Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Ox. 
t^ii^t s ^o™.aco W .j NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 1904. { No . Jg^S »S 
FEDERAL PROTECTION OF WILDFOWL. 
■ A bill was introduced in the House, on Monday of this 
week, by Hon. George Shiras 3d, of Pennsylvania, entitled 
"An Act to Protect Migratory Game Birds of the United 
States." It is printed on another page. 
This means a Federal law on wildfowl, something for 
which earnest students of the problem of protecting the 
wild ducks, and sportsmen everywhere solicitous to devise 
some efficient scheme of conserving the birds, have been 
earnestly wishing for many years. 
While the suggestion has often been made that a law of 
Congress would accomplish the end which the diverse and 
conflicting laws of the separate States have not secured 
and never could secure, a prevailing objection raised in 
discouragement of Federal action has been found in the 
proposition that the game belongs to the State, its pro- 
tection is an exercise of the police power of the State, and 
Congress has no jurisdiction. 
The course of reasoning by which Mr. Shiras has found 
what he believes to be a sufficient answer to this objec- 
tion is outlined in the text of the measure. Briefly it is 
this : Game birds are of two classes. One class is of 
species which are native to a State, breeding and remain- 
ing within its limits, and so> throughout the entire term of 
their existence properly within its jurisdiction; and may 
efficiently be protected by its laws. The other class is of 
migratory species, which breed in districts beyond the 
State boundaries in the north, and pass, after a tem- 
porary stay, into other districts out of the State boun- 
daries to the south, and being thus only temporarily and 
transiently in the limits of the State they are not properly 
under its jurisdiction, nor may they efficiently be pro- 
tected by it. 
On the other hand, while the control of the individual 
State is temporary only, the control which might be ex- 
ercised by the United States would be so extended as to 
secure the desired end. 
In practice the protection of wildfowl by the States has 
proved ineffectual. If the migratory species are to be 
preserved, they must have the protection which only the 
Federal Government can give. 
The experience of the last quarter-century of game pro- 
tection has convinced us all of the futility of striving to 
secure uniformity of protection for ducks. If it shall be 
attained at all, it must come through the intervention of 
Congress. All technical considerations dismissed, and fine- 
spun theories of State and Federal jurisdiction aside, the 
true consideration of public advantage supports this 
measure of Mr. Shiras. 
The people of this country want the wildfowl protected. 
There is not the slightest question of that. 
If a law of Congress enforced by Federal agencies will 
secure that protection, the people want the law and the 
Federal execution of it. 
Leaving for subsequent consideration certain details of the 
plan as outlined in the measure, we believe that we represent 
■the thoughtful sportsmen of the entire country when we 
■declare that in House Bill 15601 Mr. Shiras has pointed 
■the way to the satisfactory solution of a problem which 
has vexed us for a generation. If we are correct in the 
•estimate of the reception the measure will have, we trust 
that sportsmen everywhere, as individuals and in associa- 
tion as clubs and game protective societies, will declare 
for the Shiras Bill in an expression of support. We share 
the confidence expressed by Mr. Shiras the other day 
when he remarked, "If the sportsmen of the country want 
this law they can have it if they will say so and work 
for it." 
We have now such an opportunity as has never before 
been presented to provide for a wise system of conserving 
a great natural resource, 
AMERICAN FOREST CONGRESS. 
During the first five working days of January next 
there is to be held in Washington an American Forest 
Congress, under the auspices of the American Forestry 
Association. To this congress are invited representa- 
tives of foreign nations, as well as Americans of many 
sorts ; Congressmen, Governors of States and Territories ; 
foresters and generally all people interested in forest 
work. This does not include merely foresters, lum- 
bermen and wood-working associations, but irrigation 
people, miners, stockmen, makers of turpentine, railroad 
men, engineers and members of various Chambers of 
Commerce and Boards of Trade. 
The various subjects to be considered by the con- 
gress are: (1) Relation of the public forest lands to 
irrigation; (2) relation of the public forest lands to 
grazing; (3) the lumber industry and the forests; (4) 
importance of the public forest lands to mining; (5) 
forestry in relation to railroad supplies; (6) national 
forest policy; (7) State forest policy. 
The gathering, which is being brought together at 
the call of some of the most eminent men of the coun- 
try, promises to result in an interchange of views on 
a subject of the very highest importance, and is likely 
to result in great benefit to the whole Northern Ameri- 
can Continent. 
THE CAMEL CAN SWIM. 
One of the most amusing features of the introduction 
of camels into the United States, the story of which has 
been told in our natural history columns, was the pro- 
longed discussion of the question whether the camel could 
swim or would drown. It had been stated on the authority 
of Father Hue that the camel could not swim, and when 
the United States authorities proposed to import the 
beasts for traversing the deserts of the Southwest, the 
obj ection was promptly made that the enterprise would be 
futile because the camels would be unable to cross the 
rivers. As the point was demonstrable by a simple experi- 
ment with the beast in its Asiatic home, one might assume 
that before purchasing camels the authorities would have 
settled the swimming question by a preliminary experi- 
ment; but no one appears at the time to have thought of 
this. The curious discussion was carried on all the while the 
importation was in progress. The camels were landed at 
Indianola, and thence proceeded to Albuquerque, a journey 
of a thousand miles, consuming f orty- five days ; from 
Albuquerque the expedition marched to Zuni, thence to 
the Little Colorado, a stream too shallow for the swim- 
ming test; and then on to the Colorado, where at last the 
conditions were found to settle the long-involved question. 
