Ap&it g, 1904.J 
^93 
decaying carcass enabled them to locate it at some con- 
siderable distance. I was once walking through the 
woods, when I suddenly came upon a black bear, not 
over 25yds. away; it was standing looking at me, 
and I shot it in the head. On going to it, I found it 
had been to dinner and had just finished burying the 
remains of a deer, on which it had been feeding; and as 
it had been busy at its work it had not noticed my ap- 
proach. A few days later I learned that a hunter had 
wounded a deer, which had escaped from him in that 
exact locality, about two weeks before, indicating that 
It had been found by the bear only after the carcass had 
begun to decay. 
In all the bears which I have followed, I have never 
seen any actions or signs to indicate that they were look- 
ing Jor game: always prying into such places as would 
be a likely harbor for insects or mice, or where honey, 
roots or berries of any kind might be found. In fact 
if one who had never heard of such an animal, and 
knowing nothing whatever of their habits, if such were 
possible, were to go into the woods where bears live, and 
make a study of them, his impression would be that they 
were vegetarians, as there is so little in their actions 
when hunting for food to denote a beast of prey. 
Mr. Long says, in speaking of the Yellowstone park : 
"Mr. C. J. Jones, game warden of the park, says posi- 
tively that bears are not molested there simply because 
they do no harm to the game. * * * ygj. Qj^g man's 
experience counts for j ust one man's experience and no 
more in settling any question of animal habits." Now 
I would like to take exception to this last statement : If 
it was a matter of casting votes, where each .counted the 
same, that would be correct ; but when it comes to de- 
termining the habits of animal life in North America, 
the verdict of Col. Jones should count equal to that of 
a half dozen average readers of Forest and Stream; 
for the number of men living to-day who have had an 
equal experience, in an equal extent of territory, of equal 
intelligence, and who have observed and studied wild 
animals to the same extent and thoroughness as has Mr. 
Jones, are very, very few. 
At one time a disease broke out in our town which was 
declared by some of our local medical men to be small- 
Alaska Game Law. 
A HEARING was had last week before the Committee 
on Territories of the United States Senate on Mr. Dil- 
lingham's Senate bill 4,166, which repeals the game laws 
of Alaska, and which, if passed, will, it is believed, re- 
sult in the speedy extinction of large game in Alaska, 
and the consequent starvation and death of large num- 
bers of the natives. 
It is a curious thing that the persons who are re- 
ported to chiefly advocate this bill, advance as their 
principal reason for its advocacy, their wish to benefit 
the natives, and do not appear to realize that wholesale 
permission to slaughter at all seasons of the year for 
commercial and other purposes, while it may help the 
natives for a year, or possibly two years, will then have 
placed them in greater straits than ever. 
One of the chief advocates of this repealing bill is 
reported to be a gentleman very familiar with matters 
in southeastern Alaska, and with the facts as to the 
deer there, but not familiar with conditions in the 
farther north, principally affected by the game law. 
Among the letters received by the committee we print 
two — one signed by the president of the Boone and 
Crockett Club, addressed to Senator Dillingham, and 
another from Mr. Andrew J. Stone, addressed to Mr. 
Madison Grant, Secretary of the N. Y. Zoological So- 
ciety. Mr. J. Alden Loring, of Owego, N. Y., also wrote 
Mr. Grant a letter similar in tenor to the one printed 
in Forest and Stream last week. 
We give the letters below: 
Boone and Crockett Club, 
Secretary's Office, 11 Wall Street. . 
New York, March 23, 1904. 
Hon. W. P. Dillingham, Senate Chamber, Washing- 
ton, D. C: 
Dear Sir— At a recent meeting of the Boone and 
Crockett Club resolutions were passed putting the Club - 
on record as opposing Senate Bill No. 4,166, for the 
reasons stated in this letter. A copy of the Club book 
is enclosed to show the personnel and purposes of the 
organization. 
A letter just handed us by Mr. C. Grant La Farge, 
in which you set forth in great detail your views on 
the subject, would indicate that you place much reliance 
on the information furnished you by the gentlemen men- 
tioned therein. 
We would say in reply to this, that the Boone and 
Crockett Club is not composed of gentlemen who have 
purely theoretical or academic views, but its members 
have a very considerable amount of practical informa- 
tion on the subject. 
Many members of the Club, notably -Dr. C. Hart 
Merriam, Mr. Walter B. Devereux and Dr. Lewis R. 
