THE DECREASE OF WILDFOWL. ^77 



Game, Fish and Bird Protective Association. This 

 story told of an enormous destruction of wildfowl 

 eggs in the Northwest for commercial purposes; mil- 

 lions, shiploads and trainloads of such eggs, it was 

 gravely related, being annually gathered in Alaska and 

 British America, and shipped thence to points in the 

 East, where they were manufactured into egg albumen 

 cake. The story took with the newspapers, and those 

 who had fathered it were eager to be interviewed and to 

 tell what they said they knew about it. They even in- 

 duced a Senator — the Hon. John H.Mitchell, of Oregon 

 — -to make a speech in the Senate on Alaskan egg de- 

 struction, and to ask for an appropriation of $5,000 for 

 the purpose of sending some one to Alaska to find out 

 more about it. Incidentally, another Senator, the Hon. 

 H. Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, introduced and 

 pushed through Congress a bill forbidding the importa- 

 tion of the eggs of wild birds, with the result that now 

 if any man wants to import from England the eggs of 

 pheasants, partridges, black game or capercailzie for 

 hatching out birds to stock his land, he finds that the 

 law forbids him to do so. 



In 1895, Forest and Stream set on foot an investiga- 

 tion to learn what truth there was in the story; what 

 was the basis, if any, for the alarming statistics quoted ; 

 whether an abuse that required checking actually ex- 

 isted. The climax was reached when the president of 

 the Protective Association already named gave out to 

 a Chicago newspaper a quotation from the report of a 

 certain Mr, Storey, who at that time was the local 



