Hay 12, 1955,1 
soon wander away from it, and often may be found a 
long way off, just as shy as old birds would be and 
just as ready to race into the brush or to take to wing. 
They do not seem to learn anything by association with 
others of their kind, but to be born with a full knowledge 
of how to look out for themselves. 
The hatching process of the megapodes is paralleled by 
that of no other group of birds, but of course it has its 
analogue in manj^ of the reptiles. It is something that 
has been much marveled over, hut never satisfactorily 
explained by naturalists. 
Our Wild Neighbors. 
Many of the furred and feathered wild animals about us 
can be tamed and taught if taken in hand when young 
and treated with kindness. 
The gray squirrel is perhaps the most common and 
entertaining of wild pets. I once had a pair of these 
interesting little animals that furnished a great deal of en- 
tertainment to all who saw them. They not only were 
perfectly at home in their new surroundings, but were 
full of frolic and fun from morning till night. They 
were given plenty of room in a spare chamber, where 
they had free access to all the corn, nuts and other food 
they needed. They built a nest of old newspapers and 
ether material about the size of a bushel basket, where 
they reared a family of five young. If any one disturbed 
them by touching the nest they had a comical way 
of striking with their paws and growling at the same 
time. 
They will rarely bite any one. I was bitten but once. 
I was giving them strawberries, of which they are very 
fond, and while holding a berry between my thumb and 
finger so that he could not get it readily he took the 
way ntaure had taught him — that was, to cut it out 
with his teeth, and commenced by biting through my 
finger, for which I could not blame him, and of course 
he got the strawberry. 
My experience with red squirrels as pets has not been 
so pleasant on account of their being so handy with their 
teeth; but by taking them when young and treating them 
with kindness, I have known them to become very lively 
and interesting pets. 
My experience with the flying squirrel has been some- 
what limited. They are extremely handsome and are 
very amiable, and display a great disposition to frolic 
but unless one could sit up nights they would lose the 
display, for being noctural in their habits the circus be- 
gins after dark, and is kept up till morning, as I have 
found by the condition of the room, where they had 
overturned flower pots, pulled down turtains, hanging 
vines, and all movable articles within reach. 
Young skunks I have never tried to educate, but I once 
knew a man who tried it. He secured a number of 
young ones, and they were very pretty, and as playful as 
kittens. Placing them by the fire in the room where 
the family spent most of their time, in order to domesti- 
cate them, all went well until some one accidentally 
angered or frightened one of them, which caused such 
a disagreeable change in the atmosphere that all except 
the skunks were compelled to vacate the room until it 
could be thoroughly ventilated. This led to the final 
banishment of the pets, for the reason that they required 
too much care to insure the safety of those who had 
them in charge. 
One of the most interesting little animals for a pet is 
the common muskrat. A friend of mine, who is very fond 
of our wild neighbors, has one that he caught when 
young and has taught him to come when called by name, 
and to follow him like a dog. It goes in bathing with 
him in the pond in summer, swimming and playing in 
the water with him until he comes out, when it follows 
him home. It makes a very neat and interesting house 
pet; so much so that my friend says his wife would not 
part with it for $50. 
He has also tried the woodchUck as a pet. It became 
quite tame, and made itself very much at home about the 
house, but when the short days in autumn came it showed 
a disposition to go to sleep; so a nice bed of straw and 
other material was placed in a box, which it examined, 
. and then proceeded to add more straw and curled up and 
went to sleep and could not be awakened; so the box and 
contents were placed in the cellar till spring, when the 
woodchuck came out after his. long sleep as bright and 
active and ready to eat clover as ever. 
Of the feathered tribe of birds of prey I have experi- 
mented with the red-tailed hawk and the great horned 
and barred owl; the last became quite tame and made 
itself very useful by catching rats and mice; but these 
carnivorous birds are too bloodthirsty to be inter- 
esting as pets. 
One of the most interesting birds I ever had was a wild 
pigeon that I took from the nest when I was a boy. It 
became very tame and grew rapidly, and soon had a very 
handsome plumage. It would come when called by 
name and eat and drink from my hand, and was pre- 
vented from flying far by having the end of one of its 
wings clipped. It would' be hard to find a single speci- 
men in our forests to-day of what Avas once one of the 
most beautiful of our game birds — wiped out heedlessly 
and needlessly like the buffalo by the selfishness of the 
animal man, who seems to ignore the fact that when once 
gone they are gone forever. 
