150 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 
species were also found on islands in the lakes, where alone the Wild 
Goose was known to nest, while some small islets were virtually covered 
by hosts of Gulls and Pelicans. 
On the prairies Long-billed Curlew, Marbled Godwits, and Bartra- 
mian Sandpipers or “Upland Plover” as sportsmen know them, lay 
their eggs. The region has well been called the nursery of wild-fowl,"as 
at one time were our border states to the south; but the advance of civi- 
lization, which first transforms a buffalo range into a cattle country and 
CAMP AT PTARMIGAN PASS 
later into a wheat ranch, has already reached the early stages of its agri- 
cultural development about Maple Creek and the forced retreat of the 
wild fowl to the more remote north is only a question of time. ‘The 
Canadian Government would do well to set aside some of its still unsettled 
lands as permanent breeding reservations to which year after year the 
water-fowl could return to nest. Such reservations would be nurseries 
and, by permitting a bird to reproduce, would be of infinitely more im- 
portance than preserves which afford protection only during the winter. 
