144 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Aug. 3, 1912 
Published Weekly by the 
Forest and Stream Publishing Company, 
Charles Otis, President. 
W. G. Beecroft, Secretary. S. J. Gibson, Treasurer. 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
CORRESPONDENCE — Forest and Stream is the 
recognized medium of entertainment, instruction and in¬ 
formation between American sportsmen. The editors 
invite communications on the subjects to which its pages 
are devoted, but, of course, are not responsible for the 
views of correspondents. Anonymous communications 
cannot be regarded. 
SUBSCRIPTIONS: $3 a year; $1.50 for six months; 
. a co P>'- Canadian, $4 a year; foreign, $4.50 a year. 
I his paper may be obtained of newsdealers throughout 
the United States. Canada and Great Britain. Foreign 
Subscription and Sales Agents—London: Davies & Co., 
1 Finch Lane; Sampson, Low & Co. Paris: Brentano’s. 
ADVERTISEMENTS : Display and classified, 20 cts. 
per agate line ($2.80 per inch). There are 14 agate lines to 
the inch. Covers and special positions extra. Five 
ten and twenty per cent, discount for 13. 26 and 52 inser¬ 
tions, respectively, within one year. Forms close Monday 
in advance of publication date. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful in¬ 
terest in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate 
a refined taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
THE GAME REFUGE BILL. 
Big-game hunters and naturalists are watch¬ 
ing—not very hopefully—the action of the Agri¬ 
cultural Committee of the House of Representa¬ 
tives on H. R. 23,839, which was printed in Forest 
and Stream of May 18. The bill’s good features 
have more than once been pointed out, but the 
measure is so important that it should be again 
brought to the attention of all who are interested 
in the preservation of our large game animals, 
and through them to the notice of their repre¬ 
sentatives in Congress. 
The bill provides that the President of the 
United States, when requested in writing by the 
Governor of any State, may set aside as national 
game refuges areas adapted for the propagation 
and protection of game or other animals, birds 
or fish. The area of any one refuge shall not 
exceed 50,000 acres. Such national game refuges 
shall be under the charge of the Secretary of 
Agriculture. When such areas shall have been 
set aside, the hunting, trapping, killing or cap¬ 
ture of animals, birds or fish shall be unlawful, 
except under regulation prescribed by the Secre¬ 
tary of Agriculture. 
The purpose of the bill is to protect game 
mammals and birds, and not to interfere with 
the operation of local game laws as affecting 
private State lands. It is to encourage the re- 
introduction of elk and other big game in dis¬ 
tricts where they have become extinct, and to 
establish game refuges which may serve as breed¬ 
ing grounds, from which adjacent parts of the 
national forests may be restocked with game.' 
If Congress felt any special interest in the 
protection of our large game and the perpetua¬ 
tion of certain species which are now perilously 
near extinction, so good a bill as this is would 
not have slumbered in committee for months. 
Congress does not feel an interest in these mat¬ 
ters, and the reason is because Congressmen have 
not been made to understand that their con¬ 
stituents do feel interested in these things and 
want the game perpetuated. Until sportsmen ac¬ 
tively bestir themselves in these matters, their 
representatives will be sluggish, and it will not 
be difficult to smother good bills in committee, 
or to kill them on the floor. 
Readers of Forest and Stream should de¬ 
mand action on H. R. 23 839. 
ADVERTISING. 
It isn’t considered good form to talk about 
one’s self, but at the risk of being considered 
“out of order” we think our readers will be in¬ 
terested in the advertising record of Forest and 
Stream. 
New magazines secure advertising on the 
possibility that such advertising may pay the ad¬ 
vertiser. An established periodical secures ad¬ 
vertising only because it pays, and has paid, its' 
patrons. Forest and Stream is an established 
magazine — the oldest outdoor magazine extant. 
The following comparative statement, compiled 
by and published in Printers’ Ink, the recog¬ 
nized authority upon such matters as pertain to 
magazines and their advertising, shows Forest 
and Stream, during the month of June, 1912, to 
have carried over 2,215 lines (approximately ten 
standard magazine pages) more than any other 
outdoor sportsman’s publication. The month of 
June was selected for comparison, because it is 
considered the biggest month for advertising in 
outdoor publications: 
agate lines of advertising. 
(Compiled by Printers’ Ink.) 
Publication. June, 1912. 
