290 THE OREGON SPORTSMAN 
article, were transported from the state reservation, where elk are being 
raised by the State Fish and Game Commission for the purpose of 
restocking the state. The next lot to be taken from the Billy Meadows 
refuge will be liberated in eastern Marion County. 
* % * 
Every Oregon hunter and many from other states know that Curry 
County is noted for the abundance of deer to be found in its vast moun: 
tain reaches. The Gold Beach News adds another proof of this fact 
in publishing the following: ‘‘Prospectors who recently came in from 
a trip of several weeks in the eastern and southeastern part of the 
county report an unusual number of deer sighted and many instances 
of two fawns to the doe. In some localities bands of deer were found, 
in one place about 150 being seen in a band. After traversing some of 
the roughest parts of the county, they state that Curry County is, and 
will remain, the greatest deer section of the United States, if the panther 
can be kept down to protect the young deer.’’ 
THE SOLDIER ANGLER 
‘*Down by the Somme, Frenchmen and Englishmen were bathing in 
the same water pools. Close by French soldiers, fresh from a recent 
battle, the dirt and dust of war upon them, were fishing, as Frenchmen 
will always fish, whatever thunderbolts of fate may be falling near 
them, and upon the hillerest above the Somme two French trumpeters 
sat for an hour or more playing a duet. The thunderstroke of great 
guns not far from us shook the hills and echoed with dull thuds in the 
valley. Death was busy only a mile or two away, but the music of the 
two trumpeters came wandering down the hillside very sweetly, and the 
French soldier with a worm on the end of his line pointed to five small 
perch in a petrol tin and smiled with pride at his good catch. It was 
one of the little contrasts of war worth recording, because war is not 
all blood and agony, but has quiet places and quiet hours.’’—War Cor. 
respondence of Philip Gibbs. 
BUGS, BIRDS AND WAR 
(The Pine Cone.) 
The United States is-now paying cash for its long neglect of in- 
sectivorous birds. To supplement the work of the bird army, the Depart- 
ment of Agriculture is putting into the field an army of men to combat 
the depredations of insects—the greatest enemy of the American farmer. 
Specialists in rice insects, orchard and vineyard insects, truck farm and 
cereal and forage insects—specialists on the Hessian fly and the chinch 
bug and the joint worms—will try to stop the expensive thievery of 
these insatiable gluttons. 
We fancy that the birds, which once were probably numerous enough 
to hold most of the insects in check, will smile at the frantic efforts of 
men to do the work which they themselves know so well how to do, and 
would be willing to do without pay from the nation’s war chest. The 
enly wage they demand is protection. This wage we have never fairly 
paid; but we do pay hundreds of millions to the devouring insects, which 
silently, relentlessly and almost unseen compete with man for the food 
supply of the earth. 
