Dec. 28, 1912 
FOREST AND STREAM 
831 
PARKER GUNS 
Wear Well, Shoot Well and Handle Well 
Wear well because they are made of the best material by the most skillful craftsmen. 
Shoot well because they hold the charge compactly together at extreme ranges. 
Handle well because the greatest attention has always been paid to the distribution 
of wood and metal, to insure perfect balance and the most symmetrical outline. 
Twenty-bore Parkers have set the pace for small bores in America, and are growing 
in popularity every year with the most progressive sportsmen. 
For further information regarding guns in gauges ranging from 8 to 28, address 
PARKER BROS. Meriden, Conn. 
New York Salesrooms, 32 Warren Street 
(Patented. Feb. 20. 1912.) 
/'"''LEAR VISION means a sure shot. The bright rays of the sun, or the haze ofa 
dark day can’t affect your vision if you wear KING’S SHOOTING GLASSES. 
Made of Akopos Crystal, our exclusive product and infinitely superior to amber. 
Non-magnifying. Postpaid, $1.50 to $7.00. Prescriptions ground to order. 
The KING and the KING-BUSCH-STELLUX Binoculars have wonderful magnify¬ 
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the leading sportsmen of America. You save $10 to $25 buying direct from us. 
Write to-day for Booklet and Prices 
THE F. W. KING OPTICAL CO. 
Cleveland, Obi* 
yards, whether the rhinoceros meant to charge 
me or was merely running blindly, did not par¬ 
ticularly matter. 
Even in the latter case he might happen to 
catch sight of me and change his mind. Thus 
looking over my notebook records I find that I 
was “charged” forty-odd times; that is to say, 
the rhinoceros rushed in my general direction. 
Of this lot I can be sure of but three, and pos¬ 
sibly four, that certainly meant mischief. Six 
more came so directly at us and continued so to 
come that in spite of ourselves we were com¬ 
pelled to kill them. The rest were successfully 
dodged. 
Fortunately it is often possible to avoid the 
chance rhinoceros through the warning given by 
the rhinoceros birds. These are birds about the 
size of a robin that accompany the beast every¬ 
where. They sit in a row along his back occupy¬ 
ing themselves with ticks and a good place to 
roost. 
Always they are peaceful and quiet until a 
human being approaches. Then they flutter a 
few feet into the air, uttering a peculiar rapid 
chattering. Writers with more sentiment than 
sense of proportion assure us that this warns the 
rhinoceros of approaching danger. On the con¬ 
trary, I always looked at it the other way. The 
rhinoceros birds thereby warned me of danger, 
and I was duly thankful. 
How the Birds Consume Destructive Insects. 
Weather conditions, parasites, fungi, insect 
diseases and mechanically applied poisons (most 
of which are both dangerous and expensive) to¬ 
gether are insufficient to check the multiplication 
of insects without the assistance of insectivor¬ 
ous birds. Edward H. Forbush records seeing 
a pair of grosbeaks visit their nest 450 times in 
eleven hours, carrying to their young two or 
more larvae at a time. Sparrows, chickadees, 
vireos, martins and warblers, says the American 
Review of Reviews, made from forty to sixty 
trips an hour to their nests with all kinds of 
insects for their young. One of the reports of 
the Biological Survey records the finding of sixty 
grasshoppers in the crop of one nighthawk and 
500 mosquitoes in another; thirty-eight cutworms 
in the crop of a blackbird and seventy canker- 
worms in the crop of a cedar bird. Professor 
Tschudi estimates that a song sparrow devours 
1,500 larvae a day, and Professor Forbush says 
that a single yellow-throated warbler will con¬ 
sume 10,000 tree lice in a day. A scarlet tanager 
has been seen to devour gypsy moths at the rate 
of thirty-five a minute for eighteen minutes at 
a time. It is known that more than fifty species 
of birds feed upon different kinds of caterpillars, 
while thirty-eight species live largely upon de¬ 
structive plant lice. 
“By far the most efficient aids to man in 
controlling the codling moth are the birds,” says 
the “Year Book” (1911) of the Department of 
Agriculture. A report of the Bureau of Ento¬ 
mology says that this insect does more damage 
to apples and pears than all of the other insect 
pests combined, this damage being estimated at 
from $12,000,000 to $15,000,000 a year. Thirty- 
six species of birds attack this insect, these 
species representing thirteen families, of which 
the three most important are the woodpeckers, 
the titmice and the sparrows. In some locali¬ 
ties these birds destroy from 66 per cent, to 85 
per cent, of the hibernating larvae of this insect. 
Coyote Went Back to the Wild. 
