Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
^UMrTHs!°$£™-^ NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 1897. Uo.mBno^J^:^'^wYonK. 
Any fool can destroy trees. They cannot run 
away ; and if they could, they would still tse de- 
stroyed — chased and hunted down as long as fun 
or a dollar could be got out of their bark hides, 
branching horns, or magnificent bole backbones. 
Few that fell trees plant them; nor would plant- 
ing avail much toward getting back anything like 
the noble primeval forests* During a man's life 
only saplings can be grown, in the place of the old 
trees — tens of centuries old — that have been de- 
stroyed. It took more than three thousand years 
to make some of the trees in these Western woods 
— ^trees that are still standing in perfect strength 
and beauty, waving and singing in the mighty 
forests of the Sierra. Through all the wonderful, 
eventful centuries since Christ's time — and long 
before that — God has cared for these trees, saved 
them from drought, disease, avalanches, and a 
thousand straining, leveling tempests and floods ; 
but he cannot save them from fools — only Uncle 
Sam can do that* 
John Muir in August Atlantic. 
THE TBAIRIE CHICKhm-PAST, PRESENT 
AND FUTURE. 
Notwithstanding the enormous destruction of the prai- 
rie chicken by man and nature, it preserves its existence 
and numbers to an astonishing extent. This is due partly 
to its wonderfulJprolificness, partly to its vigorous, hardy 
nature, and adapliveness to widely different conditions of 
climate, food supply and habitat, and partly to the adven- 
titious circumstance of the great grain fields, which are 
consequent to man's domicile throughout the birds' habi- 
tat, and the attendant furnishing of a food supply in greater 
abundance and certainty. These general conditions pre- 
vail, although in certain sections, large and small, the in- 
cursions of sportsmen from the other States, in addition to 
destruction caused by local sportsmen, has resulted in 
partial or total extermination in such localities. 
In the older and more densely settled and thoroughly 
tilled region of the chicken's habitat — as Indiana, Illinois, 
Kentucky, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana— it remains 
in greatly reduced numbers or is found not at all, though 
years ago it was abundant. Thus on the eastern and 
{Southeastern parts of its habitat, man's proximity, at first 
:an advantage, became at last a disadvantage. The first 
•settlers were mostly tillers of the soil or hunters of big 
;game, both pursuits alike entered into seriously as a 
laneans of existence. A limited agriculture was not harm- 
)ful to the country as a chicken country, and was of im- 
imense advantage in affording an assured supply of food. 
jBut settlement made possible the coming of the army of 
isportsmen who liked the shooting for the vrholesomeness 
of the sport, and there was a host of them in the older 
'Country eastward to the Atlantic Ocean. Later, in certain 
isections, the conditions of habitat were unfavorable for 
ithe chicken, due to the circumstance of an agriculture so 
"extended that no sufficient area of wild ground was left 
ifor it to range and hide in. These unfevorable condi- 
ttions — the exposure to so much destruction from excessive 
i^hootiug and the disadvantageous changes in its habitat 
iresulting from the tilling of all the available surface — were 
so serious that they brought about its partial or total ex- 
termination in such localities. 
Besides what Is cansed by man, there is the added de- 
struction caused by unfavorable weather conditions. Its 
home being largely in the great prairie regions whose sur- 
face is relatively flat and treeless, the bird is exposed to 
the full inclemency of the weather. Sometimes nearly all 
the birds of a vast section may be destroyed in the hatch- 
ing season from this cause. A heavy rain falling faster 
than the flat ground can absorb it, or faster than the gen- 
tle watershed can drain it off, clogged as it is by the rank 
growths of prairie vegetation, overflows the nests, spoiling 
the eggs or drowning the young chicks. An extremely 
cold rain, one more befitting early April then the hatching 
season, is also unfavorable, and more or less destructive ac- 
cording to its severity. However, as such rainfall is nearly 
always in an area relatively small as compared with the 
vast whole of the chicken's range, and as there are always 
some ridges or higher stretches of ground which are above 
the overflow or protected from it, a total destruction of the 
young birds in such a section is almost impossible, . With 
the covies preserved by the higher ground, and the influx 
. of birds from the more favored surroonding area, taking 
possession of the unoccupied places, the losses from storms 
will in a year or two be made good if no extremely bad 
weather again intervenes and works destruction. 