Nearly all of our wild neighbors of the field and forest 
can be domesticated and educated if treated with kind- 
ness, and will be entertaining friends. I would have 
more confidence in any one who is kind to our dumb 
friends, and trust them much further, than I would those 
who treat them cruelly and torm^ent them. 
G. L. B. 
Wild Turkey Weights. 
The New Bern, N. C, Journal reports : "George Rus- 
sell claims to be the champion wild turkey killer of the 
.'leason, and the wild turkey he shot last week at Hancock 
Greek will be hard to equal, let alone beat. Dressed for 
the table, the turkey weighed 18V2 pounds. The bird was 
a gobbler and his beard was 12 inches long. Georgie can 
justly wear the turkey feather in his cap as, the champion. 
But this is not an extraordinary weight for a wild turkey* 
We have chronicled many much heavier birds. 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Big Game of the Far North. 
BY A. J. STONE. 
From the Bulletin of the Americati Museum of Natural H istory. 
\Concluded from page 347.] 
Rangifer, Genus. The Caribous. — It is to me a matter 
of deep regret that I cannot see in the future of the North 
the same bright prospects for the continued existence of 
the caribou that there are for the moose, for the caribou, 
the grandest of all northern land animals, is doomed. It 
is so constituted as to render it incapable of so well 
eluding its pursuers and surviving its enemies as the 
moose. For years it has supplied the natives of the 
North with more food than has the moose, and in addi- 
tion clothes the greater portion of the population. 
The caribou found north of latitude 56° are as yet very 
imperfectly known. I have traversed long stretches of 
country in the endeavor to learn something more of them, 
but the question now seems to me a greater problem than 
before. The country occupied by them is so large, the 
distances are so great, and the means of travel are so 
inadequate, that the task of properly tracing the dis- 
tribution and reltaionships of these animals is a gigantic 
one. 
These animals range throughout the mainland of North 
America from about latitude 48° to the most northerly 
limits of the continent at Boothia, in latitude 72°, and they 
are found from the eastern border of Labrador west, 
through 110° of longitude to the extreme point of the 
Alaskan Peninsula; they inhabit the woodlands, the vast 
barren plains, and the most desolate rock-bestrewn moun- 
tain tops. Vast droves of them [the Barren Ground 
caribou, Rangifer arctictis (Rich.)] leave the Arctic coast 
in the fall and travel south toward the tjmber, returning 
to the coast in the spring. This same migration occurs 
in the region to the west of the Mackenzie as well as in 
the region east of that river, and yet the herds of these 
two regions never intermingle or come in contact with 
each other in any way. Notwithstanding this regular 
migration to and from the coast every year, as winter 
comes and goes, vast numbers never leave the coast dur- 
ing any part of the year. It has become clearly evident 
to me that the animals composing one of these herds 
are larger than those of the other herd; they also occupy 
areas widely separated, with little, if any, opportunity 
for comminngling, while other conditions tend to the de- 
velopment of distinct forms. I therefore feel safe in 
saying, after my limited personal observations, that the 
caribou are the least known of any of the more important 
North American mammals, and that they present a most 
inviting field for study, with excellent possibilities of 
ample reward for the labor expended; and I may further 
add that the time for their investigation is limited. To 
successfully prosecute such a, work would necessitate the 
expenditure of a considerable sum of money, and re- 
quire a vast amount of pluck, perseverance and patience, 
and entail on the part of the explorer the endurance of 
much privation and hardship. 
On one of the charts accompanying this report [not 
here reproduced] are represented various sections of the 
country in the North most prolific in caribou life. Each 
of these large areas should be visited for the purpose of 
studying in life the different varieties of caribou inhabit- 
ing them, and numerous specimens, with complete and 
careful measurements. shouM be secured in order to fur- 
nish the zoologist with the means of properly investigat- 
ing these animals. 
