CORRESPONDENCE AND INFORMATION 
song birds ; to them wholly we owe the 
laws that protect game for ten or eleven 
months every year, the bag-limit that 
stops indiscriminate killing in the short 
open season, the establishment of 
hatcheries and game farms for restock- 
ing onr streams and covers, the setting 
aside of bird and game refuges where 
no hunting is allowed, and a score more 
reforms which all aim at the one same 
thing; namely, that our children shall 
find abundant wild life in our woods 
and fields. They do not talk of them- 
selves as nature lovers ; but “by their 
works ye shall know them.” 
4. The letter mentions John Bur- 
roughs as an alleged type of the true 
nature lover; but the writer evidently 
has not read his works, especially the 
newspaper and magazine articles which 
do not appear in his published books. 
The fact is that he often bunted, and 
that aside from bunting he did a lot of 
killing (shooting birds to identify them, 
for example) which most sportsmen 
object to as needless cruelty. 
Very sincerely yours, 
William J. Long. 
(comment by the editor.) 
I have frequently visited John Bur- 
roughs at Riverby and Slabsides. At 
least once a year for ten years I took 
with me a company of boarding school 
girls. Mr. Burroughs frequently en- 
tertained and instructed us by telling 
us graphically and in detail of the 
necessity of killing the woodchucks on 
his premises. At one visit Mr. Bur- 
roughs stood on a high rock and 
pointed out to the girls the beauties of 
the Hudson River that he said could be 
seen for forty miles. Just below where 
he was standing a girl and I saw in the 
crack in the rocks a black snake. When 
the others knew of this discovery they 
unanimously requested that it be pulled 
out by the tail, and that was done. 
Holding that living snake, which I 
think was about five feet long, the girls 
debated as to whether it should be 
freed or killed. Mr. Burroughs acted 
as a judge and apparently enjoyed the 
discussion. His verdict was, “Not that 
I love the snake less but that I love the 
birds more. Kill it.” We did so by 
crushing the head with Mr. Bur- 
roughs’s help. I have photographs and 
lantern slides of the event and have 
often told the story for the past ten 
1 15 
years or more. Mr. Burroughs always 
took the stand, kill when the killing is 
for the welfare of human beings or of 
other forms of life. 
New Jersey Reptile Students Dine. 
The Hotel Robert Treat, Newark, 
was the scene on Tuesday, November 
15, of a remarkable assemblage of en- 
thusiastic students of a not generally 
popular form of nature — reptiles. Sev- 
enty New Jersey members and their 
guests of the Reptile Study Society of 
America, headquarters 782 East 175th 
Street, New York City, of which Allen 
S. Williams is the founder and direc- 
tin', dined together and afterward lis- 
tened to speakers whose talks were 
both valuable and witty. As a finale a 
remarkable array of serpents and liz- 
ards appeared upon the scene from the 
private collection of members of this 
unique society and also from the Rep- 
tile House of the New York Zoological 
Park. These reptiles were all handled 
with the greatest interest by the diners, 
including a big boa constrictor, with 
the exception of large specimens of 
rattlesnakes, water moccasins and cop- 
perheads, which came as guests of the 
society’s chief huntsman, Mr. Arthur 
L. Gillam, of Flushing, Long Island. 
These representatives of North Amer- 
ica’s thanatophida were released on 
tables and floor and recaptured by Mr. 
Gillam to show just how the thing is 
done expertly and with assurance of 
“safety first” to captor and captive. 
Mr. Burnham W. King of East 
Orange, author and amateur ornitholo- 
gist, was toastmaster, and Mr. Gayne 
T. K. Norton, chairman of the society’s 
publicity committee, of Manhattan, 
was chairman of the dinner committee 
and won praise and credit for the suc- 
cess of the dinner. The guest of honor 
was Raymond Lee Ditmars, curator of 
mammals and reptiles of the New York 
Zoological Park and author of “The 
Reptile Book” and “Reptiles of the 
World.” Mr. Ditmars — a native of 
Newark — described in detail the new 
thirteen-foot king cobra recently ac- 
quired by the Bronx Zoo and classed 
him as the most dangerous animal on 
earth today. Mr. Ditmars then related 
a hair-raising experience with two 
murderous Seminole Indians while he 
was sleeping alone, on a collecting trip, 
in a hut on an island in a southern 
