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THE GAME FIELD 167 
of our most rare, instead of our most common, 
game birds. 
The shooting season is once more drawing 
near, and in the absence of better protection by 
law, RECREATION appeals to the quail-shooters 
of the land to save the quail. Do not depend 
upon legislation and the game warden. Do 
not depend upon some other State to supply 
more when you have killed all there are in your 
State that the hawks and the owls and the 
weasels and Jack Frost have not taken. Leave 
some for seed. It is not supposed that a sports- 
man will kill the last quail of a flock, but even 
some very well-taught sportsmen have a little 
way of forgetting their training when birds are 
scarce. We appeal to the quail-shooters of the 
land, wherever they may be, to each of them 
spare two or three quail this year. Think of 
what this would mean! If fifty quail-shooters 
in any county in any State, where it has been 
necessary to import quail, will each spare two 
birds this fall, it will mean that roo quail, many 
of them, no doubt, native-born, will be left in that 
county to breed another year. Let the members 
of sportsmen’s associations pledge themselves to 
such action, and it will not be necessary to try 
to get live quail from the South next winter. We 
say try, because another year will bring great 
changes in the attitude of the Southern people 
toward the quail-thieves. There will certainly 
be a strong shotgun quarantine against quail- 
netters in Texas, and the commission merchant 
who can deliver live Alabama quail will be a 
wonder. : 
In conclusion, let us recommend for Northern 
quail-shooters the action of the Game Commis- 
sion of the good State of Illinois. Prairie chick- 
ens, once so plentiful in the Sucker State, have 
long since dwindled in numbers to a pitifully 
small supply; wild turkeys are no more, and 
bob-white quail are becoming almost as precious 
as the pinnated grouse. So the State Game 
Commission has started, seriously, to raising 
these birds on farms, bought for the purpose, 
and from the stock there raised in immunity 
from hunters and cared for through the rigors of 
winter will be trapped at times birds for stock- 
ing the depleted coverts of the State. Il‘inois 
intends hereafter to respect the Lacey law and 
raise her own game birds. The sooner other 
States where game has become scarce follow 
her example, the surer will the game supply of 
the country hold out. But as can readily be 
understood, all legislation must be futile, all the 
good work of State game commissions come to 
naught, unless the sportsmen of the country are 
sincere in their wish to have the game pro- 
tected. If quail-shooting becomes a thing of the 
past, no one will be to blame but the quail- 
shooters. 
Propagating Wild Rice 
RECREATION is constantly in receipt of re- 
quests for information on the subject of planting 
wild rice as a means to feeding wildfowl, and as 
the harvest season is now approaching we will 
quote the best authority we know, 2.e., the 
Bureau of Plant Industry, United States De- 
partment of Agriculture. 
In Bulletin No. go, Part 1, issued on Septem- 
ber 7 of last year, Mr. J. W. T. Duvel, of the 
seed laboratory, says in part: 
The many failures in the propagation of wild 
rice from seed have been due to the use of seed that 
had become dry before sowing, or to the fact that 
the seed when sown fresh in the autumn had been 
eaten by ducks or other animals or was carried 
away by heavy floods before germination took 
place. 
It is now very generally known that the seed of 
wild rice, if once allowed to become dry, will not 
germinate, save possibly an occasional grain. In 
its natural habitat the seed, as soon as mature, falls 
into the water and sinks into the mud beneath, 
where it remains during the winter months, ger- 
minating the following spring if conditions are 
favorable. 
Heretofore the plan generally followed, and the 
one usually recommended by those who have given 
some attention to the propagation of wild rice, was 
practically that of natural seeding; that is, to gather 
the seed in the autumn, as soon as thoroughly 
mature, and while still fresh to sow it in one to 
three feet of water. 
It must be remembered that the bulk of the seed 
remains dormant during the winter, germinating 
first the spring after maturing; consequently, with 
but few exceptions, fall seeding is unsatisfactory 
and unreliable. Fall seeding is likely to prove a 
failure for three reasons: (1) Wild ducks and 
other animals of various kinds eat or destroy the 
seed in considerable quantity before it has had 
time to germinate the following spring; (2) much 
of the seed is frequently covered so deeply with 
mud that washes in from the shore during the 
winter that the young plants die of suffocation and 
starvation before they reach the surface; (3) in 
some cases a large quantity of the seed is carried 
away from the place where sown by the high 
waters and floating ice prevalent during the latter 
part of the winter and early spring. 
In exceptional cases these difficulties can be 
overcome; under which circumstances autumn 
sowing may be preferable to spring sowing. In the 
majority of cases, however, much better results will 
be obtained if the seed is properly stored and sown 
in the early spring, as soon as the danger of heavy 
floods is passed and the water level approaches 
normal. 
In sowing the seed considerable care must be 
exercised in selecting a suitable place, securing the 
proper depth of water, etc. Good results can be 
expected if the seed is sown in from 1 to 3 feet of 
water which is not too stagnant or too swiftly mov- 
ing, with a thick layer of soft mud underneath. 
It is useless to sow wild rice seed on a gravelly 
