In spite of the vigilance of our custom house officers, every now and then a Hindoo from some foreign vessel sneaks into the country with a pet mongoose (and they do make great pets!) inside his shirt, or in the bottom of a bag of clothing. Of course, whenever the Department of Agriculture discovers any of these surreptitious animals, they are at once confiscated, and either killed or sent to a public zoological park for safe-keeping. In New York, the director of the Zoological Park is so genuinely concerned about the possibility of the escape of a female mongoose that he has issued two standing orders: All live mongooses offered to us shall at once be purchased, and every female animal shall immediately be chloroformed.
If Herpestes griseus ever breaks loose in the United States, the crime shall not justly be chargeable to us.
The English Sparrow. —In the United States, the English sparrow is a national sorrow, almost too great to be endured. It is a bird of plain plumage, low tastes, impudent disposition and persistent fertility. Continually does it crowd out its betters, or pugnaciously drive them away, and except on very rare occasions it eats neither insects nor weed seeds. It has no song, and in habits it is a bird of the street and the gutter. There is not one good reason why it should exist in this country. If it were out of the way, our native insect-eaters of song and beauty could return to our lawns and orchards. The English sparrow is a nuisance and a pest, and if it could be returned to the land of its nativity we would gain much.
CHAPTER XXXVI
NATIONAL AND STATE GAME PRESERVES, AND BIRD REFUGES
Out West, there is said to be a "feeling" that game and forest conservation has "gone far enough." In Montana, particularly, the National Wool-Growers' Association has for some time been firmly convinced that "the time has come to call a halt." Oh, yes! A halt on the conservation of game and forests; but not on the free grazing of sheep on the public domain. No, not even while those same sheep are busily growing wool that is so fearfully and wonderfully conserved by a sky-high tariff that the truly poor Americans are forced to wear garments made of shoddy because they cannot afford to buy clothing made of wool! (This is the testimony of a responsible clothing merchant, in 1912.)
We can readily understand the new hue and cry against conservation that the sheep men now are raising. Of course they are against all new game and forest reserves,—unless the woolly hordes are given the right to graze in them!
Many men of the Great West,—the West beyond the Great Plains,—are afflicted with a desire to do as they please with the natural resources of that region. That is the great curse that to-day rests upon our game. When the nearest game warden is 50 miles away, and big game is only 5 miles away, it is time for that game to take to the tall timber.
But in the West, and East and South, there are many men and women who believe in reasonable conservation, and deplore destruction. We have not by any means reached the point where we can think of stopping in the making of game preserves, or forest preserves. Of the former, we have scarcely begun to make. The majority of the states of our Union know of state game preserves only by hearsay. But the time is coming when the states will come forward, and perform the serious duty that they neglect to-day.