ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



life of the species. But the plumage hunter 

 runs riot in Nepal and Yunnan. I have seen 

 valley after valley despoiled of their one or two 

 pairs of magnificent resident tragopans ; and 

 only to beguile the days of a lowly Nepalese 

 shepherd, without caste, but with all the time in 

 the world to make snares. In Burma the terres- 

 trial birds and animals of a valley are some- 

 times completely wiped out by a half-mile bam- 

 boo fence, punctuated every few yards with 

 dead-falls. 



Even in China, where for unnumbered years 

 tlie pheasants have taken their moderate toll of 

 rice and repaid with the compound interest of 

 an insect diet the rest of the year, — even there 

 changes are at hand. With the more or less 

 successful adoption of foreign hats and gar- 

 ments, seems to have occurred a yearning of 

 the inner man for change, from rice and fish to 

 pheasant flesh. And in many parts of the Ce- 

 lestial Republic the birds are paying heavy toll 

 to this demand. Not only this, but tens of thou- 

 sands of pheasants were being sent up and down 

 the rivers to huge cold storage warehouses, to be 

 frozen and sent to European restaurants. 



A new. wholly unexpected change has now 

 come to pass, and the terrible history being 

 made in Europe will mean a new, however brief. 

 lease of life to the creatures of the Eastern jun- 

 gles. The capital necessary for many of the 

 rubber plantations will not be available. The 

 demand for this product and for the luxury of 

 frozen pheasants will lessen. The milliner will 

 be unable to sell his ill-gotten wares, and the 

 pressure of Caucasian commercial influence will 

 lighten everywhere. Hundreds of intended 

 clearings will be abandoned, projected build- 

 ings will be deserted and the voice of the wild 

 pheasant- the finbacks, the monal, the kok- 

 lass. the argus. the golden and the silver, will, 

 for a time, increase in volume throughout the 

 jungles of the Far East. It may, however, be 

 the last pause in the slow, certain kismet which 

 can only result finally in the complete extinc- 

 tion in the wild state of these splendid but in- 

 tolerant birds. 



ITEMS OF INTEREST 



Zoological Park 

 lijl Raymond L. Ditmars 



The Beaver Colony. — The most definite 

 change of habits from the cold seasons to the 

 warm ones, may now be noted among our beav- 

 ers. Last fall these intelligent and industrious 

 animals collected a large amount of food-wood 

 and built what appeared like an elaborate levee, 

 extending about twentv feet from their mound- 



like home. They were constantly diving and 

 lacing the long branches under water in con- 

 structing this levee of brush, and it was evident 

 that their intention was to prepare a supply of 

 bark for winter food that could be reached be- 

 neath the ice. 



During the mid-winter months they made un- 

 der-water trips to the larder, and as the ice 

 melted during March, the brush structure was 

 rapidly consumed. The food levee has now 

 disappeared, and the beavers are at work re- 

 constructing their house for warm weather. 

 The interior living room has been enlarged by 

 the removal of the many pieces of food-wood 

 and these have been taken downstream to the 

 dam. 



Work on the dam now is an all-day task, as 

 the house interior is made larger. As the beav- 

 ers' inflexible rule is that the entrance must 

 be kept submerged and bidden, it necessitates 

 elevating and broadening the dam to raise the' 

 water level of the spring-fed lake in which 

 the house is situated. The best time to see the 

 beavers at work on the dam is about four o'clock 

 in the afternoon. 



./ Test in Acclimatisation. — Our exhibit of 

 coypu rats is a good example of the possibili- 

 ties of acclimatization. These large, aquatic 

 rodents inhabit Central America and represent 

 typical animals of the tropics. They are hardy 

 as captives, and we determined to experiment 

 with them under outdoor conditions during the 

 winter. They were provided with a cement shel- 

 ter house with a wooden floor and a vestibule, 

 or similar device, to exclude the wind. These 

 animals were abroad during the coldest days ot 

 the winter. The keepers kept the ice broken in 

 one corner of their inclosure and the writer 

 several times watched them diving through the 

 small opening and remaining under the ice sev- 

 eral minutes. Emerging from this chilling bath 

 they would roam over the ice and nibble at the 

 branches of willow and birch in as complacent 

 a fashion as during warm weather. They were 

 abroad as usual during the severe cold periods, 

 when the temperature registered from two to 

 six degrees below zero. 



Exhilarating Spring. — There is a joyous ex- 

 odus of the tropical hoofed animals from their 

 stalls to the yards with the beginning of the 

 warm weather. After about five months con- 

 finement in the stalls, the removal of the storm 

 doors, and the first sight of green foliage out- 

 side brings much capering and rushing about 

 the yards. It is difficult, in fact, to induce the 

 animals to return to the building at the close of 

 the afternoon. 



