July 14, 1906.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
noted: “Early in May, when the birds were re¬ 
turning North, observers on the top of Mount 
Tom saw a sight strange to this region for more 
than two generations—a flight of wild pigeons. 
There was no mistake about it, for they were 
discovered and recognized by one who had seen 
them in the West, and was perfectly acquainted 
with their mode of flight and by the aid of an 
opera glass could identify them without hesi¬ 
tation. They were not flying high above the 
mountain, and the flock was a small one.” 
The Bison Society. 
The object of the American Bison Society is 
“the permanent preservation and increase of the 
American bison.” 
With a view to awakening a wider public in¬ 
terest in the preservation of the few remaining 
buffalo, the Society is now beginning an active 
campaign. Mr. E. H. Baynes, its secretary, is 
energetically engaged in writing and lecturing on 
the Subject, and is sending out thousands of 
circulars appealing for help—and with very grati¬ 
fying results. 
The Society takes the very sensible ground that 
—as we long ago pointed out—the remaining 
buffalo ought to be acquired by the Government, 
and that reservations for them ought to be 
established in different parts of the country, where 
small separate herds could be kept. Only by such 
a course can the danger of accident or epidemic 
be so reduced that the race will be certain to 
endure. 
This Society does not appeal to the public on 
economic grounds but on those of sentiment. 
While the buffalo is a useful animal, it is not for 
this reason especially that it should be preserved. 
It is because it is our largest mammal, because 
it is typical of America, and because its history 
is interwoven with the development of the great 
West and with the history of the Indians and the 
pioneers. Good reasons these are, too. 
A campaign such as the Society has inaugu¬ 
rated cannot be carried on without money, and 
money can only be had from the fees and dues 
of membership, supplemented occasionally by 
private subscriptions. The Society has three 
forms of membership, associate members, mem¬ 
bers. and life members with varying fees. 
The Society’s object is a good one, and we look 
forward to a large membership for it. Persons 
interested in the preservation of the buffalo, and 
what an American is not, should write to Mr. 
Edmund Seymour, Treasurer, 45 Wall street, New 
York city, for information and blanks. 
Death of Prof. Henry A. Ward. 
Prof. Henry A. Ward, formerly of Rochester, 
but lately of Chicago, was killed July 4, by being 
struck by an automobile. Prof. Ward was born 
at Rochester, N. Y., in 1834, educated at Williams 
College and Rochester University, and entering 
the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, be¬ 
came after a time assistant to Prof. L. Agassiz. 
He studied in Europe and traveled extensively, 
making collections and investigating mines. More 
than forty years ago, while Professor of Natural 
Sciences at Rochester University, he established 
a laboratory for the production of facsimiles of 
fossils and of mounted osteological preparations 
and of natural history objects in general, which he 
supplied to museums. As time went on, this 
gradually developed into the Ward’s Natural 
History Establishment which we know to-day, 
and which is the most important institution of 
its kind in the United States. 
Prof. Ward was a great collector, and possessed 
at his death a great collection of minerals. His 
collections of meteorites is perhaps the most im¬ 
portant in the country. Of him the Springfield 
Republican very j ustly says that he “combined the 
attainment of authority in natural science, so that 
in several lines he had not his superior, with the 
commercial capacity to make a profitable calling 
out of it. He was in fact the business man with 
special knowledge behind him, and his business 
was furnishing natural history collections to 
museums, colleges—all sorts of institutions—and 
even to small collections for schoolboys. It was 
a matter of indifference to him whether he was 
sending a great saurian’s mounted skeleton to the 
ROCKY MOUNTAIN BIGHORN. 
Photo by F. Tolhurst, Livingston, Mont. 
British Museum or an assorted lot of minerals 
to grace a "den” with a mere toy of a cabinet. 
And indeed, his extraordinary establishment on 
College avenue, Rochester, could respond to any 
call for anything that might be wanted in the 
lines of prehistoric fossils or bits of curious stone 
•—geology, paleontology, conchology, everything 
was in his 'line. He was doubtless the most ver¬ 
satile and comprehensive student of such matters 
in America, and can have had few rivals any¬ 
where. Indeed, there are many European insti¬ 
tutions of various scope and means that have con¬ 
stantly, or for nearly thirty years, depended on 
him for their supplies. Ward was absolutely the 
scientist. He never made even the least of his 
cabinets less than accurate and systematic. Thus 
he deserves the honorable title of a trustworthy 
and thorough educator; nothing that he did mis¬ 
led the student; he was a recognized scholar in 
his large lines, and in the extent and variousness 
of his labor for science, such as no other scholar 
ever thought of entering upon, he had done a 
service for mankind that is of a value clearly 
estimable and memorable.” 
