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. 



