468 
FOREST AND STREAM 
April 12, 1913 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 
Charles Otis, President. 
W. G. Beecroft, Secretary. W. T. Gallagher, Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
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SOME OREGON MAMMALS. 
The first number of the Bulletin of the 
American Museum of Natural History for 1913 
contains an interesting paper on the mammals of 
Northern Malheur county, Oregon. H. E. An¬ 
thony spent the greater part of August and Sep¬ 
tember, 1912, in that county, collecting mammals 
and birds for the American Museum of Natural 
History. 
The lower country there is a more or less 
level sage brush flat, alternating with rolling 
hills, and Willow Creek, the stream which drains 
it and flows into the Malheur River, has an alti¬ 
tude of about 3,750 feet. The soil is fertile, the 
climate on the whole equable, warm in summer, 
with a moderate amount of snow in winter. 
There are some mountains running up to an 
altitude of 7,500 feet. 
On the sage brush flat such familiar birds 
are found as the sage hen, the sharp-tailed 
grouse, the magpie and the rock-wren, while in 
the timber of the hills occur blue grouse, ruffed 
grouse, various woodpeckers, Clark’s crow and 
the Louisiana tanager. 
Mule deer were formerly abundant in this 
country, and still exist, spending their summers 
hack in the more inaccessible parts of the range, 
but coming down to the lower land to winter. 
Pronghorn antelope formerly ranged the 
open country in large numbers, and as late as 
1908 were reported to the number of fifteen or 
twenty. ‘'This band would work south in the 
fall to spend the winter about some springs 
where favorable winter forage existed. In the 
spring time they would return and be seen at 
intervals back on their summer range. However, 
there came a summer when none returned, and 
to-day their old range knows them not. It is 
presumed that they were exterminated while in 
their winter quarters, since it is customary for 
antelope always to return to a chosen district 
unless persistently molested.” 
On Ironside Mountain, at an elevation of 
about 7.000 feet, Mr. Anthony found a fair-sized 
horn sheath of a mountain sheep. It was old and 
weathered, and serves as one of the last re¬ 
minders of an animal once abundant. "I he 
open, rocky ridges along the foothills, were 
favorite haunts for this fine species in the earlier 
days, but it has been some years since the last 
one was seen in Malheur county.” 
Of the many rodents the one of chief in¬ 
terest is the beaver. 
It is six or seven years since Forest and 
Stream called attention to the good work done 
by the beaver in irrigation, pointing out that their 
dams hold the water and furnish sub-irrigation 
in many places for considerable areas of meadow 
land. It was predicted then that when the public 
came to appreciate this good work, farmers gen¬ 
erally would strive to have the beaver protected. 
Mr. Anthony says: 
“The beaver have held their own along 
Willow Creek, and to-day their dams and evi¬ 
dence of their work can be seen at every bend. 
The ranchers, in general, believe in their pro¬ 
tection, and, freed from molestation, the few 
that were left on the creek, when active trap¬ 
ping for their fur ceased some years ago, have 
increased to quite a respectable number. The 
whole valley of the creek shows the results of 
beaver work. The soil, in places, indicates con¬ 
ditions that only generations of beaver dams 
produce by inundation; and most of the creek 
bottoms are moist from sub-irrigation induced 
by beaver work. The ranchers consider these 
animals an important asset to their holdings; so 
much so, in fact, that when stock is occasionally 
lost through becoming bogged down and drown¬ 
ing in some dam, they do not molest the beavers, 
but charge up the loss to accident, for the beaver 
is responsible for the heavy hay crops in the 
creek valley through his system of sub-irriga¬ 
tion. Flis dams raise the level of the waters 
and his burrows, dug deep into the banks, pro¬ 
vide a ready outlet into the fields for the back¬ 
water. In most cases, the water does not appear 
in the meadows as surface moisture, but may be 
found at varying depths of several inches. The 
value of this has been demonstrated by the 
former uncertainty of hay crops when the beaver 
were scarce, and by the increase in yield as the 
beaver multiplied and their work became a 
greater factor. 