A Spartan Mother. 
I was snipe shooting in northwest Missouri 
this spring when two boys came along on their 
way home from “town.” The shooting was not 
so good but that there was time to stop and have 
a talk, and before we parted, they had told the 
following story: They had caught a gray squirrel 
and her four young ones, in the usual way, by 
stopping up the hole in a hollow limb. “We 
wanted to raise the young ones, and took the 
mother, so she’d raise them; but when we got 
them home and put her in the box with the young 
ones, she killed every one of them. Bit each one 
once through the heart. First she took hold of 
a little girl squirrel, and she acted kind of as if 
she didn’t like to kill it, bein’ as it was a girl, so 
she dropped it and went and smelled another one, 
and it was a ‘he,’ so she killed it, and then the 
other ‘he’s,’ and then he killed the girl last.” 
"What did you do with the mother?” I asked. 
“Well, sir, after she treated her children that- 
away, we didn’t want her, and we turned her 
loose.” George Kennedy. 
Something about the Okapi. 
Some interesting details as to the manner of 
life of the okapi and as to its numbers are given 
in a letter to the London Times from Capt. G. 
B. Gosling, who, as stated last week, was prob¬ 
ably the first European to see a living specimen 
of the strange creature. He says: 
"The okapi is generally found singly or in 
pairs, but Mobatti lninlers state that sometimes 
three may be found together. An essential to 
the life of the okapi is a small Stream of water 
with some muddy and swampy ground on either 
side. In this grows a certain large leaf that on 
its single stalk attains a height of ten feet. It 
is the young leaf of this plant that is the favorite 
food of the okapi, and I venture to say that 
where the plant is not to be found the animal 
will not exist. During the night he will wander 
along in the mud and water in search of it. Here 
he may be found feeding as late as 8 A. M. 
in the morning, after which he retires to the 
seclusion of the forest, where he remains till 
nearly dusk. On the three occasions that I was 
at close quarters with the beast, he was perfectly 
concealed in this swamp leaf. Near the River 
Welle I found his spoor on ground frequented 
by buffalo and waterbuck, but this is unusual, 
and his companions in the forest are the elephant, . 
the greater bushbuck, the yellow-backed and 
small red duikers. The okapi is very quick of 
hearing, and in that respect is classed by the 
Mobatti with the bushbuck (local name ‘bun- 
gani.)’ In the forest here I consider this latter 
beast to be more difficult to obtain that the 
former. On the hunting ground of the first 
village that I visited I estimated the num¬ 
ber of okapi as five or six, at the second and 
third nil. and twenty miles south in the forest, 
on very likely ground, where my guide said they 
were formerly numerous, there was one only, 
probably owing to rubber collectors who*had been 
there. The okapi is killed occasionally by the 
natives, speared, shot, or trapped by the common 
African method by which Jose Lopez secured it. 
At the first village I visited three had been 
speared at various times, at the second and third 
one each, and in the forest referred to above my 
guide had shot one. Unfortunately, time did not 
permit me to continue my search or return to the 
ground first visited by me.” 
A Fox Story. 
A few days ago I read in a Boston daily thit 
Mr. S., of a certain town in Maine, having 
missed a good many of his lambs, determined 
to watch out for the thief, with the result that 
one day he saw a fox capture one and sneak off 
with it. So he took the direction and went in 
pursuit. He found a den, and at its mouth one- 
half of a lamb’s carcass. Desiring to obtain posi¬ 
tive information, I wrote to Mr. S. requesting a 
statement of facts if there was any truth in 
the story. In his reply, after commenting on 
the way reporters get things mixed up, he states 
that he and a companion found a fox den in his 
pasture and dug out eight young foxes, but did 
not see the old fox. The reporter, he says, must 
have thought him about as “keen-scented as a 
foxhound,” and that is all there is to the story 
about a fox carrying off one of his lambs. 
Central. 
Bluejay a Mouser. 
Clarksdale, Miss .—Editor Forest and Stream: 
A few days ago a party of friends at a nearby 
residence were sitting on the front porch, when 
a jay bird alighted on the yard pickets a few feet 
distant. The bird presently flew to the ground 
and seized a live mouse, which after a struggle 
was subdued, and the bird, holding the mouse 
by the neck with his bill, flew away with it. 
The character of the “mouser” is a new role 
for the jay bird so far as I am aware. 
Coahoma. 
