Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
' V • ' - - ■ I I » 
Terms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. ( NEW YORK SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 190B. { No. 346°BroadwIy7new York. 
Six Months, $3. ) ^ > ' ' ^ 
^The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
'ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen-. 
The editors invite communications on tlie subjects to wiiich its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. Wliile it is intended to give \f/ide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms : For single 
cdpies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iii. 
The object of this Journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre- 
ation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
ObiectS. Announcement in first number of 
Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
CALIFORNIA FRUITS AND BIRDS. 
With the coming into^ any country of civilized man 
come also changes in physical conditions which affect the 
whole region. When the forest is cut down, woods 
dwelling birds disappear with the forests; when thickets 
are cleared up, the birds of the brush patches take their 
departure. Fields and cultivated land bring at once spe- 
cies which belong to the prairie and the open valleys. 
Some birds disappear because their food and their homes 
have disappeared, other species come to live in the land 
because their food has come. Quadrupeds in many cases 
move away or come in because of appearance or dis- 
appearance of conditions favorable or unfavorable to 
their life. 
A recent paper from the pen of F. E. L. Beal, Economic 
Ornithologist of the Biological Survey, treats of the rela- 
tion of birds to fruit growing in California, and contains 
much information which is interesting and useful. With- 
in the past few years we have become accustomed to see- 
ing and hearing much sentimental writing and talk about 
the birds, and it might be supposed from much that is 
said that no birds did any harm. This, of course, is not 
true. Many birds perform great services for the farmer, 
but others do much damage to the crops. One of the 
most striking and best known examples of this is found 
in the rice plantations of the south, where the rice birds 
of half a dozen species sometimes almost destroy the 
crop. 
California has a long- extent from north to south and 
consists of mountain and plain,, seashore, swamp and 
river, so that it is rich in bird life, both as to species and 
individuals. Besides the ordinary north and south mi- 
jgrations there occurs here, too, one from east to west; 
' that is from the high mountains where the birds breed, to 
the lower lands and valleys where they spend the winter. 
In California birds do very serious damage to the fruit 
crops, but on the other hand they perform great services 
by eating vast quantities of noxious insects. The harm 
which they do is direct and obvious and is too important 
to be overlooked ; while the good done by the destruction 
of insect pests is indirect, and often understood only by 
thoughtful people. The lack of wild fruits on the Pacific 
coast and the absence of water in summer, which may 
cause the introduced fruits to be attacked . because their 
juices may supply needed water, suggest themselves as 
two reasons for the injury to fruit by the birds. It has 
generally been found that the birds doing damage to any 
special crop are either great congregations of birds of a 
single species or of birds of two or three closely allied 
species. 
The house finch is perhaps the leader among the birds 
which do harm to fruits. Its strong beak enables it to 
cut through the skins of the toughest fruit. Seeds con- 
stitute the chief food of this bird. It eats few noxious 
insects, but many noxious seeds. It is a brightly colored 
bird and possesses a sweet song, and the matter of balanc- 
ing its good and its bad aualities is one of some difficulty. 
Very serious damage is done by this species as well as by 
the white crown sparrows by eating the buds of fruit 
trees in the very early spring. 
If Brewer's blackbird eats cherries to some extent, it 
also- eats a multitude of grubs and other ground-dwelling 
insects, and many of our readers have seen a procession 
of these blackbirds in early spring following the plow 
through the California fields, destroying in great numbers 
ihe grubs an4 atlier msects turned up by tl\p hxm^h 
The California jay is another very destructive bird; 
destructive not only for what it eats, but for what it 
carries off. The jay's well known habit of taking away 
and hiding food after its appetite is satisfied is practiced 
by the robbers of the California orchards. In one case two 
continuous lines of jays were seen passing, the one up, 
the other down a ravine to an orchard, each bird of the 
line going up carrying a prune in its beak, while the 
other line returned empty-mouthed. This sort of thing 
kept up for hours or days would, of course, soon destroy 
the whole crop. The California quail is believed to de- 
stroy many grapes. In a large vineyard in southern Cali- 
fornia the loss was estimated as twenty tons annually. 
There are other birds that do a great deal of harm, and 
of these the robin is one of the most important, for he 
destroys great quantities of olives. At times the olive 
orchards are visited by robins in such numbers that, not- 
withstanding all the shooting that is done in the effort to 
protect the crop, there seems to be a real scramble be- 
tween the olive pickers and the birds as to which shall 
get the greater share of the fruit. Mr. Ellwood Cooper, 
an olive grower who has suffered greatly from the robins, 
believes that they visit the olive orchards only when the 
crop of native berries in the Sierra Nevada Mountains 
has failed them. The birds by no means come every year 
to the orchards, and it is quite possible that this accounts 
for their depredations. 
A year or two ago attention was called by a corre- 
spondent of the Forest and Stream to the destruction of 
apples by Lewis' woodpecker. On some occasions, the 
visits of these birds to the apple orchard are so constant 
that a great amount of fruit is destroyed. 
There are a multitude of small insect-eating birds that 
perform astonishing services to the fruit grower and the 
farmer generally in California as elsewhere; but the in- 
jury done by the fruit-eating birds must also be consid- 
ered, and efforts made to reduce it. 
ALBANY OR WASHINGTON? 
The Nebraska law which forbids the importation into 
the State of game from another State during the time 
when "such other State prohibits the transportation of 
such game from said State to a point without the same," 
might appear to be an interference in interstate com- 
merce. But according to a ruling of the United States 
Supreme Court in the case of Gear vs. State of Connec- 
ticut, game, the export of which is forbidden, cannot be- 
come a subject of interstate commerce; hence the game 
legislated against by Nebraska is quite within the proper 
jurisdiction of that State to exercise control over. 
