By way of illustration, to show what the sale of wild game means to the remnant of our game, and the wicked slaughter of non-game birds to which it leads, consider these figures: 

DEAD BIRDS FOUND IN ONE COLD STORAGE HOUSE IN NEW YORK IN 1902.

Snow Buntings 8,058
Grouse 7,560
Sandpipers 7,607
Quail 4,385
Plover 5,218
Ducks 1,756
Snipe 7,003
Bobolinks 288
Yellow-legs 788
Woodcock 96

The fines for this lot, if imposed, would have amounted to $1,168,315.

Shortly after that seizure American quail became so scarce that in effect they totally disappeared from the banquet tables of New York.  I can not recall having been served with one since 1903, but the little Egyptian quail can be legally imported and sold when officially tagged.

Few persons away from the firing line realize the far-reaching effects of the sale of wild game.  Here are a few flashes from the searchlight: 

At Hangkow, China, Mr. C. William Beebe found that during his visit in =1911=, over =46,000= pheasants of various species were shipped from that port on one cold-storage steamer to the London market.  And this when English pheasants were selling in the Covent Garden market at from two to three shillings each, for fresh birds!

In =1910=, =1,200= ptarmigan from Norway, bound for the Chicago market, passed through the port of New York,—­not by any means the first or the last shipment of the kind.  The epicures of Chicago are being permitted to comb the game out of Norway.

In =1910=, =70,000= dozen Egyptian quail were shipped to Europe from Alexandria, Egypt.  Just why that species has not already been exterminated, is a zoological mystery; but extermination surely will come some day, and I think it will be in the near future.

The coast of China has been raked and scraped for wild ducks to ship to New York,—­prior to the passage of the Bayne law!  I have forgotten the figures that once were given me, but they were an astonishing number of thousands for the year.

The Division of Negroes and Poor Whites who kill song and other birds indiscriminately will be found in a separate chapter.

THE DIVISION OF “RESIDENT” GAME-BUTCHERS.—­This refers to the men who live in the haunts of big game, where wardens are the most of the time totally absent, and where bucks, does and fawns of hoofed big game may be killed in season and out of season, with impunity.  It includes guides, ranchmen, sheep-herders, cowboys, miners, lumbermen and floaters generally.  In times past, certain taxidermists of Montana promoted the slaughter of wild bison in the Yellowstone Park, and it was a pair of rascally taxidermists who killed, or caused to be killed in Lost Park, in 1897, the very last bison of Colorado.