June i, iqoi.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
423 
were swimming in the water, and as they passed by turned 
their heads repeatedly and looked at us, but seemed in no 
way alarmed. We had a log cabin built near the shore of 
another lake, about two miles from here, where we made 
our headquarters, and had a fine spring right at the 
water's edge. A hundred yards from this spring was a 
large beaver house, and frequently while, going to the 
spring for water we would see beaver swimming in the 
water around this house. They appeared, however, to do 
all their work on the house (which was a new one) at 
night, .^nd if we went down to the spring almost any time 
at night we could hear them striking the water with their 
tails. Evidently this sound which they made with their 
tails upon the water was a signal of some kind to their 
friends. 
We had many beaver cuttings at our camp and at almost 
any point along the shore of these lakes could be found 
old beaver chips and beaver cuttings of various 
sizes. We saw many tre^s, some of which were 
by actual measurement 8 or lo inches in diameter, cut 
down by beaver, and in numerous places found the run- 
ways leading from the water to the banks. A remarkable 
thing to me was how they manage to sink the cuttings 
which they stored in the lake for winter use. Many of 
these twigs, when dislodged, would come to the surface, 
but I was unable to find any in the shallow water which 
appeared to be run into the mud. 
The dams, of which I send you a photograph, appear in 
large numbers, and are made of bushes, from which the 
bark had generally been stripped in feeding. This dam 
also contained stones weighing as much as 7 or 8 pounds 
which they had pushed up on the dam itself. Upon 
several occasions we made small breaks in their dams 
and would invariably find the same repaired next 
morning. 
I know of no more interesting sight than to warch 
beaver and observe tlie care and intelligence which he 
A very considerable number of animals were bom in 
the garden, among them monkeys, wolves, a brown bear, 
antelope, various deers, some birds and a number of 
snakes. There have been also a number of deaths in the 
collection, among which the most noteworthy is that of 
the male Indian rhinoceros, which has been in the collec- 
tion for twenty-six years, and has been thirty-six years in 
the country. 
The usual repairs and improvements have gone on, and 
the quarters of the collections are better than ever before, 
while their general wellbeing is looked after by Mr. Arthur 
Erwin Brown, the secretary of the Society, whose great 
knowledge and singular success in this particular field are 
well understood. 
^Hg and 0nn. 
— <^ — . 
Cold Storage Warehouse Raided. 
It has never been a very profound secret that New 
York cold storage warehouses were crowded with illegal 
game, but to obtain evidence of this that could be u.sed in 
court has many times proved impossible. A few years 
ago, when the notorious Section 249 stood on the statute 
books, it was legal to have in possession at any time 
during the year game that had been legally killed in the 
State, or that had been killed out of the State. Happily, 
however. Section 249 was repealed, and at the present 
time the possession of game birds by any one in the 
State of New York at this season is a misdemeanor. 
. Mr. John E. Overton, State Game Protector, who has 
done excellent wprk on Long Island, has long realized 
BEAVER HOUSE. 
Photo by Dr. C. P. Ambler. 
uses in locating his dam and also his house. Their method 
of building their dams, the arrangement of the sticks, the 
placing of the mud, and the position in which they locate 
the dam so as to give most bracing against the highest 
current of the lake, and all, make one highly respect 
their engineermg abihty. In the construction of a house 
the arrangement of the sticks and mud as an outside pro- 
tection makes their house almost proof against any of 
their foes, while the great labor they expend in excavating 
around the house in order to allow them to make a way 
from the house to the deeper water is simply marvelous. 
We were in the New Brunswick woods in this section 
twenty-nine days, and my diary shows that on fourteen 
different days I have noted seeing beaver by daylight. 
Was I among a colony of beaver which had been so 
httle visited by man that they had no fear of him, or are 
these beaver freaks as regards their habit of appearing in 
the day time? 
To any one who wishes to study this animal, he certainly 
would make no mistake in going into the section men- 
tioned. 
I would like to hear from others. C. P. Ambler. 
ASHEVILLE, N. C- 
Philadelphia Zoological Society. 
