722 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Dec. 6, 1913. 
One snap shot was all I had for the day. To be 
brief, I was compelled to go from three to seven 
miles away to find any birds and then far away 
from good roads. 
I have made it my business as well as my 
pleasure to become on friendly, even confidential, 
terms with the natives up there, and I have found 
them very scrupulous in observing the game laws. 
There are some as good cover shots as can be 
found anywhere, but there is no game warden. 
None is needed for THEM. This is the tale I 
heard from almost all the mountain farmers. One 
said: “There were three broods of grouse raised 
near my house; I could find them any time. One 
had eleven, another thirteen and the other fifteen. 
I watched them come to maturity and the 15th 
'of October arrived. One day I saw three autos 
drawn out beside the road down there, and there 
was the awfullest racket going on in that cover 
you ever heard. Fourth of July wasn’t in it. 
There hasn’t been a partridge in there since.” 
Another farmer said: “A few days ago a 
party from an auto went through this cover and 
then came toward the house, and my wife and 
I saw them shoot three rabbits almost in my 
dooryard.” 
These are samples of what I heard from the 
farmers all over that section, and the acts were 
committed between the 15th of October and the 
10th of November. The game law allows the 
killing of woodcock on and after October 15th, 
but provides a penalty of $100 for the killing 
of any other game until Nov. 10th, when all game 
becomes legitimate. This penalty is enormous in 
the eyes of these farmers, but it does not amount 
to a hill of beans in the estimation of the autoist- 
shooter. He can scoot up there from Plainfield, 
Passaic, Paterson, Newark, or anywhere within 
reach, and scoot away again and no one the 
wiser, except for the noise and the evidence in 
the skinned covers. There is no warden there, 
and besides they were shooting WOODCOCK. 
It’s so easy. 
Every tyro knows that woodcock, grouse and 
rabbits inhabit the same cover. It takes some 
self-restraint for a law-abiding shooter to refrain 
from shooting at a grouse when he rises in 
’cock cover, and only rarely can one judge by a 
dog’s actions whether he has a grouse or a ’cock. 
Why put such a strain on a man’s nerve? Why 
offer a premium to the illegitimate shooter? 
Why not put every man on the same footing; 
give all an even chance and let the best shooter 
win? Put every man where he can look every 
other man in the eye with a clear conscience. 
Open the season on ALL game on One date. 
Shorten the season; limit the bag; prohibit shoot¬ 
ing altogether for a period of years, if need be, 
but give every man an even chance. Don’t let 
the game-hog-autoist-shooter have it all his own 
way; nor any one else for that matter. 
I feel better but still have some left in my 
system. 
Talk it over boys. 
P. P. Staunton. 
74 Wheeler St., West Orange, N. J. 
My old nom de plume was 
Oatka. 
Washington, D. C., Nov. 22, 1913. 
HE Alaska legislature in undertaking to 
regulate the shipment of furs from that 
territory by mail has run afoul of the 
postal laws and regulations, and Third Assistant 
Postmaster General Dockery has undertaken to 
straighten out the situation. A recent act of the 
Alaska legislature makes it unlawful for any 
person to ship from that territory any furs with¬ 
out first having obtained and paid for a license 
permit, and further providing that no postmaster 
shall receipt for mailing any furs unless the 
shippers thereof shall present a certificate for 
this license fee signed for by the clerk of the 
district of the division in which the furs are 
shipped. After informing the postmaster at La- 
touche, Alaska, who first brought the matter to 
the attention of the post office department, that 
Congress under the Constitution has the exclu¬ 
sive power of determining what shall be admitted 
to or excluded from the mails, Mr. Dockery has 
advised him that neither the parcel post law or 
any other law contains any provision making un- 
mailable articles shipped in violation of the laws 
of a state or territory. The postmaster was fur¬ 
ther advised by Mr. Dockery that under the pro¬ 
visions of the postal laws furs constitute mail- 
able matter of the fourth class, and, therefore, 
if they are properly prepared for transmission in 
the mails and otherwise conform to the require¬ 
ments of the postal laws, they should when pre¬ 
sented, fully prepaid at the proper rate, be ac¬ 
cepted for mailing. This brings about a conflict 
in the efforts of the Alaskan game authorities 
to protect the game and enforce the laws for 
preservation and conservation of the game of the 
territory with the postal laws, a matter which it 
appears only congressional legislation will be able 
to remedy. This same provision of the postal 
laws is now being applied to shipment of game 
by parcel post. State-game officials and organiza¬ 
tions interested in protecting and conserving the 
fish and game throughout the country have dis¬ 
covered that the laws placed upon the statute 
books in a number of the states with this end in 
view are being set at naught through the agency 
of the parcel post. As a result, Postmaster Gene¬ 
ral Burleson has been called upon by the Illinois 
Game and Fish Conservation Commission to 
make a ruling as to whether or not game can be 
shipped through the parcel post in violation of a 
state law specifically prohibiting its shipment. 