The river here was from 200 to 300 yards wide, with 
nineteen feet of water in mid-channel flowing at the rate 
of three or four miles an hour. The result of the trial 
was recorded in the New York Tribune of Jan. 22, 1858: 
"Now it was to be proved whether the camel could swim ; 
a test to which Lieutenant Beale had looked forward with 
not a little anxiety. Having reached the Colorado, he was 
determined to settle the question for himself. The first 
camel brought to the bank refused to enter the river; 
but another being brought down, to the great delight of 
the whole company it took the water freely and swam 
boldly across. The others, tied one behind the other in 
strings of five, were taken across in the same way. They 
not only swam with ease, but in this particular, as in 
others, they seemed to outdo the horses and mules. This 
seemed to be the only remaining test needed to establish 
the character of the camel as a beast of burden specially 
suited for those regions." 
Thus at the end of a journey of thousands of miles 
over land and sea, and after months of anxious specula- 
tion, it was determined in the distant Colorado that the 
camel could swim, and the bright minds of the officers, 
for many months burdened with anxious speculation, were 
finally set at rest. 
Had these white men possessed the sconce of a 
Carib they would have decided the question by throw- 
ing a. cheap priced camel into the Red Sea and watching 
to see it swim or drown, Hugh Linchot relates that 
when the first Spaniards arrived at Porto Rico, and the 
islanders saw the great ships and heard the thunder of the 
cannon, and saw the white faces, they thought that 
they had come down from heaven. But the Casique 
Yaguara made a test of their immortality by promptly 
throwing a Spaniard into the water, to try whether he 
would drown or not, and seeing him wholly deprived of 
life, he concluded in consequence that the rest of them 
were mortal, and thereupon set upon them, when they 
were seeking for gold, and killed above a hundred and 
fifty of them. . 
FIRE IN THE WILDERNESS. 
The terrors of fire on the prairie or in the forest have 
often been pictured. Volumes of early travel over the 
plains of the Southwest describe the fury and speed of a 
conflagration on the prairie, the mingling of beasts fero- 
cious and gentle in a common flight, and, after the fire 
had passed by, the blackened, smoking land strewn with 
carcasses. Not a few among our readers have witnessed 
such scenes, and in early days it was not uncommon to 
find on the prairie old buffalo bulls whose sight had been 
destroyed by the flames through which they had run. 
Even within a few months we have seen in Dakota a 
prairie fire which, traveling over level land, ate up within 
our view the stacks and buildings of a prosperous farmer. 
There recently occurred a deplorable conflagration in 
the St. Mary's country in northern Montana, a region well 
known to many of our readers. The fire started within 
the forest reserve on the head of Swift Current River, 
among dead tops left years ago by persons cutting tim- 
ber for houses or for mining use. The wind was blowing 
a gale, and, once beyond control, the fire destroyed the 
local saw-mill near the town of Altyn, one house in that 
town, and thence swept down through a fine body of tim- 
ber south of Swift Current River and over on to Boulder 
Creek, and perhaps all around Flat Top Mountain. The 
few houses occupied by miners and squatters within the 
area covered by the fire were all destroyed, together with 
all their domestic animals. For fury and swiftness no 
fire like this was ever seen, even in that country of forest 
fires. The heat was so intense that fish were cooked in 
Boulder Creek, and within a mile of Swift Current Valley 
a bull elk was found roasted in the timber. 
A large area of mountain and valley once covered with 
beautiful green timber is thus now a blackened waste, and 
many years must elapse before the country shall become 
reafforested. 
The danger to the forest from the heaps of dry tops left 
here through the inefficiency of an employe of the Land 
Office was long ago recognized, and the attention of the 
Land Office calle'd to the peril. To its failure to act in 
the premises is due this disastrous fire. 
WIDGEONS. 
We are not disposed to intervene in the discussion of 
the ethics which should control in the writing of books of 
bear stories ; but we cannot refrain from alluding to the 
contribution which Dr. Morris makes, in his letter printed 
to-day, to the figures of speech drawn from field sports 
and the ways of animals. We say of a detective that he 
is "on the wrong scent ;" of a man who is used to induce 
others to do something that he is a "decoy duck;" of one 
who is making a mistaken attack that he is "barking up 
the wrong tree ;" of a fugitive who is caught that he has 
been "run to earth;" of one who is indiscreet in certain 
methods that he is trying to "hunt ducks with a brass 
band;" of a lawyer quizzing a witness in a certain way 
that he is on a "fishing excursion" for information; and 
so ; on, as any of us may note in the speech of the next person 
who talks to us. In his exposition of the principle that 
we must grin and bear it when we believe ourselves to 
have been stolen from and must find our recompense in 
the joy of the struggle and the consciousness of having 
contributed something to the sum total of human good, 
Dr. Morris draws a new figure of speech from the wild 
ducks whose habits he has noted as a sportsman. Having 
observed the ways of the widgeon which gets its fine 
flavor by snatching the dainty roots of the wild celery 
brought to the surface by other ducks, he applies the 
figurative appellation "widgeon" to those members of the 
human family who appropriate to themselves the good 
things brought to light by their fellow workers in the 
various fields of literature and science, not forgetting the, 
medical profession, as to which we may assume that the 
opinion of Dr. Morris should be accepted. Such appro- 
priated he calls "widgeons." The term is felicitous; it 
describes the thing perfectly. We are all familiar with 
the phenomenon ; the widgeons, like the poor, are always, 
with us, 