Morris, are familiar with the condition of affairs in 
Alaska from a study on the spot Other members, like 
pox, while others insisted it was not. In order to arrive 
at a correct conclusion, an expert of the medical pro- 
fession who was the most experienced, and highest au- 
thority obtainable, was sent for to come and decide the 
case in dispute. 
Most of us who are interested in wild animals are but 
amateurs, while Col. Jones may be compared to a pro- 
fessional, and his conclusions should have corresponding 
weight. The "observations" of all should count for the 
same, as far as they go, regardless of the experience 
of the observer, but the weight of conclusions must de- 
pend upon the extent of experience. All respect and 
consideration are due to those who take the other side, 
for some there be among them who are of long expe- 
rience, and whose conclusions are not to be ignored. 
Emerson Carney. 
Morgantown, W. Va. 
In our issue of March 19, Mr. Manly Hardy gave an 
account of a \Tioose, which, as the circumstances indicated, 
had been killed by a bear. Mr. Hardy writes : "By a 
misprint I was made to say that there was a 'light sun.' 
I wrote 'light snow.' Mr. Staples, who found the moose, 
told me he could see every motion, just how the bear 
had crept up to the moose, which was lying down, how 
he had jumped on its neck and held it down, and how 
they struggled over a large place; but the moose never 
was able to get on its feet. The bear was a small one, 
while the moose was a large one, with nine points on 
each horn. I know of another case where a moose, after 
the entrails were removed, was turned over on its breast 
to let the blood out and was left over night. In the night 
a bear crept up to within springing distance, evidently 
thinking the moose was not dead, and sprang on it and 
clawed it; but finding it was dead left without eating 
any." , 
New York, April 2.- — Editor Forest and Stream: The 
new question which has just come up as to the destruc- 
tion of gaiiie by bears is of very great interest, less from 
the practical side of game preservation than from the 
natural history side. 
I know nothing whatever of the black bear of the East, 
Mr. Jas. H. Kidder and Dr, Lord Smith have hunted 
there season after season. 
In addition to this, members of the Club have sup- 
ported the Andrew J. Stone expedition, and are thor- 
oughly familiar with its results. Mr. Stone probably 
knows more than any living man about the animals of 
Alaska, having traversed something over one thousand 
miles of the Canadian arctic coast, having crossed from 
the Mackenzie to the Yukon Rivers, and having hunted 
for us during the last three years along the south coast 
of Alaska from the Alaska peninsula to the Stickene 
River, B. C, and in the interior. 
_ Mr. J. Alden Loring was also sent, under the direc- 
tion of some members of the Club, to the head waters 
of Cook Inlet three years ago; a letter from him bear- 
ing on the subject is enclosed. 
_ Our authority on the question of the walrus and sea 
lion is Mr. Charles H. Townsend, who was for many 
years in the U. S. Fish Commission, and who is an 
international authority on the fur seals of Bering Sea, 
as well as on the sea lions and walrus. 
In addition to this we have many sources of informa- 
tion, such as Mr. Phelps, as appears in the letters to 
which you refer, so that the views we express are not 
without some basis. 
_ We may say to start with that all the above authori- 
ties are in absolute accord and against the proposed 
repeal. 
As to the invasion of the immemorial right of the 
natives to trap, the report of the sub-committee of the 
Committee on Territories is erroneous, as there is 1K> 
limitation in the existing law on the killing of any fur- 
bearing animal, except bear, which latter can be killed 
during the spring, when their fur is at its best. There 
is also in the law no limitation as to the killing of 
animals for food by natives, explorers, miners or trav- 
elers, the purpose of the law being to preserve for the 
residents of Alaska, both native and white, the present 
store of food animals, and to prevent a few professional 
hunters from destroying them en masse for commercial 
purposes. 
There is no surer way to destroy the game, and to 
prevent anyone from having fresh meat, than to allow 
the employment of paid hunters to supply meat to steam- 
boats, mining camps and settlements. 
Senate Bill No. 4.166 seems to be based on an erro- 
neous view of the needs of the natives, and on the 
mistaken idea that they are dependent on meat for food. 
As a matter of fact the coast natives are fish eaters 
rather than meat eaters. 