The mighty Mackenzie seems to form, through its 
entire length,_a well-defined dividing line between eastern 
and western herd.s — in fact, we find that at most points 
this dividing line is a broad belt of country, in places 
more than 100 miles wide. The herds that reach the 
coast in the spring, to the west and east of the Mackenzie 
Delta, never approach each other nearer than 75 miles, 
and rarely so near as this. 
West of the Mackenzie vast numbers have been slaugh- 
ered to provide the whalers wintering at Herschel Island 
with fresh .meat. The natives, who are often the regular 
hunters sent from the ships, shoot them, consume the 
head, shoulders and ribs, and cache the saddles until 
thirty to fifty of them have been accumulated, when the 
ships' sleds go out and draw them in. 
The inhabitants of Herschel Island informed me that 
the saddles procured there from the mainland generally 
weighed about 33 pounds per saddle, while those coming 
from Richards Island, or Kittygagzyooit, to the east 
of the Mackenzie, average considerably heavier. In the 
mountains east of the Mackenzie, both south and north 
of Bear River and Great Bear Lake, there is a large kind 
of caribou which I believe to be different from any of 
the others here mentioned. A large form is also to be 
found in the Rockies, west of the Mackenzie, which 
ranges north well into the headwaters of the Peel River. 
Again, to the north of the Porcupine, and in the 
regions of the headwaters of the Koyukuk, Noatak. 
Kowak and Colville rivers, we also hear of large caribou. 
The large mountain caribou (Rangifer monfanus. 
Seton-Thompson) taken by me in the Cassiar Moun- 
tains, September, 1897, I believe to range throughout the 
Cassiar range and to occupy a considerable territory in 
the Rockies tc the east of the Cassiar Mountains, and 
11 extends for a considerable distance both to the north 
and south of the latitude in which my specimens were 
taken, f am very skeptical as to the species having ever 
extended south to within the borders of the United 
States. A quite large caribou inhabits the timbered 
slopes to the south of the Liard River, down through the 
Peace, Athabasca and Saskatchewan districts, and in 
all probability this is the animal occasionally taken in 
northern Montana and Idaho. 
The species of which I forwarded specimens to the 
American Museum of Natural History, in the fall of 
3897, occupy a habitat almost identical with that of Ovis 
stonei. They range high in the mountains, winter and 
summer, are very rarely found in timber, and feed but 
little in the cations, even above timber line. Several 
adult specimens were taken and very carefully measured, 
these measurements indicating great uniformity in size. 
Hudson Bay traders who once occupied posts at old 
Fort Yukon and at the Ramparts- on the Porcupine 
tell me that there was at one time a red caribou in the 
mountains north oi these places, and numerous Loucheux 
S6i 
Indians gave me the same information, but they had not 
seen any of them for several years, and did not believe 
that any were to be found there now. If, however, they 
ever existed, it is highly probable that some yet rem_ain 
in the region of the headwaters of the rivers mentioned 
above, as it is a game region little disturbed by natives 
and never molested by white men. 
The color of a very young moose calf is that known 
in horses as a deep bay; at a very early age a line of dark 
hair makes its appearance along the top of the neck, 
and continuing along the back, terminates with the end 
of the tail; this rapidly becomes very prominent until 
the young moose assume very much the appearance of 
young mules, which are often marked in the same man- 
ner. As the calf begins to assume its winter coat, this 
stripe gradually loses its prominence, the entire coat be- 
coming dark. 
Caribou calves are lighter in color, the shading of red 
is not so even over the body, being lighter on the lower 
flanks and on the belly and legs, and it lacks the dark 
dorsal stripe of the moose calf. Caribou and moose 
calves are both small when first born, the moose calf 
being especially small in proportion to the size of its 
parents, but the calves of both grow very rapidly, far 
more rapidly than a domestic calf, in proportion to the 
size of the matured animals. 
I believe the antlers of the caribou are rather untrust- 
worthy in determining species, but I am confident that 
the average antler of the larger species is heavier than 
the average antler of the smaller species. I have seen 
numerous heads of antlers of the Barren Ground caribou 
that were very long, but they are always light and delicate 
in proportion to their length, and never have the weight 
or strength of antlers of the larger caribou of the same 
length. I have in my possession a pair of antlers from 
a large inland caribou that I believe will weigh twice as 
much as the largest pair of Barren Ground caribou 
antlers ever found. 
