322 



RECREATION. 



I could not agree with Mr. Lovejoy that 

 the best way to propagate game birds was to 

 send them out over the State to persons 

 who would care for them, for in that event 

 they would largely fall into the hands of the 

 owners of private clubs or preserves, and 

 the majority of the people who like to hunt 

 are not members of any club, hence would 

 not derive any benefit. Let us make propa- 

 gating grounds of the entire State by killing 

 off the crows. This can and must be done 

 before many years if we would preserve the 

 few game birds now remaining. 



Mr. Hornaday expresses fear that the 

 crow, too, would be exterminated if we 

 were to wage war against him. There is 

 no bird so wary as the crow, and it would 

 be impossible to exterminate him, for he is 

 not confined to any one region or location. 

 He is not like the bison, that could run no 

 faster than the average horse, nor like the 

 passenger pigeons that at one time flew in 

 such great flocks across the Mississippi val- 

 ley and nested in groves, or roosted so close 

 together that they would break the branches 

 from the trees. They were easy to exter- 

 minate, but Mr. Crow is more cunning. 



For a bounty of 10 cents a head the sports- 

 men of the State will hunt him, and even 

 at that price a man will need to be an ex- 

 cellent shot to earn more than the ammuni- 

 tion he will use. 



W. L. Blinn, Rockford, 111. 



Last spring, in Iroquois county, near 

 Watseka, I noticed the peculiar actions of 

 a crow in a meadow, i tied my horse to a 

 fence and went into the field to investigate. 

 On my approach a prairie chicken sprang at 

 the crow, struck at it with wings and beak 

 and rushed back a short distance. About 

 that time both crow and chicken saw me. 

 The crow left and the chicken disappeared, 

 but by a careful search I discovered 4 dead 

 chicks, probably not over 48 hours old. 

 They had all been mutilated, and I have 

 not doubted an instant that the crow killed 

 them. 



Another time I saw a crow destroy a Bob 

 White's nest of eggs. 



I only wonder that Bob Whites and prairie 

 chickens can hatch and mature in a place 

 where crows are as numerous as they are 

 in Western Indiana and Eastern Illinois. 



If I had but one shell in my gun and 

 should flush a game bird in season and a 

 crow should caw within range, the crow 

 would get my charge. 



F. W. Myrick, Chicago, 111. 



A DANGEROUS EXPONENT OF NATURE. 



W. T. H., IN THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY BULLETIN 



Few men who love the works of Nature 

 are given to criticising others in print; but 

 there are times when the expressing of 

 one's opinion becomes a duty. When men 

 begin to sew broadcast throughout schools, 



and among young people generally, unlim- 

 ited quantities of questionable seed, it should 

 be carefully inspected. Messrs. Ginn & 

 Company's elaborate defensive pamphlet of 

 "William J. Long and His Books" is a re- 

 minder that Mr. Long is now a public issue, 

 and one not to be ignored by those who 

 care for real natural history. 



Mr. Long now has 9 books on the market, 

 4 of which are published specially for school 

 use, at 50 cents each. Presumably they are 

 already in a great many schools ; and yet no 

 other American writer calling himself a 

 naturalist ever has been so universally con- 

 demned by real naturalists, both in and out 

 of print, as William J. Long has. Among 

 his defenders and exponents, as far as I 

 know, there is not one naturalist. 



To all persons, young and old, who are in- 

 terested in Nature, who desire to learn only 

 what is true, I express the belief that Mr. 

 Long is the most visionary writer who has 

 ever appeared before the American public 

 in the guise of a naturalist. Any man with 

 unlimited capacity for swallowing, as gos- 

 pel truth, every silly story that is told him 

 by the wild-animal liars of this world, is to 

 be pitied ; but when any man combines with 

 limitless gullibility, a vaulting imagination 

 which places on the acts of wild creatures 

 only the most far fetched and wonderful 

 interpretations, he is to be feared and 

 avoided. 



If William J. Long has seen all the won- 

 derful things in wild life that he says he 

 has seen, then has he observed more mar- 

 vels of Nature than all other American nat- 

 uralists combined. He writes smooth and 

 pleasing fiction about the wonderful wis- 

 dom and superhuman doings of wild crea- 

 tures, and vows it is all true. Any man 

 who is able to< swallow so palpable a hoax 

 as the oriole's nest, illustrated in a recent 

 number of "Science," and describe it as a 

 genuine product of unassisted Nature, is 

 about as wise as a chipmunk; and as a guide 

 to the works of Nature he is about as val- 

 uable and safe as a mole. 



Mr. Long has a command of language 

 that any revivalist might envy. His mar- 

 velous tales of the wonderful things he has 

 seen done by wild creatures gush forth like 

 water from an open hydrant. We have seen 

 that for an hour and a quarter he can hold 

 his hearers spellbound "with a degree of 

 hadmiration hamounting to hawe." To him 

 no phase of Nature is mysterious; and in 

 everything, from telepathy in the moose to 

 the ratiocinations of a kingfisher his cock' 

 sureness is sublime. 



The objectionable point of all this lies in 

 the fact that Mr. Long continually and per- 

 sistently conveys to the minds of people 

 who know little of Nature totally false im- 

 pressions of the mental capacitv of wild ani- 

 mals. To those who think this is proper 