The natives, when demoralized by the presence of 
whites, and when equipped with modern firearms, • are 
not only reckless and improvident killers of game, but 
are frequently used as agents for white hunters who 
wish to evade the law.: 
The present limitations on the killing of animals are 
and very little about the bears of any region. On one 
occasion, however, I followed a band of elk for a long 
time through the snow over the mountains. I had hoped 
to Gome up with them, but for the last mile or two of 
my travel a medium sized grizzly bear had cut in ahead 
of me and was following the elk trail. This alone proves 
nothing. The bear might have had a dozen motives fot 
doing what he did. 
On the other hand, if we may trust the stories told by 
the plains Indians of buffalo days, bears sometimes at- 
tacked and killed buffalo and also elk. I have cited a 
case, on the testimony of an eye witness, where a grizzly 
bear tried to kill a buffalo and was subsequently— after 
a long fight— himself killed by a young bull that was 
with the heifer. 
Indian stories of fact and myth frequently speak of 
bears killing buffalo, and tell how the bears crept arourid 
in the brush of river bottoms to get near enough to 
spring on the buffalo. An old Blackfoot friend, now 
dead, told me of seeing a grizzly bear kill an elk, and - 
I remember his saying "he bit it in the jaw," implying, 
of course, that the bear grasped the elk's neck with his 
arms and crushed the head with his jaws. 
While the food of the bear is exceedingly varied, we 
all recognize that they eat flesh when they can get it, 
and I believe that they will return day after day for 
weeks to a carcass, until nothing remains of it except 
the larger bones, which they still seem to like to mumble- 
or play with. 
Personally, I have absolute confidence in what Mr. 
Manly Hardy says of the eastern black bear of his region, 
for Mr. Hardy's experience goes back further than that 
of most of us, and he is a most careful observer. 
G. B. G. 
The Linnaean Society. 
A regular meeting of the Society will be held at the 
American Museum of Natural History, 77th Street and 
Eighth Avenue, New York, April 12, at 8 P. M. The 
speakers will be : L. B. Bishop, "Further Notes on the 
Winter Birds of Pea Island, N. C"; Wm. Dutcher, "The 
Work of the National Committee on Bird Protection?' 
absolutely necessary in the interests of the natives them- 
selves, as the walrus has been greatly reduced in numbers 
along the Alaskan peninsula, and the sea lion must be 
protected if it is to be preserved much longer. 
As to the alleged numbers of brown bear, we cannot 
help but feel that you have been misinformed both as 
to its numbers and ferocity. 
On the Alaskan peninsula and on Kadiak Island the 
brown bears have been reduced to a small fraction, of 
their former numbers. These bears are fish and vege- 
table rather than meat eaters. The writers have been 
concerned in several expeditions for these bear during 
the last two or three years. 
As to the caribou on the Alaska and Kenai peninsulas 
they are on the verge of extinction. In the latter district 
their numbers in 1902 had been reduced to less than 
forty. There are no elk in Alaska. 
The necessity of protecting animals during their breed- 
ing_ season, the protection of breeding females, the lim- 
itation of the numbers to be killed by one person, and 
the absolute prohibition of commerce in hides, meat 
and antlers, are fundamental principles. 
Every State in the Union, every province in Canada, 
in fact, every civilized community on earth, including 
the newly organized protectorates in Africa, especially 
Uganda, has found it necessary to apply these principles 
and restrict the indiscriminate killing of wild animals, 
both by whites and by natives, in consequence of the 
universal introduction of modern firearms, especially re- 
peating and long-range rifles. 
Until two years ago Alaska alone was without such 
protection, and the wasteful slaughter of game there 
was without check. An exceedingly liberal law was 
passed in 1902. This law it is now proposed to repeal, . 
and to leave without protection all birds, all sheep, • 
goats, walrus, and sea lions, and impose a nominal re- 
striction on the export only of hides and heads of the 
three species of deer. 
A license is imposed of twenty-five dollars for resi- 
dents, and one ten times as large for non-residents. 
Under this dealers can ship two moose and two caribou 
heads worth $150 to $200 apiece for each $25 license 
taken out in the name of some resident. 
It is scarcely credible that the Senate of the United 
States, having before it the destruction of the buffalo, 
and other large mammals in the west, which to-day is 
a standing reproach to the civilization of our country, 
would _ deliberately remove from the statute books a'll 
protection for the game animals in the one locality where 
they still exist in anything like their former numbers. 
Those who are not familiar with the details of the 
destruction of the buffalo, as well as the elk, sheep and 
deer in North America, cannot realize how quickly such 
destruction can take place. In the years 1880 and 1881 
the buffalo north of the Union Pacific Railroad were 
estimated at 500,000. Less than five years afterward, 
