902 
FOREST AND STREAM 
[Dec. 8, 1906. 
pouch at the end or “door” of the stomach. 
The food is here ground into powder, after 
being softened and soaked in the crop and 
the stomach instead of before, ’as in animals. 
Nature can make a grinding apparatus at any 
part of the food tube where it seems most 
desirable. With this exception and addition of 
a pouch-like swelling of the gullet, at the lower 
part of the neck, where food can be stored and 
soaked before being passed on to the stomach, 
the bird food tube is practically the same as the 
animal’s. 
It matches the character of the food in pre¬ 
cisely the same way, for in birds which live 
upon flesh or fish or soft-bodied insects, the 
walls of the gizzard are extremely thin, because 
such food after being torn up by the beak needs 
comparatively little grinding and the length of 
the food tube is short in proportion to that of 
the body. In the grain-eating birds on the other 
hand, its walls are extremely thick and strong, 
because their food cannot be properly melted 
for absorption until it has been ground, and the 
food tube is long in proportion to the length of 
the body, just as in grass and grain-eating ani¬ 
mals. As an instance of how quickly a food 
tube can adjust itself to change in the diet, it 
has been found that the gulls in the north of 
Scotland, which during one part of the year live 
largely upon grain and seeds, and another part 
of the year chiefly upon fish, grow a much 
thicker walled gizzard during the time that they 
are living on grain than they have in the other 
half of the year when they live upon fish. 
Curiously enough, in the ant-eaters, some arma- 
dilloes and other animals of that class, which 
have lost their teeth and hence are known as 
“edenates,” the lowest part of the stomach has 
become greatly thickened and lined with horny 
plates almost exactly like a bird’s gizzard. 
As we have seen that our own teeth are in¬ 
termediate between those of the flesh eaters and 
those of the grain eaters, although much nearer 
to the former than the latter, so our food canal 
is also intermediate between the two, although 
it is so little removed from that of the dog that 
nearly everything that we have said of the dog’s 
food tube is true of our own. Our stomach is 
a little larger, on account of the larger amount 
of potatoes, vegetables and such like bulky foods 
that we eat, but its shape is almost exactly the 
same, and our food tube, for the same reason, 
is about six times the length of our bodies in¬ 
stead of about five times as in the dog. 
But we again come under precisely the same 
rules as the rest of our animal cousins in this 
respect, for negroes and other races of men 
living in warm climates where there is abund¬ 
ance of vegetable food, such as rice, bananas, 
yams, maize and fresh fruits, to be had the year 
round, and whose diet is in consequence more 
largely vegetable than that of our northern 
races, have added about another body’s length 
to their alimentary canal. The same sort of 
lengthening has been proved to take place in 
the food tubes of poor children in the city 
slums, who are fed upon coarse, innutricious 
and indigestible food. In them the canal may 
actually become ten or twelves times the length, 
of the body. 
It is said by some observers that the Eskimo, 
in the frozen North, who are compelled by their 
climate to live almost exclusively upon animal 
food, and that very largely in its most concen¬ 
trated form of fat or oil, have shortened theirs 
nearly a body’s length. 
You must not, however, conclude, from what 
we have seen of the shape of the dog’s canal, 
that his food is or ought to be entirely meat or 
flesh. There are very few animals indeed that 
live absolutely and. entirely upon a flesh diet. 
Those who take their flesh in the form of fish, 
such as the seals, some fishes, and the flesh¬ 
eating birds, are almost the only ones. Even when 
wild, although two-thirds or three-fourths of his 
diet consists of the flesh of animals and birds that 
he can capture, the dog also eats a certain amount 
of fruit during the season. Indeed the best 
place to find tracks of wolves, foxes and bears 
in the height of summer is in the patches of wild 
raspberries, wild cherries, salmon-berries and 
so forth, and later in the groves of wild plum 
trees. Some dogs will even go so far as to 
crack and eat nuts when they can find them, 
and nearly all these wild animals when captured, 
if given bread or sweet-stuff or even potatoes 
and carrots will eat them in fair quantities. 
I dare say most of you have seen dogs biting 
off blades of grass and swallowing them, but 
this is not for food, merely their way of taking 
medicine for certain digestive disturbances. 
Since the dog has become domesticated, sleeps 
for the most part under cover, spends a good 
deal of his time indoors and has only about 
half the need of exercise or the opportunity for 
it, that he had in the days when he would find 
his breakfast on foot, on waking in the morn¬ 
ing, he no longer needs such a concentrated, 
highly nourishing and stimulating diet as one of 
pure meat. Indeed, too much meat will 
seriously upset his digestion, and, fanciers assure 
us, give him that unpleasant “doggy” smell, 
which is the principal objection to his being 
received in the parlor, as a member of the 
family. 
A diet consisting of a mixture of animal and 
vegetable foods, meat and bones with potatoes, 
rice, oatmeal, breads and biscuits of various 
descriptions will be found to be the best for 
his health under domestication, and though 
sugar forms but a very small part* of his djet, 
when in a state of nature, only during the short 
fruit season in fact, yet a small amount of it in 
his food is of great importance, and one of our 
best known brands of dog discuit owes part 6 i 
its value to the fact that it contains sugar in 
the form of dates. In fact, so closely does the 
dog’s alimentary canal correspond to our own 
that when he is brought under domestication 
and housed and “cityfied” as we are, he thrives 
best on almost precisely the same diet that we 
ourselves use. There is no better food for any 
dog than an abundance of household scraps, 
and dogs in kennels who are fed in large num¬ 
bers, upon specially prepared and purchased 
foods, seldom thrive as well as those who get 
the “little-of-all-sorts” diet which any house¬ 
hold scraps can give in perfection. As for the 
dogs and their cousins the bears, in captivity, a 
well-mixed diet, like our own, is found to agree 
with them far better than a purely animal one. 
