July 26, 1913 
FOREST AND STREAM 
99 
‘Tenement Tommy 
Asks for 
A Square Deal 
H 
E lives in New York’s tenement 
district, the most congested spot in 
America. 
In his sultry three-room home there is 
scarcely space to eat and sleep. His 
playground is the blistering pavement of 
the ill-smelhng streets, hemmed in by 
scorching brick walls. 
Tommy’s widowed mother is broken 
with worry; his sisters and brothers are as 
pallid and frail as he. The winter struggle 
has sapped their vitality. They are starv¬ 
ing for air. 
No medicine will help Tommy. What 
he, his mother and the other children need 
are : a chance to breathe something pure and fresh,—a taste of sunshine and 
outdoor freedom,—an outing in the country or at the seashore. 
But between Tommy and his needs stands poverty, the result of mis¬ 
fortune. He must suffer just as if it were all his fault. 
This Association every summer sends thousands of 
“Tenement Tommies ”, mothers and babies to the 
country and to Sea Breeze, its fresh air home at Coney 
Island. A dollar bill, a five dollar check, or any amount 
you care to contribute, will help us to answer Tommy’s 
appeal. 
Send contributions to Robert Shaw Minturn, Treasurer, 
Room 204, 105 East 22nd Street, New York City. 
SUGGESTIONS 
A lawn sociable by your 
class, Sunday School or 
Club. 
A card party at your sum¬ 
mer hotel or camp. 
A subscription among your 
friends. 
N. Y. ASSOCIATION FOR IMPROVING THE CONDITION OF THE POOR 
R. FULTON CUTTING, President 
1 
in astonishment, for never have I seen such a 
perfect bead or such a perfect picture as he 
stood there in the rays of the setting sun. 
It was a more suitable picture for a camera 
than a rifle, but hunger is a bad master, and 
taking a deep breath and directing a silent in¬ 
vocation to the god of the sportsman, I pressed 
the trigger, and heard .a most welcome ‘ klop.” 
In an instant the glade was alive with impala 
that had been lying down, and my gun bearer 
would insist that I had only wounded him, and 
that he had seen the beast disappear into the 
bush wounded. 
After shooting like a child all day, this 
would not have surprised me. Instead, there¬ 
fore, of going straight to where I had shot the 
animal, we went to the place at which the gun 
bearer saw him enter. There was no blood, and 
I was just going to where I had fired, when I 
saw an impala looking at me some 100 yards 
away. Thinking this must be the first I had 
fired at, I tried again for him, but he was too 
quick. Then I determined to pick up the blood 
spoor from the starting point, and on proceeding 
there found my original beast stone dead, with 
a bullet right through his heart. 
When I joyfully lifted the head of the buck 
to look at it, and perhaps to gaze with that 
rapture which it is given to the sportsman to 
feel in such circumstances, I found I was not 
deceived by the evening light as to length of 
horn. The head was quite as fine as I expected, 
and later on in camp the horns taped thirty-one 
and one-eighth by thirty-one and one-quarter 
inches, and that I have every reason to believe 
is equal to the record. And to my brother 
sportsmen's imagination I leave my delight at 
getting so grand a specimen, to say nothing of 
the excitement of the porters, who had been 
much cast down at the thought that they were 
destined to sleep with empty stomachs. 
Government to Lessen Breakage of Eggs. 
BY U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 
To reduce the enormous breakage of eggs 
in transit, which yearly causes a loss of millions 
of dollars to producers, and raises the price of 
eggs for consumers, the United States Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture, through its Bureau of 
Chemistry, is conducting extensive experiments 
to determine the safest manner of packing eggs 
for long and short shipment by rail. The waste 
from the breakage of eggs, according to Year 
Book Reprint 552, ‘‘The Effect of Present 
Methods of Handling Eggs on the Industry and 
Product,” in New York city alone in 1909 was 
over 137,804,768 eggs, or over eleven and one- 
half million dozen, out of a total consumption 
in 1909 of 127,689,600 dozen of eggs. In other 
words, about 9 per cent, of all eggs received in 
New York were cracked, and of these a large 
number were unfit for food use. The egg sup¬ 
ply of large cities, and particularly New York, 
has to come from a long distance, because, ac¬ 
cording to the thirteenth census, the Middle At¬ 
lantic States in 1909 sold only about 110,000,000 
dozen eggs, or not enough to supply New York 
alone if every egg had been sent to that point. 