Similar inquiries have been made by other states 
and during the present week a statement was 
issued by the Post Office Department in which it 
is said that since Congress had failed to write 
into the parcel post law, or any other postal law, 
a provision making unmailable such articles ship¬ 
ped in violation of the statutes of a state or ter¬ 
ritory, the postmasters must accept game for 
shipment by parcel post when it meets with the 
regulations relative to the preparation of such 
matter for mailing. In this ruling, however, the 
postal authorities point out that such a holding 
does not operate against the right of any state 
official to proceed under the laws of his state 
against any person who may violate them. In 
doing so, however, the state officials must not in 
anv way interfere with the postal officials in the 
discharge of their duties as prescribed by law. 
If this remedy does not prove sufficient to pre¬ 
vent the shipment of game in the prohibited ter¬ 
ritories it is declared that the game conservation¬ 
ists will appeal to Congress to amend the parcel 
post law in such a manner as to make game un¬ 
mailable in states having prohibitive shipping 
laws. 
During the coming month the United States 
Coast and Geodetic Survey steamer Bache will 
begin a voyage of exploration to gather speci¬ 
mens of fish and other sea life in the Atlantic 
Ocean, the work to be performed being along the 
lines accomplished for science by the Prince of 
Monaco, who has been engaged for many years in 
the exploration of the sea for marine life. In 
addition to the officers of the ship will be two 
experts from the United States Bureau of Fish¬ 
eries, who will classify and preserve the fish and 
other objects taken from the deep waters of the 
Atlantic by the nets, drags, and deep sounding 
apparatus used in the work. While the cruise 
will be primarily for the benefit of the Bureau 
of Fisheries and will be under its direction, in a 
large measure, the information that will be se¬ 
cured as to the ocean bottom and depths of water 
will be used in correcting existing charts. The 
Bache will head for the Bermudas and from 
Cape Henry to the islands dredges will be pulled 
over the ocean bottom. From the Bermudas the 
ship will lay her course for the Florida coast 
and specimens of ocean life will be obtained on 
this leg of the cruise. Considerable dredging 
will be done in the vicinity of the Bermudas, and 
it is expected that specimens of marine life will 
be brought up from the lower depths of the 
ocean that are now unknown to science. The 
specimens obtained will be preserved with the 
greatest care and deposited in the National Mu¬ 
seum for exhibition. This expedition to gather 
fish and other specimens of marine life is some¬ 
thing rather new for the Coast and Geodetic Sur¬ 
vey service, which has heretofore confined its 
operations to gathering information regarding 
shoals and currents for the benefit of mariners, 
but dragging the ocean bottom is nothing new to 
the officers, so that the survey is for the first 
time to be made of double value. The matter of 
exploring the sea for the study and classification 
of marine life has long been agitated by the sci¬ 
entists of the leading nations, but so far little 
has been accomplished compared to the efforts 
without system and co-operation as well as con¬ 
tinuous work in the matter. 
Railroad blasting operations on a tributary 
of the Frazer River in the State of Washington 
having killed more than 1,000,000 salmon and 
prevented the spawning of between two and three 
billion of sock-eye salmon eggs, the Department 
of Commerce announces that the fish-loving 
American might expect a decided shortage of this 
article of food from three to five years hence. 
The department pronounces the slaughter of the 
fish to be a “catastrophe,” the effect of which will 
be seen three to five years hence when the 1913 
progeny come back to the river to spawn. How 
serious the outcome will be can only be surmised. 
The livelihood of the thousands of persons in 
the State of Washington, and in British Colum¬ 
bia, declares the department depend on the an¬ 
nual “run” of these fish, which return year by 
year to the same spawning grounds. This, it is 
suggested, makes the matter of even of greater 
economic interest. Rocks discharged by the 
blasting blocked the stream and caused the death 
of the ascending fish. Appropriate legislation 
both by the several states and Congress appear 
inadequate to properly conserve the fish, and un¬ 
til the matter of increasing and propagating as 
well as properly conserving the food fishes of the 
country receives adequate attention from Con¬ 
gress the country will continue to see such catas¬ 
trophes as the one just mentioned. 
Raleigh Raines. 
Bone-Shaped Dog Food. 
Taking it by and large, it was a pretty 
clever thought that prompted the making of 
a dog biscuit bone-shaped—an ordinary tempt¬ 
ing leg-of-mutton bone, with bulged ends and 
“plain sailing” between. We all know how 
much a dog likes one, and to watch him carry 
his biscuit bone away to gnaw most naturally 
on a neighboring mat or grass-plat, with one 
eve to windward lest some interloper steal his 
dinner, is to watch a genuine act of enjoy¬ 
ment, which the inventor of a new dog bis¬ 
cuit had a picture of in mind when the idea 
struck him. More than this, he knew that in 
order to make it true to life, he had to devise 
a biscuit that the dog would enjoy as much 
as he did the bone. It has been done, and 
the biscuit is better than the real, because it 
is made under sanitary conditions of pure food 
materials, that benefit the dog more than the 
real bones, often mouldy from burying, a 
taste for which it is neither wise nor ex¬ 
pedient to allow him to cultivate, if any ken¬ 
nel or household standard is to be maintained. 
A taste for carrion is a vitiated taste, and the 
dog is not in the turkey buzzard class. 