The Twenty-ninth Annual Report of the Board of 
Directors of the Zoological Society of Philadelphia has 
just appeared. It covers the period from Feb. 28, 1900. to 
Feb. 28, 1901, and is an interesting document. The num- 
ber of visitors to the garden during the past year was 
191,906, an average attendance of 526 throughout'the year. 
Last year the attendance was somewhat larger, owing to 
the presence in Philadelphia in September, 1899. of the 
encampment of the Grand Army of the Republic. Com- 
pared with ordinary seasons, however, the receipts by 
the society from admissions show an increase. 
Dnring the year there have been exhibited in the garden 
613 specimens of mammals, representing i6g species; 817 
specimens of birds, representing 317 species; 1,069 rep- 
tiles, of 129 species, and 58 batrachians, of 11 species. 
Nearly 50 species of animals have been exhibited this j'ear 
for the first time. Of these, 13 were mammals. 18 birds 
and 16 turtles and snakes. 
that the cold storage warehouses of New York were a 
dumpmg ground for game killed all over the country, and 
at all tmies and all seasons. He knew, as most New 
workers know, that at any time game can be obtained 
from almost any butcher, if ordered a dav or two in 
advance. Some of the restaurant keepers' do not sell 
illegal game, and those who do are careful about it, and 
besides calling their birds by a variety of foreign names, 
cut off the heads and feet from the birds so that identifica- 
tion becomes practically impossible. Butchers who sell 
to private families, however, are not so careful, and snipe 
quail, grouse and certain other birds which the law says- 
shall not be had in possession or sold at this season are, 
as a matter of fact, commonly bought and sold. Prac- 
tically all these birds come from the cold storage ware- 
houses, where they have been frozen, until they have lost 
all taste and character, and have become dry, tasteless 
morsels which are game birds only in name. 
For a long time Mr. Overton has been at work trying- 
to get evidence against the cold storage people which 
should be legal. When he had obtained this, he went with 
It to a police court and obtained a search warrant on 
which he raided the Arctic Freezing Warehouse at' 120. 
West street on Thursdaj- May 23. 
In two rooms on the second floor of the building he 
found 2,100 birds, among which are said to have been 
snipe, woodcock, partridges, quail, grouse, redhead and 
canvasback ducks. It is said that the managers of the- 
freezing plant deny their responsibility in the matter de- 
claring that the birds are not their property but are 
sent there in cases and barrels to be stbred. In fact they 
deny 'any knowledge as to precisely what is stored in 
their place. They do not deny that birds were in their 
place and thus physically in their possession, and precisely 
how they are to avoid the responsibility for this is 
not clear, since the language of the statute is quite 
plain. 
The Arctic Freezing Warehouse is only one of many 
siniilar places m the city, and the knowledge of the raid 
which has been made caused abundant excitement in the 
other similar places. People thought to be in a position 
to know state that for a night or two after the raid they 
had busy times at these cold storage plants moving out 
illegal property. If the full legal penalty should be en- 
forced against the persons interested here, the fine would 
amount to something over $50,000. 
On Friday, the day after the raid, Magistrate Brann, 
who originally gave the warrant for searching the Arctic 
Freezing Company's warehouse, seemed' to have whipped 
around and faced in the other direction. He is reported 
as having been more or less offensive to the State officer, 
and to have expressed sympathy for the warehouse peo 
pie, whose disregard for law and order had been so 
strikingly shown the day befoi-e. He refused to grant a 
warrant for a further search through the warehouse. 
However, not at all discouraged, Mr. Overton applied to 
Judge Foster in General Sessions, and found in him some 
one apparently a little more familiar with the statutes 
than Magistrate Brann appears to' be. Armed with this 
warrant, Mr. Overton returned to the West street place, 
and resuming his search unearthed 2,000 additional game 
birds, besides some barrels of venison. Besides that, a 
lot of "French pheasants" were found, and some barrels 
full of "song birds," which as yet do not appear to have 
been identified. Of these there were said to be about 
1,400. Altogether more than 7,000 illegal birds are be- 
lieved to have been captured, and the fines ifl enforced 
would probably amount to nearly two hundred thousand 
dollars. 
Of course the birds in question were not truthfully 
labeled. Most of the barrels and boxes were tight and 
bore such labels as "young turkeys," "spring broilers." 