Miss Elizabeth Coyne, living on a home¬ 
stead north of Grover, being a good rifle shot, 
lay in wait for a coyote that had been stealing 
her chickens. 
The other morning she killed it and upon 
examination was surprised to find on its neck 
an ordinary dog collar with a small plate en¬ 
graved “Jerry McGahan.” 
The animal was at one time a pet of Wild 
Horse Jerry, a widely known character of the 
Chalk Bluff country, who was killed three years 
ago.—Denver Republican. 
“So Why Fret?” 
Are the trains too slow for you? Csesar, 
with all of his court, never exceeded the speed 
limit. 
Are your wages too small? In Europe peo¬ 
ple are content with making a living. 
Are the lights too dim? David wrote his 
Psalms by the light of a smoky torch. 
Are you ugly? Cleopatra, though homely, 
bewitched two emperors. 
Are you cold? The soldiers of Valley Forge 
walked barefoot on the ice and snow. 
Are you hungry? The children of India are 
starving for want of a crust of bread. 
Are you tired? Why fret about it? Jacob 
was tired when he dreamed of the angels of 
heaven. 
Are you sick? Suppose you had lived 2,000 
years ago, when sickness was fatal. 
Are you poor? The Saviour of men was not 
wealthy. 
Cheer up! Praise God that you live in the 
midst of His blessings. 
Why fret?—American Magazine. 
Wild Ducks are Tamed. 
The Agricultural Experiment Station at the 
Connecticut State College is taming wild ducks. 
The station was enabled this season through 
funds provided by sportsmen to send an expe¬ 
dition to the Canadian Northwest to study 
methods of increasing wild ducks and getting 
breeding stock for experimental purposes. The 
expedition was in charge of State Ornithologist 
Herbert K. Job. 
Most species of wild ducks have not been 
persuaded to breed under restraint, but it has 
been believed they would do so if stock could 
be secured that was hand reared from the egg 
and had never learned wild ways. Job estab¬ 
lished a camp on the shore of Lake Manitoba. 
Wild duck eggs were collected in the surround¬ 
ing wilderness and hatched out in incubators. 
Twelve species of wild ducks’ nests in that 
region and eggs of young of all these were se¬ 
cured. 
In the majority of cases every egg hatched. 
The average for the season was 92 per cent., far 
better than poultry men often attain. Most of 
the young, except of two peculiar maritime 
species—the white-winged scooter and the ruddy 
duck—were reared with little loss. Even such 
supposedly wild natures as the redhead, canvas- 
back, bluebill and various others proved per¬ 
fectly docile, thriving in confinement. 
On the 2,000-mile journey back, Job per¬ 
sonally cared for and tended the consignment 
in the express cars. A fine large stock, represent¬ 
ing eleven species, arrived in good condition and 
are now thriving at one of the large preserves 
affiliated with the experiment station. Experi¬ 
ments with them will be conducted there. On 
the trip only one duckling, some three weeks 
old, died. 
The achievement is expected to prove the 
beginning' of an important movement to save 
and restore the wildfowl, while demonstrating 
the effect of environment on even the wildest 
creatures.—Winnipeg Correspondence, Minneapo¬ 
lis Journal. 
Big Game in Portuguese East Africa. 
The big-game shooting grounds of British 
East Africa have become so widely and generally 
known that they have blotted out of mind the 
Zambezi Valley to the south, the forests of 
Gorongoza and Govuro, and the courses of a 
dozen rivers that break into the Indian Ocean 
through Portuguese territory. To the big-game 
hunter with a desire for trophies, British East 
Africa presents undoubted advantages over any 
other country in the world, but to the sportsman 
who wishes to test his powers of woodcraft to 
the full and on the supreme scale, so far as 
game is concerned, Portuguese East Africa offers 
a field that is unsurpassed. 
Portuguese East Africa still contains the 
following big game in abundance: Buffalo, croco¬ 
dile, eland, elephant, giraffe, brindled and white¬ 
tailed gnu or wildebeest, hartbeest, hippopotamus, 
hyena, koodoo, rhinoceros, roan antelope, sable 
antelope, waterbuck and zebra. There is a great 
variety of smaller game. Not all of the species 
mentioned can be hunted indiscriminately, but 
each may be hunted under certain conditions in 
certain districts after securing the necessary gun 
permits and shooting licenses. 
(Consul Chamberlain’s complete report? giving 
information as to the required permits and 
licenses and fees therefor, ammunition, guns, 
outfit and probable expense will be loaned to 
interested sportsmen by the Bureau of Foreign 
and Domestic Commerce, Washington, D. C.) — 
Consul G. A. Chamberlain, Lourenco Marquez. 
