A LOOK BACKWARD 525 
row in North America, and of the mongoose in some 
of the West Indian Islands, suggest themselves at once. 
Happily, within the past two or three years, the ex- 
periment of hand-rearing some of our native game birds 
has apparently advanced well along the road to success. 
If it cannot be said that any of the public establishments 
for rearing such birds have been successful in any great 
degree, it is yet true that they hatch and partly rear 
many birds. Almost always it has happened that before 
the birds reached maturity, certainly before they had 
reached the breeding age, death in some form or other 
has overtaken them. It was left to a private individual, 
a professor in a New England university, to take up 
this matter of rearing native birds as a hobby and to 
succeed in it beyond the expectation of anyone, possibly 
beyond his own hopes. Certain it is that Prof. C. F. 
Hodge, of Clark University, at Worcester, Mass., has 
succeeded in rearing from the egg a considerable num- 
ber of ruffed grouse and quail, which birds are no more 
timid and fearful of the members of their owner’s 
family than they are of their fellow birds. Not only are 
they tame in this way, but they manifest no fear what- 
ever of strangers. Within their enclosures they carry 
on the operations of their daily life with the same un- 
concern that they would manifest if they were hidden 
in the depths of one of their native swamps, and this 
whether human beings are in the vicinity or not. 
Broods of quail which Professor Hodge has reared and 
turned out to shift for themselves will come at his 
whistle, flying from all directions, expecting to be fed. 
