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FOREST AND STREAM 
FOUNDERS OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETY 
ADVISORY BOARD 
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, NEW YORK, N. Y. 
CARL E. AKELEY, American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
EDMUND HELLER, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 
WILFRED H. OSGOOD, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 111. 
JOHN M. PHILLIPS, Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
CHARLES SHELDON, Washington, D. C. 
GEORGE SHIRAS, 3d, Washington, D. C. 
JOHN T. NICHOLS, American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
T. GILBERT PEARSON, National Association of Audubon Societies. 
WILLIAM BRUETTE, Editor 
JOHN P. HOLMAN, Managing Editor 
T. H. MEARNS, Treasurer 
Nine East Fortieth Street, New York City 
Member of Audit Bureau of Circulation 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL WILL BE TO 
studiously promote a healthful interest in outdoor 
recreation, and a refined taste for natural objects. 
August 14, 1873. 
THE REINDEER INDUSTRY 
T he Reindeer Industry of Alaska, one of the estab- 
lished and growing industries of our northern terri-* 
tory, is attracting ever-increasing attention from 
the country at large due to recent importations of rein- 
deer meat into the United States, and the recent intro- 
duction of reindeer into Baffin’s Land by the Hudson’s 
Bay Company and into the Northern Peninsula of Mich- 
igan by the Conservation Commission of that State. 
An animal that grazes twelve months of the year ; that 
requires no shelter from the elements, and one which 
can thrive and rapidly multiply on the almost limitless 
arctic prairies — a region of no agricultural value and 
on which no other domesticated animal can live — is 
bound to prove of inestimable value. 
The reindeer will make possible a permanent popu- 
lation over wide areas of the North Country that would 
otherwise remain practically uninhabited; and will give 
to the American public an additional and welcome meat 
product — one of which it can truly be said that “it has 
the juiciness of beef, the delicacy and tenderness of 
venison’’ — . The reindeer will also play its part in the 
conservation of the big game of the country by provid- 
ing a domestic meat saleable twelve months of the year, 
which is superior to and therefor a welcome substitute 
for venison and caribou, thus lessening to an extent the 
opportunity of the market game hunter. 
With the rapidly decreasing grazing areas of the west- 
ern United States and the consequent decrease of meat 
animals, coupled with an ever-increasing population, the 
time is not far distant when a large portion of the meat 
supply of the nation will be supplied by the reindeer 
herds of Alaska and Canada. 
CALIFORNIA ANTELOPE 
S portsmen, naturalists, and all interested in pro- 
tection, have for many years felt the gravest regrets 
at the continued disappearance of the antelope. 
Once the most abundant and familiar of the lars:e 
animals of the West, it has now almost vanished; and 
the places where it can be found are very few. In 
Southern California and Southern New Mexico and 
Arizona, there are still antelope enough to make a little 
July, 1922 « 
showing; but from the states of the plains, once abound- 
ing in antelope, the species has wholly disappeared. 
In Northern California at the south end of Lower 
Klamath Lake, near Mt. Dome, there still remains a 
group of antelope which a recent census seems to num- 
ber about a hundred animals; and it is a matter of 
congratulation that these antelope seem to have found 
friends. 
The Big Game Committee of the California Academy 
of Sciences, headed by Mr. M. Hall McAllister, has 
taken an active interest in this group of animals, and 
last year furnished funds to feed them during the win- 
ter. A number of organizations — the Eish and Game 
Gommission, supported by the United States Eorest Ser- 
vice, the California Academy of Sciences, and other as- 
sociations — are taking active steps in co-operation to 
furnish protection to these animals. Some men have 
been chosen to watch for poachers who might attempt 
to kill them, and to watch their condition. What is 
vastly more important, an effort is being made — and 
with some success — to interest the local public in the 
protection of this herd. 
This local public ought to take the greatest pride in 
the protection and increase of these antelope and, if 
it does feel this pride and frowns upon the killing of 
the animals, this will constitute the best possible guard- 
ianship that they can have. If the antelope which still 
exist in Northern Nevada and Southern Oregon could 
have such protection, there might be hope for the con- 
tinuation of this species north and south along the Pa- 
cific Goast for a long time. 
DRIFT WOOD PYROTECHNICS 
H OW easy to have a pipe dream when the blazing 
logs in the fireplace not only crackle and sputter 
before you but throw off brilliant colors as well ! 
Such rainbow pyrotechnical displays are being observed 
by certain dwellers on Long Island near the Atlantic j 
Ocean, who are gathering stray driftwood to burn in j 
their open fireplaces or to use in campfires on the 
shore. 
The driftwood, cast by many a wave, became water- ’ 
soaked, then dried and the chemicals in the sea water 
have been evaporated out and have filled the pores of " 
the wood until they have become part of its very texture. 
Some of the ingredients that enter the Fourth of July i 
fireworks are found in the salvaged wood. : 
Chemists often determine an unknown substance by 
placing a bit of it on the end of a platinum wire, holding 
it over a gas burner, and then judging the element by 
the color of the flame. A chemist could therefore tell 
what substances were in the blazing bits the Long 
Islanders gathered from the shore. 
The most prominent substance would be sodium car- 
bonate, contained in most sea plants and given back to 
the sea upon their decomposition. Sodium carbonate 
is made up of sodium, carbon and oxygen, the sodium 
imparting to the fire an intense yellow. 
Now and then our Long Islanders may obsen^e a .i 
violet flame. This indicates the presence of potassium, il 
the twin sister of sodium, and after which the substance, 
potash, is named. Potassium is contained in many 
minerals, such as feldspar, which have been dissolved 
by springs and rivers and washed into the sea. A 
sodium salt is very rarely pure and often contains a 
potassium salt closely bound with it. However, the 
yellow flame is so much more powerful that it often 
covers up the potassium color. If the spectator holds 
a blue glass in front of his eyes — a piece of blue bottle, 
for instance — the glass will absorb all of the sodium 
flame rays and allow only the potassium rays to come 
