states below the international boundary that are annihilating their remnants of birds as fast as they can be found.

BRITISH COLUMBIA.—­We note with much satisfaction that the Provincial Game Warden, Mr. A. Bryan Williams, has been allowed $37,000 for the pay of game wardens, and $28,000 for the destruction of wolves, coyotes, pumas and other game-destroying animals.  During the past two years the following game-destroyers were killed, and bounties were paid upon them: 

1909-10 1910-11

Wolves 655 518
Coyotes 1,464 3,653
Cougars 382 277
Horned Owls 854 2,285
Golden Eagles 29 73
                   3,374 6,806

“Now,” says Warden Williams in his excellent annual report for 1911, “in these two years a total of 2,896 wolves and cougars and 5,141 coyotes were destroyed, as well as a number of others poisoned and not recovered for the bounty.  Allowing fifty head for each wolf and cougar and ten for each coyote, by their bounties alone 196,210 head of game and domestic animals were saved.  Is it any wonder that deer are increasing almost everywhere?”

The great horned owl has been and still is a great scourge to the upland game birds, partly because when game is abundant “they become fastidious, and eat only the brains of their prey.”  The destruction of 3,139 of them on the Lower Mainland during the last two years has made these owls sing very small, and says the warden, “Is it any wonder that grouse are again increasing?”