There is less substantial ground of confidence in the 
stability of the New York law relating to the fish of 
Missisquoi Bay. It will be recalled that the united 
efforts of . New York and Vermont to protect the pike- 
perch of Lake Champlain have been nullified for the rea- 
son that in the chief breeding waters of the fish in Mis- 
sisquoi Bay, in the Province of Quebec, netting is per- 
mitted under the Provincial law. The Missisquoi fisher- 
men have found a market for their catch m New York. 
Slate. Failing to secure satisfactory co-operation on the 
part of Quebec for the protection of Lake Champlain fish 
by the suppression of the Missisquoi netting, the New 
York authorities conceived the plan of circumventing the 
nelters by cutting off their market; and the Albany Legis- 
lature having been appealed to at the late session enacted 
a law that no transportation company nor person should 
import any fish from Missisquoi Bay, under a penalty of 
$6o and $to for each fish transported in violation of law ; 
and the act authorizes the fish and game authorities to 
seize and confiscate all fish coming into the State from the 
Canadian waters referred to. The measure is most com- 
mendable in intent, but it will hardly stand the test of 
the court if fish shall be seized under the authority it 
confers and the defendant in such action shall call in 
question the constitutionality of the law. For clearly it 
is an act in regulation or conmierce with a foreign na- 
tion, and the Constitution of the United States expressly 
provides that '•the Congress shall have power to regulate 
commerce with foreign nations." 
Granting that exclusion of these Canadian fish was de- 
sirable, was the appeal to that end properly made to 
Albany, or should recourse have been had to Wash- 
ington? . ^, . 
WILLIAM C. HARRIS. 
William C. Harris-, widely known as a writer on fish 
and fishing, died in this city on June ii, aged seventy-five 
years. 
Mr. Harris was a native of Baltimore. He served in 
the Civil War, was made prisoner at Ball's Bluff, and 
spent several months in Libby Prison. 
In 1875 Mr. Harris was connected with the Forest and 
Stream, and afterward started a Philadelphia paper 
called "Afield and Afloat." Aiter a few years this was 
merged into a monthly called "Nature's Realm." After- 
ward he published the "American Angler," which was fol- 
lowed by the "Fishing Gazette." The most ambitious 
undertaking of Mr. ITarris was the publication "Fishes of 
North America," in which he planned to do for the fishes 
what Audubon had done for the birds. To secure the 
correct coloring of the species described, he enlisted the ' 
services of an artist to accompany him, to paint tlje fish 
in its natural colors as it was taken from the water. The 
project was never completed. 
A steamship from the United States took into Flono- 
lulu the other day a box of snakes, some of them rattle- 
snakes, intended for exhibition in a local zoo. There are 
no snakes in the islands, and public sentiment is strongly 
opposed to the introduction of any, even for exhibition 
purposes, because of a possibility that they might escape. 
That snakes do escape from public or private possession 
was demonstrated in New York city the 'other day, when 
a large boa constrictor was discovered wandering up 
Fifth avenue. The Honolulu people took no chances; the 
rattlers and the other snakes were done to death in the 
custom house. 
K 
There are other pests, however, which no vigilance on 
the part of the customs authorities can exclude. Hawaii 
owes its mosquitoes to importations of the pests carried 
in American sailing vessels. As a corrective of this evil 
imported from the United States, a resident living near 
the Makiki stream has procured from California a large 
number of the western salamanders and liberated thein to 
make war on the mosquitoes breeding in the Makiki pools 
and the taro fi*elds. It is not anticipated that the salaman- 
ders will extirp_ate the insects, but they may do much in 
mitigation of the plague. 
This expedient of im.porting the natural enemy of an 
introduced insect pest, which has more than once proved 
highly effective, has been recommended to the Massa- 
chusetts authorities in their conflict with the gypsy moth. 
This insect has already cost in public money appropriated 
to fight it and a private expenditure for the purpose, more 
than $400,000, and while the spread of the infected dis- 
trict has been restricted, the moth has not yet been ex- 
terminated, nor is there now belief that its extermination 
will be possible. The most that may be hoped 'for is its 
partial control and restraint within certain infected areas. 
Now that a policy of extermination has been abandoned 
as hopeless, it is recognized that an efficient agency in 
restricting the moth may be provided by importing from 
the original homes of the, insect in Europe and Asia the 
natural enemies which there prey upon it and maintain 
such a repressive effect that the moth does not often 
prove a very destructive pest. Through the studies of 
European entomologists and foresters the habits of, these 
natural enemies are well known; and agents of the 
Bureau of Entomology at Washington have expressed a 
belief that the introduction of the insects into New Eng- 
land would not be attended with any danger that they in 
turn might beCome a plague, because they subsist entirely 
upon the larva of the gypsy moth and allied insect pests, 
and in the absence of such food themselves perish. 
Manitoba was once a hunting country which attracted 
many visiting sportsmen from the United States, but it 
is no longer to be counted among the shooting grounds 
of America except for its own citizens. The authorities 
do not invite the non-resident sportsman, nor is he likely 
to come, for a $100 license regulation stands in the way. 
This is practically prohibitive. 
m 
The new association organizing in Toronto gives 
promise of eificient service in the cause of better protec- 
tion of game and fish, inasmuch as it has behind it the 
very substantial backing of citizens who realize the situa- 
tion and are in earnest in 3. purpose to supplement the 
work of the authorities, ' l-^ 