“An interesting modification in food habits, 
due to the cultivation of the creek meadows, was 
noted. The beaver were found to have numbers 
of well defined paths into the alfalfa, and every 
morning mud and water along these attested 
to their constant use. The alfalfa would be 
cleared away for some distance from the creek 
bank by the time the meadow was ready for 
cutting. After the field was mowed, the beaver 
brought in bundles of the cut hay and used it 
even when it was fairly dry. A few cut willows 
were generally to be seen floating in the dead 
water at each dam. 
“Very rarely were beaver houses noted. 
These animals seemed to prefer living in holes 
in the bank, with the entrances under water.’’ 
The Idaho pigmy rabbit, spoken of as the 
rarest of the hare family in the Ihiited States, 
is not uncommon in the region where Mr. An¬ 
thony collected, and he gives some interesting 
remarks on its habits. 
Coyotes are abundant in Malheur county, 
and do much damage by catching the chickens, 
ducks, geese, turkeys and sheep of the ranchers. 
They are, therefore, highly unpopular, though 
they do a great deal of good by destroying the 
mice and ground squirrels that are so abundant 
and do so much damage to the crops. 
A single black bear was seen by the col¬ 
lector. 
The paper is illustrated by two plates, one 
a scene showing Ironside, and the country where 
the collecting was done, and the other giving 
the country in which the Idaho pigmy rabbit is 
found, and a capital picture of the animal itself. 
Mr. Anthony’s paper possesses unusual in¬ 
terest. 
EGRET PLUMES AND THE TARIFF. 
Several times within the past few months 
we have pointed out the desirability of insert¬ 
ing in the new tariff law a provision forbidding 
the importation of the plumage of our native 
wild birds, including aigrettes, or the importa¬ 
tion of any feathers which are indistinguishable 
from the feathers of our own native birds. The 
movement to carry out this suggestion has had 
the support of protective associations generally, 
and the tariff law just introduced contains such 
a provision. The section forbids all importation 
of aigrettes, egret feathers, osprey plumes—an¬ 
other name for egret plumes—and all feathers 
of wild birds, except for scientific or educational 
purposes. 
So amended, the tariff law would be a tre¬ 
mendous force in re-establishing a number of 
species that by commercial destruction have now 
been brought very close to the danger point. 
This re-establishment is of course very import¬ 
ant from the scientific standpoint, and equally 
desirable from the economic point of view, for 
many of our herons feed largely on such no.xious 
creatures as grasshoppers, cut-worms, crayfish, 
and various snakes and mice, and are thus allies 
of the farmer. 
Bird protectors everywhere should make a 
strong effort to see that this prohibition against 
the importation of egret feathers is retained in 
the bill. 
THE MOUNTAIN SHEEP’S NAME. 
The specific name of the mountain sheep has 
been under discussion among naturalists for 
nearly twenty years. Some people call the moun¬ 
tain sheep Ovis canadensis; others Ovis cervina, 
and others, a few years back, called it 0 . mon- 
tana. Many of our best mammalogists have ex¬ 
pressed their opinion as to which was the proper 
name, but there has been no agreement, some 
authors insisting on using cervina, and others 
canadensis. 
In Vol. XXVI., of the “Proceedings of the 
Biolo.gical Society of Washington,” Wilfred H. 
Osgood has an article on the name of the Rocky 
Mountain sheep, and gives his reason for con¬ 
cluding that Ovis canadensis is the proper title. 
These various names were all given to the species 
early in the year 1904, but in no case is it pos¬ 
sible to establish the precise date at which the 
names were applied. Because, however, the name 
Ovis canadensis appeared with both a text de¬ 
scription and a figure, in the year 1904, while in 
the same year the name monfana appeared with 
only a figure, and the name cervina with only a 
diagnosis, Mr. Osgood concludes that according 
to Article 28, of the International Code of Zoo¬ 
logical Nomenclature, Recommendation (b), the 
selection of the name canadensis is imperative. 
