1S4 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



said : " It looks safe but cannot be " — and went away. And now 

 Miner's ambition for next year is to have some swans there in order 

 to assure these wild fellows that it really 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 limited only by the amount of corn that l^iner, who is not a 

 very wealthy man, can afford to feed them. During the migration sea- 

 son last year I believe he fed them about three hundred bushels of com. 

 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. In the old days the geese were common all 

 over that country. Settlement banished them and twenty years ago 

 there were none. When he began his experiments about twelve or 

 fifteen years ago, he obtained a few domesticated 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 number 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 after that Miner said he could not 

 count them, that he had about " five acres " of geese the year following. 

 It is all very well for a person to talk about quantities of wild geese, 

 but nothing is so convincing as to see them for yourself and if the 

 members of the Committee could spare the time to visit Kingsville 

 next April, I am sure they would be impressed with the value of even 

 individual eflFert, though much more could be accomplished if the 

 matter were handled on a little larger scale. On Miner's farm there 

 are tw© ponds, one, thirty-five yards across, the other, thirty by fifty or 

 sixty, yet they accommodated between 1,000 and 1,500 wild geese last 

 spring. 



_ Coming down to smaller things, the protection of the 



of Birds ordinary birds around the home, it is not often that 



near Home ^^ j^^ ggj. figures that are exact and reliable. In fact, 



not very many people have tried or have made serious effort to encour- 

 age the birds and increase their numbers. But I was told the other 

 day about what seemed to me to be really a very spectacular result. 