"puddle ducks," etc. "Squabs" is a favorite title for a 
great variety of birds, none of which to the simple minded 
ornithologist appear to have any relationship whatever 
with the pigeon family. 
Mr. Overton seems to have the strong backing of Dis- 
trict Attorney Philbin and of Assistant District Attorney 
Walsh, and as he has thoroughly established the illegal 
character of the contents of one storage warehouse he is 
likely to have the backjng of the authorities in investigat- 
ing others. However, the scare has been such a thorough 
one that it may be doubted if any similar success will fol- 
low his further investigation. 
It may be remembered that it is but a short time since 
Mr. Overton was removed from the position of Game 
Protector, to which he was afterward restored. He is 
certainly entitled to great credit for the way in which he 
has worked up this matter of illegal game storage in 
New York city, a course which fits in admirably with the 
energy shown on Long Island, as frequently reported 
during the past fall and winter. 
Texas Ducks and Tarpon. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I want to say a few things about shooting in Texas 
and spring duck and snipe shooting. The duck shooting 
has been tremendous this year; there were more ducks 
around Galveston and on the mainland than have been 
seen for years, but if there is no stop put to spring shoot- 
ing they will soon desert us (and I don't blame them) 
and look for new winter quarters. Now, I .shoot ducks in 
the spring, but for this reason every one does so, and T 
cannot hear reports of good bags being made without 
wanting ter git inter de game mesilf. I hope and pray that 
before long we will have a law in Texas to stop the 
murderous slaughter of ducks and snipe in the spring. If 
we don't, then good-by ducks and jacksnipe. Think of 
two guns taking 185 jacksnipe in seven hours. This is the 
way they are killing them, but it is about over now. Well, 
all I can say is that every true sportsman in Texas should 
pray for a law to prohibit duck and snipe shooting after 
the first of March for five years, or, still better, forever. 
Teal and mallards, bluebills and redheads, and, in fact, 
-nearly all the ducks that now visit us in the winter used 
to breed in Texas. 
An old market-hunter told me that during the Civil 
War in almost every pond on Galveston Island you could 
find a brood of ducks, generally mallards or teal. But 
now if a duck hatched out a brood in less than a week 
some man would find it out and then good-by to those 
■ducklings. One cannot express himself in decent lan- 
guage about men like these, yet they live, carry a gun and 
flourish, and are only waiting for just such a chance as I 
have mentioned. On the mainland east of Galveston to- 
ward Beaumont there are still a few ducks that stay there 
all summer, but they would not be hard to count. If 
these ducks were left alone they would breed there every 
year and soon things would resume their former state 
and shooting would be grand. As it is now, every one 
who has a gun is doing all in his power to run the ducks 
out of the country, and consequently, ruin the shooting, 
and then l:hey will wonder where the ducks have gone and 
why they don't come to certain death. 
There is another thing. When a man kills a duck in 
the spring he kills a whole brood, because ducks breed as a 
rule before they start on their northward journey home. 
Another thing, if you kill one mallard out of a pair, the 
one that is left will not mate again that year. It is the 
same with snipe. If we don't have a law to stop all of this 
we will have no snipe, as well as no ducks. 
There are lots of men in Texas who would welcome a 
law to prohibit wildfowl of any kind being killed in the 
spring (these are the real sportsmen), but they see every 
one else shooting and they see the ultimate end of jt all 
—no ducks; so while it la^ts they are not going to let 
the others have all the fun. There are men whose onlv 
idea is to kill as many birds as possible, who never think 
of the consequence, nor care where or how they kill a 
bird except that they prefer to get them on the ground 
'or on the water bunched up. 
We are going to have everything in fine shape for tarpon 
hshing— boats, men to row you around, in fact everything 
the tarpon fisherman requires, every comfort. I haVe de- 
.scribed the tarpon fishing at Galveston before. Everv- 
thing will be ready by the end of May, and I intend to o-et 
a new tarpon ng and then when I return to Galveston I 
will speiid many a day on the north jetties The new 
pavilion is being put up now. and is going to be great I 
hope Mr. Waddell will be able to pay us a visit he will 
not go away without having enjoyed himself 
Game laws are scarce in Texas? 
Yes; something else going to be "scarce, too, soon 
What is that? 
Answer — Game. C K H B 
