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Canadian Forestry Journal, September, ipi6 



Jack Miner's Experiments. 

 From the humming"-bird perhaps 

 the long-est step we can take is to 

 the wild goose, one of the wildest 

 as well as largest of our birds. Jack 

 Miner at Kingsville has the most 

 spectacular demonstration every 

 year on his farm of the possibility 

 of temporary domestication of this 

 bird. One morning last April, 

 1.000 wild geese came to his farm, 

 all of which lit within 150 yards of 

 his house. Many of them — by ac- 

 tual count 425 geese — were in the 

 small enclosure right in front of his 

 dining-room window. I went into 

 the enclosure with him, and found 

 it quite possible to walk to within 

 fifteen or twenty leet of the nearest 

 goose ; but, when those geese were 

 out on the lake, two miles distant, 

 it was exceedingly dif^cult to get a 

 boat within half a mile of them. In 

 one case, they knew absolutely they 

 were on safe ground, and in the 

 other case they suspected danger, 

 because man is a dangerous animal 

 To them, however, the man who 

 goes around Jack Miner's place is 

 safe, and, therefore, they are not in 

 the least alarmed. It seems that 

 the birds have methods of commu- 

 nication, not only between members 

 of their own species, but with others, 

 because one day during last year's 

 migration, while the geese were vis- 

 iting, Miner's place, on four different 

 occasions flocks of wild swans flew 

 over, apparently to see if these sto- 

 ries the geese were telling about the 

 safety and pleasant conditions on 

 Miner's farm were true. But while 

 the swans found they were appar- 

 ently true, because the geese were 

 down in the ponds on the farm, 

 they felt like the farmer who, seeing 

 the girafTe at a menagerie, said : 

 "There ain't no such animal." The 

 swans looked at the geese and said : 

 "It looks safe, but cannot be"— and 

 went away. And now Miner's am- 

 bition for next year is to have some 

 swans there in order to assure these 

 wild fellows that it reallv is all 



right on his farm. Perhaps I might 

 take it upon myself to urge upon 

 the members of the Committee on 

 Fisheries and Game that probably 

 . the most spectacular demonstration 

 of protection that you can see on the 

 continent of North America is at 

 Jack Miner's place in Kingsville any 

 day in April while the geese are 

 there. They come in March and 

 leave in May, and the number is lim- 

 ited only by the amount of corn that 

 Miner, who is not a very wealthy 

 man, can afiford to feed them. Dur- 

 ing the migration season last year I 

 believe he fed them about three 

 hundred bushels of corn. That 

 does not cost a great deal of money, 

 but then he is giving it to wild geese . 

 and for the benefit of the country at 

 large. I am not sure that in any 

 year I have spent out of my own 

 pocket the value of three hundred 

 bushels of corn for the benefit of the 

 country at large. Of course, Mr. 

 Miner gets personal enjoyment out 

 of it, or he would not do it, and his 

 work with the geese has resulted in 

 an entire change of condition in his 

 township. Settlement banished 



them, and twenty years ago there 

 were none. When he began his ex- 

 periments about twelve or fifteen 

 years ago, he obtained a few domes- 

 ticated Canada geese and kept them 

 in an enclosure, hoping to lure wild 

 geese to visit him annually, but he 

 had the tame ones there for a num- 

 ber of years before the wild ones 

 came. Eventually they did come, 

 seventeen visiting him the first year. 

 The next year there were thirty, 

 then one hundred and fifty, then five 

 hundred in the fourth year, and af- 

 ter that Miner said he could not 

 count them, that he had about "live 

 acres" of gee-se the year following. 

 It is all very well for a person to talk 

 about cjuantities of wild geese, but 

 nothing is so convincing as to see 

 them for yourself, and if the mem- 

 bers of the Committee could spare 

 the time to visit Kingsville next 

 April, I am sure they would be im- 



