BY THE WAYSIDE 
BY THE WAYSIDE 
Published on the tenth of each month except 
July and August. 
The official organ of the Wisconsin, Illinois and 
Michigan Audubon Societies. 
Twenty-five cents per year Single copies 5 cents 
Contributions to By the Wayside are invited 
from all lovers of Nature and friends of the 
birds. All communications should be sent to 
Roland E. Kremers, 1720 Vilas St., Madison, 
Wis. 
In tlie recent special session of our 
legislature, there came up a matter 
which is worthy of our consideration. 
We refer to the proposal to establish a 
state farm for the propagation of for¬ 
eign game birds. It is well to bear in 
mind from the outset that this scheme 
has been tried here before; $5,000 were 
spent by the state of Wisconsin in this 
undertaking and today no pheasants 
are to be found. 
There is probably a very good rea¬ 
son for this failure. The climate of 
western Europe, whence these birds 
are taken, is of a much milder order. 
Hence one would expect that the in¬ 
troduced species would find it hard to 
acclimatize themselves. Add to this 
the fact that pheasants are non-migrri- 
tory, and the conclusion must be that 
almost inevitable death awaits any 
species in the course of a severe Wis¬ 
consin winter. It is a well known fact 
that as hardy a bird as our native 
quail suffers heavily in our region. Is 
it to be expected that a foreign bird 
will survive? 
Granted for the moment that Euro¬ 
pean pheasants will live through the 
winter, there is from the hunter’s own 
viewpoint a reason for not attempting 
this scheme. These birds do not fur¬ 
nish the kind of hunting which Amer¬ 
icans demand. They are, like most 
others of their order, adept runners, 
but second rate fliers: that is to say, 
they have not the powers of sustained 
flight. Rather, they escape by run¬ 
ning to cover. Even when they do 
take wing, they are not skillful fliers; 
this is especially true of the ring pheas¬ 
ant which flies slowly and in a straight 
line. Hence it is comparatively easy 
to kill these birds. Perhaps the value 
of these birds for hunting has been 
overestimated by the fact that pheas¬ 
ants are shot so much in England and 
on the Continent. This is probably 
due to the fact that what the Euro¬ 
pean calls hunting, even the Ameri¬ 
can hunter calls slaughter. That is to 
say, the European, when he goes hunt¬ 
ing, takes his station in a favorable 
place and then shoots the game which 
a company of lt beaters” drives by. To 
this mode of hunting the pheasants are 
adapted, but not to the mode of the 
American hunter. 
Furthermore, there is not a little 
danger connected with the introduc¬ 
tion of foreign species of any kind. 
This is especially true of animals be¬ 
cause by their rapid increase they may 
become a pest that can be suppressed 
only with extreme difficulty. The 
gypsy moth and the San Jose scale 
are examples of the truth of the asser¬ 
tion. Hence we should be very care¬ 
ful to make a most thorough investiga¬ 
tion of the food habits of the birds in 
their native country and of the pos¬ 
sible changes which they may undergo 
in our own country before we attempt 
to introduce them. 
Not the least objection, however, in 
the eyes of the bird lover is that this 
is a move to fasten on us the hunting 
evil. There is a vast difference be¬ 
tween raising poultry for the market 