Of course here as everywhere else, the food 
fuel must be regulated according to the kind 
and amount of work required of it, and for 
hounds and other hunting dogs, setters, collies, 
and dogs that are used to draw carts and 
wagons, larger quantities, in proportion of meat 
and larger total amounts of food are required, 
than in the case of pet and lap dogs of all sorts, 
or the ordinary city dog, who is confined for 
the most part to a small yard and has only an 
occasional formal run of an hour or so as an 
apology for exercise. 
The more nearly vegetative a dog’s existence 
becomes, the lighter and more vegetable should 
his diet be. In fact, some unfortunate little 
wretches of lap dogs, toy spaniels and pugs, can 
only be kept alive at all and in any temper short 
of fiendish, by cutting down the meat in their 
diet almost to the vanishing point. Some of 
them are. kept by fanciers, when training for a 
particular beautiful coat of hair, for show purposes, 
upon a diet of toast, dipped in tea, or milk-and- 
water; shavings, instead of sea coal, under their 
boilers. 
Reindeer or Caribou to Replace Dogs. 
Some weeks ago it was announced in the 
columns of Forest and Stream that an interest¬ 
ing experiment relative to the introduction of 
reindeer into Newfoundland for draught purposes, 
was about to be tried. In his trip around the 
Newfoundland and Labrador coast in 1905 His 
Excellency, Sir William McGregor, Governor of 
the island, saw the need of some substitute for 
the half savage mongrel dogs now in use. 
He gathered and caused to be gathered large 
quantities of the different mosses that grow in 
immense quantities on these shores, in order to 
have their qualities tested as a food for reindeer. 
It was his intention, if it were proved that these 
immense tracts of moss were good provender for 
reindeer, to import some o'f the latter from Lap¬ 
land or Alaska where they have been domesti¬ 
cated, and get them into general use in northern 
Newfoundland and Labrador. The Governor, 
since his advent to the island, though a profes¬ 
sional man formerly, has proved that he is also 
a practical hardheaded business man. If he suc¬ 
ceeds in introducing reindeer in the place of the 
savage mongrels now in use, he will need no 
other monument to keep his memory green in 
this island. 
It was suggested at the time that an experi¬ 
ment. be tried with our own caribou. It was 
urged that they were easier and cheaper to ob¬ 
tain, and they had the advantage of being already 
acclimatized. Many people who are competent 
to judge, say that caribou would be preferable. 
For some reason the suggestion was not acted 
upon officially. Several hunters caught young 
caribou this spring and are taming them. If 
they succeed in domesticating them, the problem 
will be solved. While it is extremely hard to 
feed dogs, it is comparatively easy to feed deer, 
especially caribou, and there is no doubt as to 
the fitness of the indigenous mosses as a food for 
them. They thrive on them in summer, and in 
winter scrape away the snow to secure them. 
The Governor did not spend much time in 
theorizing about the quality of the various mosses 
and lichens, but sent them to the Royal Botanical 
Gardens at Kew near London to be tested. He 
himself is a scientist of no mean attainments, but 
not satisfied with his own opinions, he appealed 
to the botanists at Kew, these being the final 
authorities in the scientific world on matters 
botanical. The Governor’s theories were con¬ 
firmed in every particular and by last English 
mail he received the specimens back duly classi¬ 
fied and labeled. W. J. Carroll. 
A New Bogoslov Island. 
In the Bering Sea are two well known volcanic 
islands known as the Bogoslov group. Both of 
these are of comparatively recent origin, the 
older having emerged from the sea in 1779, while 
the second popped up in the same way in 1883. 
Both islands still have hot springs and steam 
vents which are constantly in action. The islands 
are uninhabited except by sea lions and by mil¬ 
lions of sea birds, of which the murres are by 
far the most numerous. Dr. C. Hart Merriam 
has written interestingly of the Bogoslov group. 
Last spring the Indians on the western end of 
Unalaska Island were astonished by a tremen¬ 
dous commotion in the waters of Bering Sea to 
the northwest of their home. By day the water 
smoked, by night flashes of light were seen; 
there were tremendous noises and deep rumb¬ 
lings from time to time, and finally great num¬ 
bers of dead fish, birds and seals drifted ashore. 
The reports brought the Aleuts were not at 
first believed, but a little later they were con¬ 
firmed by stories told by other neighboring 
natives. The result of all the talk was that an 
expedition was organized to go to the Bogoslov 
group and see what foundation there was for 
the persistent reports. When the party- had 
come to within a few miles of the islands dense 
clouds of vapors were seen hanging over the 
sea, and later large numbers of dead fish and 
other marine animals were found floating in the 
water. The investigators were unable to get 
very near to the islands, but did approach them 
near enough to see the land at intervals. When 
this was possible, they saw to their astonishment 
that instead of two islands three were standing 
up out of the water. For the most part the 
islands were nearly hidden by vapor, the water 
about them was very much disturbed and its 
temperature was several degrees above that of 
the sea. 
The Forest and Stream may be obtained from 
any newsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply you regularly. 
IN THE WOODS 
or in the mountains, no matter how far from civilization, 
fresh milk can always be had if foresight is used in 
packing the outfits. Borden’s Peerless Evaporated Cream 
in cans keeps indefinitely until opened, and answers every 
purpose. It is pure, rich milk, condensed to the con¬ 
sistency of cream, put up without sugar and preserved 
by sterilization only.— Adv. 