The eastern part of the great prairie region which ex- 
tends irregularly through a broad belt from the Gulf of 
Mexico northward into British America, is more thor- 
oughly cultivated and domiciled, and more exposed to the 
ravages of the army of shooters who reside there, and 
thence eastward to the Atlantic Coast, Agriculture each 
year encroaches more and more on the wild prairie land, 
thus destroying the best equilibrium of food supply and 
habitat. When such conditions pass a certain point, and 
excessive destruction of the birds and unfavorable habitat 
prevail, their numbers will be greatly reduced or wholly 
exterminated. In the less thickly settled places, as near 
British America, where the bird now finds abundance of 
food and wild prairie, the land will be thoroughly settled 
in time and devoted to extensive agriculture, when the 
same conditions which worked the chicken's destruction 
in the older sections will be repeated again in the new. 
There yet remains a vast tract of country in Minnesota, 
Dakota and Manitoba, where the favoring conditions of 
mixed grain-bearing land and wild prairie exist, thus 
affording the needed food supply, range and cover. No 
doubt, as the years pass, and with them come a denser 
population, this will necessitate the taking up of the wild 
land for agriculture, and the same conditions w^hich have 
been so destructive to the chicken in Kentucky, Arkansas 
and Minnesota, and parts of Illinois and Indiana and some 
other States, will again be in force. We may expect then 
the same destructive results. 
Fortunately, as the Southern range of the chicken was 
injured by agriculture and its numbers lessened from exces- 
sive shooting, the opening up of a new wheat country in 
the North, far into Canada, the great grain fields stringing 
irregularly throughout this area, afforded the bird a new 
and better habitat with food in abundance. The shooters 
in this new country were few in numbers, comparatively; 
the population was small and scattei ed, and yet the num- 
bers of vast grain fields made food for the grouse constantly 
abundant. 
As man extended his agriculture further and further, the 
chicken followed on, so that what it has lost in the South in 
suitable habitat and numbers, it has more than gained in. 
the North. Various local conditions may affect the gen- 
eral rule; the presence of a great number of sportsmen in 
one town results in the shooting off of all the birds in that 
vicinity; or the birds in a certain locality may suffer from 
the ready convenience with which the district can be 
reached by shooters from the large cities. Or the situa- 
tion may be affected by the local changing of crops, differ-' 
ing from those of preceding years, which sometimes takes 
place in a section, as, instead of wheat, barley and flax, 
the farmers may grow corn and oats; and this change 
would force many birds to seek a more favorable section. 
If agriculture monopolizes the land, the bird becomes 
wilder, and when disturbed takes longer flights to such 
cover as may be available, seeing safety in tree claims or 
timber, though naturally it is strictly a bird of the 
prairie. This device may save it a few times, but often 
serves to bring quicker destruction, for the shooters take 
stands around the cover and send one of their number in 
with a dog; he either shoots the bird as he would a ruffed 
grouse or drives it out to the guns on the outside, where 
almost certain death awaits it. 
In the warmth of summer the bird is easily killed, for 
then it is tender, slow of flight and tame. When the 
nights are frosty, and the stiff' fall winds set in — about the 
latter part of August — it becomes heavily feathered, strong 
of wing and wild. If much shot at then it becomes wilder 
still, and rises at long ranges or out of shot entirely. 
When the yet colder weather sets in, as in the middle of 
September, the birds in a small section will ail join to- 
gether in a pack, and stiU later many of the smaller packs 
may join together in one large pack, so that the birds of 
a certain area of several square miles may thus be packed 
together. 
They do not migrate in the true sense of migrating, 
though they may remove many miles from their regular 
resort to seek the protection of timber, or valleys for pro- 
tection in severe winter weather. 