Forest and Stream.20,023 
Outing.117,808 
Field and Stream.15,624 
Outer’s Book .12,320 
Recreation .10,248 
In addition to leading all other outdoor 
magazines, it is gratifying to find Forest and 
Stream for June, 1912, showed a gain of 6,339 
lines over June, 1911. 
But in considering these figures, it should be 
borne in mind that Forest and Stream, being a 
weekly, is issued oftener than the magazines with 
which it is compared, and its figures are derived 
by totaling the advertising of the weekly issues. 
Without the support of our readers, through 
their patronage of our advertisers during the 
past year, we could not have shown so handsome 
an increase this year. Forest and Stream has 
paid its advertisers handsomely, and indications 
are that this year will out-distance all previous 
years. Our editorial improvements are daily 
bringing encomiums—and new subscribers. Forest 
and Stream is the most talked of magazine 
among outdoor men and women. It has been, 
and is, authority on all matters relative to hunt¬ 
ing, fishing, trap, field and big-game shooting, 
travel, natural history and yachting. 
We are proud of our showing as set forth 
by Printers’ Ink, and take this opportunity to 
thank our readers and advertisers-. 
ECONOMIC VALUE OF BIRDS. 
In a bulletin recently issued by the Depart¬ 
ment of Agriculture a phase of the work of the 
Bureau of Biological Survey, as developed under 
Secretary Wilson, is brought prominently to the 
attention of those interested in the economic 
value of birds. In this bulletin, which is No. 44, 
of the Biological Survey series, the traits of the 
family, commonly known as fly-catchers, are 
shown, and the results of a study of the food 
of the birds given to the public. The contents 
of 3-398 stomachs are reported upon, showing 
an average of 94.99 per cent, of animal food 
and 5 01 per cent, vegetable, the animal food 
consisting of insects, almost exclusively of harm¬ 
ful species. Attention is also called to the fact 
that the fly-catchers, as a rule attack large pre¬ 
daceous birds and are thus a protection for the 
poultry yard against such winged enemies as 
hawks and crows. Of the seventeen species re¬ 
ported upon, the habits of each are briefly de¬ 
scribed, and insects preyed upon, as revealed by 
the stomach contents, are listed. 
PROF. WILLIAM NIVEN’S DISCOVERIES. 
It gratifies us not a little to have secured 
for our readers the heretofore unpublished paper 
by Prof. William Niven, of Mexico City, relating 
his discovery of several ruined cities in Mexico. 
Beginning more than twenty years ago, Prof. 
Niven was the first white man to gaze on the 
greatest of these buried towns, a city fifty miles 
in length by five miles wide, lying along the bank 
of one of the lesser rivers in the heart of the 
wildest part of Guerrero. With the persistence 
of the Scotchman—for the professor is a son of 
the Land of Heather—he followed this first dis¬ 
covery with others, laying bare several ruined 
towns not even named by the Indians, and alto¬ 
gether unknown to men of science of any land. 
None was so large as the first great city, but 
from all he has brought thousands of artifacts 
of the dead race, relics which are totally differ¬ 
ent from anything left anywhere else in Mexico 
by the vanished tribes of America’s Egypt. 
In these explorations, Professor Niven first 
overcame the objections of the Indians, success¬ 
fully combatted a small but determined revolu¬ 
tion, conquered insects, reptiles, animals and the 
dread diseases of the wild land, and finally 
emerged from his last trip, only to prepare for 
another on which he will leave this fall, com¬ 
missioned by the Mexican Government to wrest 
from the earth the secret of the great race which 
vanished from Guerrero more than 2,000 years ago. 
In the article, to appear shortly in Forest 
and Stream, Professor Niven has told for the 
first time the story of his trips into unexplored 
Guerrero, and enumerated his almost unbeliev¬ 
able adventures among men and animals and dead 
cities there. The account of his years of life in 
the jungle reads like a piece of fiction, but it 
is true to the smallest detail, and needs no addi¬ 
tion of skilled word-imagery to make it interesting. 
STATE FORESTER RANE TO ENGLAND. 
F. W. Rank, State Forester of Massachu¬ 
setts, has been delegated by Governor Foss to 
represent the Commonwealth of Massachusetts 
at the Second International Congress of Ento¬ 
mology, which is to be held at Oxford England, 
Aug. 5 to 10, 1912. At the termination of the 
convention Mr. Rane will go on to the Black 
Forest of Germany to study forestry conditions 
and the gypsy moth question. He will remain 
abroad throughout the month of August. 