For the eastern coast cities, the distant corn 
districts are practically the sole source of sup¬ 
ply, because the little gray hen does not have 
to scratch so hard for a living in the corn field 
as she does where grain is scarce. Increasing 
consumption of eggs adds to the distance from 
which eggs must come, and makes the safe 
shipment of this valuable food product more 
and more essential. 
The Bureau of Chemistry regards the in¬ 
vestigation of the methods of preventing egg 
breakage as particularly important, because the 
many, millions of dozens of eggs now broken 
in shipment naturally tend to keep the price of 
this valuable food higher than if there were no 
breakage, or breakage were materially reduced. 
The Bureau, through the Food Research Labor¬ 
atory. is now engaged in shipping eggs handled 
in different ways on long journeys to different 
points in the United States, and is carefully 
noting their condition on receipt at their desti¬ 
nation. Shippers, railroad men and commission 
men are co-operating heartily with the investi¬ 
gators of the Government, through their joint 
conference committee, composed of representa¬ 
tives from the National Butter, Egg & Poultry 
Association, the Traffic Managers’ Association 
of Chicago, and the U. S. Department of Agri¬ 
culture. The situation is growing very acute, 
because the railroads are claiming that their 
damage losses are such as to make the carry¬ 
ing of eggs an unprofitable commercial propo¬ 
sition. The shippers and consignees have large 
sums of money tied up in claims and litigation 
with the roads. If the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture succeeds, as it hopes to do, in devising a 
successful method of shipping eggs, it will con¬ 
tribute importantly to the poultry industry, in 
which the little gray hen produces food worth 
half a billion dollars annually. 
Elephants Made Heavy Swells. 
A British mariner, formerly in the Eastern 
trade, tells a queer elephant yarn. While cap¬ 
tain of a trading steamer he had as cargo forty 
elephants. The vessel was anchored in a per¬ 
fectly calm sea off the coast of Zanzibar. When, 
therefore, the steamer began to roll, every one 
on board was greatly surprised. 
At first they supposed the motion to be 
due to the ground swell, but when this motion 
continued to increase, general alarm ensued. 
Then it was revealed that the elephants had, 
in some way, discovered that by swaying to and 
fro in unison they might produce a rocking 
motion that pleased them immensely. So the 
great heads and bodies rolled and swung to¬ 
gether until the steamer, which had no other 
cargo and rode lightly, was in imminent danger 
of rolling clean over. The attendants hurried 
down into the hold, and after a great deal of 
shouting and thumping, managed to stop the 
dangerous amusement. 
New Federal Bird Reservations. 
Five new Federal, bird reservations have 
recently been established as follows: On Dec. 
7 , 1912, Charmisso Island (Alaska); on Dec. 17, 
1912, Pishkun (Montana) ; On Dec. 19, 1912, 
Desecheo Island (Porto Rico) ; on Jan. 9, 1913, 
Gravel Island (Wisconsin), and on March 3, 
1913, Aleutian Islands (Alaska). The first, con¬ 
sisting of an island within the Arctic Circle, 
was established near to an Eskimo school, large¬ 
ly for the purpose of demonstrating to Alaskan 
Eskimos the Federal Government's attitude to¬ 
ward conservation of faunal life. The other 
Alaskan reservation, which embraces the whole 
Aleutian archipelago, is designed to protect 
birds, foxes, fisheries and reindeer, the last to 
be introduced on the islands. The Wisconsin 
reservation comprises Gravel and Spider islands, 
at the mouth of Green Bay. Desecheo Island 
Reservation is at the western end of Porto Rico. 
The Montana reservation is for migrating water- 
fowl. 
Prohibition of the Export of Birds from 
Australia. 
Export from Australia of the following 
birds, their plumage, skins or eggs, except for 
educational or scientific purposes, was prohibited 
by proclamation of the governor-general dated 
March 25, 1911: Emus, terns, gulls, egrets, 
herons, bitterns, lorikeets, cockatoos, parrots, 
dollar birds (rollers), kingfishers, bee-eaters, 
cuckoos, lyre-birds, pittas, “robins” (Musci- 
capidce, genus Petrcecu), ground thrushes, chats, 
wrens, shrike-tits, thickheads, shrike-robins, sun- 
birds, bower-birds, rifle-birds, grebes, albatrosses, 
finches, orioles and shining starlings. The proc¬ 
lamation has since been suspended, except as to 
skins and plumage of non-edible birds. 