The southern part of the great prairie region, as Texas, 
Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Indiana, 
Illinois, is in the midst of a denser population, which 
extends far east and west. The raUroads make it easily 
accessible from New York, Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis, 
Chicago, Louisville, New Orleans and other centers. As 
the population increases to the northward in like liianner, 
it is but a question of time till the population shall be 
equally dense and the prairie all tilled, thus making un- 
favorable conditions of habitat. With the greater popula- 
tion the causes of extermination will be in force to the 
northward as they had previously been to the southward. 
The same agencies which effected its partial or total de- 
struction in Kentucky, southern Illinois, Louisiana, Mis- 
souri and Indiana, will in the North have like effects. 
But a new factor could be introduced to avert the grow- 
ing destruction, that is the game preserve. Areas could 
be secured of sufficient scope to include both the summer 
and winter home of the bird, boundaries which couid 
be easily determined by local observers; and from a 
reasonable effort at protection good results would be 
certain to follow. This is applying for the preservation of 
the chicken the same precautions and measures which 
are used to insure the preservation of quail and ducks in 
other sections. As wealth has increased in the prairie 
region a leisure class has sprung up, and there is now a 
local contingent of shooters in every section. To save 
the chicken, some measures must be taken to preserve it 
by individuals. The State laws are inadequate, because 
they are but weakly enforced or practically not at all. 
The habitat of the chicken is encroached upon more and 
more each year by agriculture, manufacture and domicil. 
Local shooting and non-resident shooting are gradually but- 
surely diminishing the numbers of the chicken through- 
out a large region. If the private preserve does not inter- 
pose, the causes which produced extermination or scarcity 
in parts of its southern habitat, will have like effects in 
the northern part. 
THE KLONDIKE. 
Mk. J. B. BuENHAM, of the Forest and Stream staff, whd 
left New York on Aug. 6 bound for the Klondike, goes to . 
Alaska with a special commission from this journal to. in* 
vestigate and report upon all subjects within its field, from 
Indians and wild duck eggs to mighty moose and living 
mammoths. Mr. Burnham is possessed of enterprise 
pluck and endurance. He has a keen eye to see, a' ready 
intelligence to comprehend, and a graphic pen to record. 
We promise a rich treat in store for those who shall have 
the privilege of reading his Alaskan letters. 
The extremely interesting paper from the pen of Mr. C. 
H. Townsend, of the United States Fish Commission, gives 
beyond question the solution of the Alaskan live mam^ 
moth problem, if indeed the fanciful story may be said 
ever to have attained the dignity of a problem. We print 
to-day the portrait of the progenitor of the entire herd of 
living mammoths, who have careered and cavorted 
through the icy wastes in the imagination of Eskimos 
aiid newspaper scribes; and very lively and terrific creat- 
ures have they been, to have descended from this one 
solitary and innocuous "restored" and "stuffed" specimen 
in a Rochester museum. 
The prevailing interest in Alaska has prompted a Wide 
reading of Mr. Charles Hallock's ''Our New Alaiska," 
issued from the press of the Forest and Stream Publishing 
Co. Its information is very complete, and the descriptive 
chapters artj in Mr. Hallock's best vein. * ' 
Some one has set a-going at Tarpon Springs, Fla.; a' 
warm weather fake mill, and it is running on fall time. 
Among the ingenious lies sent out for the consumption of 
associated press agency readers, three afford interesting 
specimens of newspaper natural history. First came the 
tale of a party of hunters encamped near Tarpon Springs, 
who ventured into the pine woods unarmed, and were set 
upon by a drove of wild razor-back hogs; one man was 
killed, the rest barely escaped. This -svas followed by a 
harrowing account of a family, father, mother and two 
babes, driving in a buggy, who were set upon by a cata- 
mount and badly done up. Then came a circumstantial 
story of a woman rowing in a boat, attacked by water 
moccasins and rattlesnakes, from which she escaped only 
after most of her clothing had been stripped off by the 
infuriated monsters. These tales are pure, unadulterated, 
fabricless and baseless lies, as we have ascertained through 
the offices of our correspondent, Tarpon. The man who 
invented them doubtless had his reward in demonstrating 
that no story is too silly to find its place in the daily 
press. 
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