Foreign Office as well as in the Sudan. The obligations imposed
by the recent London Convention upon the signatory Powers will not
become operative until after the exchange of ratifications, which has
not yet taken place. In anticipation, however, steps have been taken to
revise the existing regulations in the British Protectorates so as to
bring them into strict harmony with the terms of the convention. The
game reserves now existing in the several Protectorates are: In (a)
British Central Africa, the elephant marsh reserve and the Shirwa
reserve; in (b) the East Africa Protectorate, the Kenia District; in (c)
Uganda, the Sugota game reserve in the northeast of the Protectorate; in
(d) Somaliland, a large district defined by an elaborate boundary line
described in the regulations. The regulations have the force of law in
the Protectorates, and offenders are dealt with in the Protectorate
Courts. It is in contemplation to charge special officers of the
Administrations with the duty of watching over the proper observance of
the regulations. Under the East African game regulations only the
officers permanently stationed at or near the Kenia reserve may be
specially authorized to kill game in the reserve.

Other effective measures have been taken in the Soudan
district. Capt. Stanley Flower, Director of the Gizeh Zoological
Gardens, made a very full report, which is quoted in _Nature_ for
July 25, 1901, p. 318.

STATE LAWS.

The preservation of even a few of our wild animals is a very large
proposition; it is an undertaking the difficulty of which grows in
magnitude as one comes to study it in detail and gets on the ground. The
rapidly increasing legislation in the Western States is an indication of
rapidly growing sentiment. A still more encouraging sign is the strong
sympathy with the enforcement of the laws which we find around the
National Park in Wyoming and Montana especially. State laws should be
encouraged, but I am convinced that while effective in the East, they
will not be effective in the West _in time_, because of the
scattered population, the greater areas of country involved, the greater
difficulty of watching and controlling the killing, and the actual need
of game for food by settlers.

When we study the operation of our State laws on the ground we find that
for various reasons they are not fully effective. A steady and in some
cases rapid diminution of animals is going on so far as I have observed
i