May 12, while skirting the west shore of Franklin Bay, 
a herd of about twenty-five head of caribou were sighted 
on the sloping mountainside inland. By the aid of my 
glasses I could make them out to be a bunch of females 
with some of the calves of the preceding year. They 
were traveling northward at a fair pace, and were among 
the advance guard to reach the coast, these animals evi- 
dently reaching Cape Bathurst by the isth of the month. 
They were traveling pretty nearly in single file during the 
hour they were in view. 
When these animals discover the hunter or traveler 
they will generally run around him in a circle until they 
get wind of him, when they are off. But in running this 
circle, I may add that their judgment as to the distance 
a rifle ball will carry is very good. While thus circling 
around I have often been amused at the manner in 
which they carry one hind leg. A novice in the hunting 
field, after having fired a shot in their direction, would 
think that he had broken one hind leg of each member 
of the herd. 
The destruction of caribou is vastly greater among the 
Barren Ground or small caribou of the far North than 
among the larger caribou further south, and I can hardly 
agree with a well-known writer, who, after a trip down 
the Yukon on a river steamer that carried him rapidly 
through the Territory, says, "At one time huge herds of 
reindeer roamed wild over the mossy plains of Alaska. 
A time came, however, when, the Eskimos grew so 'civ- 
ilized' as to possess (and own) guns, the natural result 
being that the reindeer were exterminated for sport, not 
for meat." 
Very little game do our Northern Indians or Eskimos 
kill for the sport of shooting, and with or without modern 
firearms, these people, if left to themselves, would never 
exterminate their game, and especially is this true of the 
Eskimo. It is the presence of the w'hite man among the 
natives that is so dangerous to such animals as. the 
caribou. 
Our Northern Indians, as they formerl}^ roamed over 
their hunting grounds, - following the lakes and streams, 
lived much of the year upon fish, as they do still, al- 
though possessing firearms, and they were capable of 
making beautiful nets of the willow bark for the purpose 
of taking fish, food being thus acquired with much 
less labor than attends the hunting of large game. 
When they resort to the hunting field it is nearly always 
for the purpose of obtaining furs. The flesh of the bear, 
beaver, lynx, marmot and muskrat, with an occasional 
moose and some birds and fish, furnishes the greater part 
of their food. They formerly hunted caribou and sheep 
only in the fall, when in need of their skins for clothing, 
at which time the flesh would also be utilized. 
But now numerous trading posts must be supplied 
with both meat and skins, and the natives, while killing 
this meat for the posts, must live and support their 
families and dogs on the same flesh, all of which greatly 
increase the slaughter of these animals. Our Eskimos 
are practically all fish eaters, and the custom has been 
for them to obtain the principal part of their food from 
the water, killmg every fall just enough sheep and cari- 
bou, principally caribou, to provide them with clotEing 
tor the winter; and the possession of firearms would never 
have materially changed tliis, but for the fact that both 
the whales and walrus in Bering Sea waters have been 
very much reduced in numbers during the past thirty 
years by the white man, which has naturally had a ten- 
dency to take the Eskimo hunter more inland. But the 
real key to the problem of extermination of our Northern 
caribou is the demand of the white man for the 
flesh and skins of this animal. The large whaling 
fleets in Bering Straits and as far north as Point 
Barrow have created a demand for the flesh of 
the caribou, and they are slaughtered by the thousand 
tor the purpose of barter. Now this demand has been 
extended by this fleet of whalers along the Arctic coast 
as far east as Cape Parrj-. 
One winter fifteen vessels wintered at Herschel Island, 
and I am reliably informed that these vessels each used 
from io,oco pounds to 20.000 pounds of caribou meat, 
an aggregate of over ,300.000 pounds in one -winter, prin- 
cipally the saddles. Af the head of Franklin Bay, in the 
winter of 1897-98, four ships used of the same kind of 
meat about 90,000 pounds, and at Cape Bathurst, in 1898- 
99, one vessel used in the neighborhood of 40,000 pounds. 
We may clearly infer from this that it is not the pres- 
ence of the modern rifle, alone» npr is it the sporting 
