If we are courageous, we will brace up and answer these questions now, like men.  If we are faint-hearted, and eager for peace at any price, then we will sidestep the ugly situation until the destroyers have settled it for us by the wholesale extermination of species.

If the zoologist cares to know, then I will tell him that to-day the wild life of the world can be saved by law, but not by sentiment alone! You cannot “educate” a poacher, a game-hog, a market-gunner, a milliner or a vain and foolish woman of fashion.  All these must be curbed and controlled by law.  Game refuges alone will not save the wild life! All species of birds, mammals and game fishes of North America must have more thorough and far-reaching protection than they now have.

Do not always take your cue from the sportsmen, especially regarding the enactment of long close seasons!  If you need good advice, or help about drafting a bill, write to Dr. T.S.  Palmer, Department of Agriculture, Washington, and you will receive prompt and valuable assistance.  The Doctor is a wise man, and there is nothing about protective laws that is unknown to him.  Go to your state senator and your assemblyman with the bills that you know should be enacted into law, and assure them that those measures are necessary for the wild life, and beneficial to 98 per cent of the people who own the wild life.  You will be heard with respectful attention, in any law-making body that you choose to enter.

People who cannot give time and labor must supply you with money for your campaigns. Ask, and you will receive!  I have proven this many times.  With care and exactness account to your subscribers for the expenditure of all money placed in your hands, and you will receive continuous support.

In times of great stress, print circulars and leaflets by the ten-thousand, and get them into the hands of the People, calling for their help.  Our 42,000 copies of the “Wild Life Call” (sixteen pages) were distributed by organizations all over the state of New York, and along with Mr. Andrew D. Meloy’s letters to the members of the New York State League, aroused such a tidal wave of public sentiment against the sale of game that the Bayne bill was finally swept through the Legislature with only one dissenting vote!  And yet, in the beginning not one man dared to hope that that very revolutionary measure could by any possibility be passed in its first year in New York State, even if it ever could be!

It was the aroused Public that did it!

This volume has been written (under great pressure) in order to put the whole situation before the people of America, including the zoologists, and to give them some definite information, state by state, regarding the needs of the hour.  Look at the needs of your own state, in the “Roll Call of States,” and you will find work for your hand to do.  Clear your conscience by taking hold now, to do everything that you can to stop the carnage and preserve the remnant.  Twenty-five or fifty years hence, if we have a birdless and gameless continent, let it not be said that the zoologists of America helped to bring it about by wicked apathy.