INTRODUCTION. y 



by differences in color. The best known of these is the common wild 

 turkey of the Mississippi Valley and the Eastern States. The others 

 are the Florida wild turkey, the Rio Grande turkey, and the Merriam 

 turkey of the southern Rocky Mountains from Colorado south 

 through New Mexico and Arizona. These birds differ in color to 

 a certain extent, but have a close general resemblance. Owing to 

 their size and the value set on their flesh, wild turkeys have been 

 hunted so persistently that they have been exterminated over much 

 of their former range and have become the shyest of our game birds. 

 There are remarkable exceptions to this rule, however, as their per- 

 sistence up to the present day in parts of Virginia and Maryland, 

 within a few miles of Washington City. This ability to maintain a 

 foothold in long-settled parts of their old territory suggests the feas- 

 ibility of restocking parts of their former range. In pioneer days 

 they were often destructive to cornfields, and in remote places they 

 still raid grainfields, but the damage is insignificant. 



Unfortunately a number of our game birds are now gone or are 

 fast disappearing from their former haunts. An awakening appre- 

 ciation of the real value of some of the species and of the evident 

 danger of their extermination is evinced by protective laws that 

 have been enacted in recent years throughout the country. These 

 laws are mainly the outcome of a realization of the value of the birds 

 from the sportsman's point of view. The investigations upon which 

 the present report is based show that the farmer has a vastly greater 

 interest at stake in the increase and protection of some of these 

 birds, notably the bobwhite, than has the sportsman. In view of the 

 decrease of both bobwhites and prairie hens it is important to know 

 that there is every probability that proper efforts to rear these 

 birds for restocking purposes will be successful. The numbers of 

 bobwhite may be readily increased by careful protection, but the heath 

 hen is already extinct in the Eastern States, and the prairie hen is 

 nearly or quite gone from large areas in the West Avhere it was 

 numerous a few years ago. The restocking of suitable places in the 

 former range of the prairie hen and even in the former range of the 

 heath hen in the coast region of Virginia and Maryland appears to 

 be quite practicable. Tlie significance of an experiment made by 

 Audubon many years ago at Henderson, Ky., is of special interest 

 in this connection. In the fall he secured 60 prairie hens and, clip- 

 ping their wings, turned them loose in his garden and orchard which 

 contained about 4 acres. The birds quickly became tame and " walked 

 about the garden like so many tame fowls, mingling occasionally 

 with the domestic poultry." The importance of the prairie hen as 

 a destroyer of weeds and insects has been demonstrated, and its value 

 as a food and game bird is well known. As the bird possesses such 



G5(j8— No. 24 — 05 M 2 



