Sept. 30, 1911.] 
521 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Egrets and Aigrettes. 
The enforcement of the provisions of the 
Shea-White plumage bill, which went into ef¬ 
fect the first of July last, is awaiting a decision 
by the courts on the constitutionality of the law 
which has been questioned. A woman who ad¬ 
vertised aigrettes for sale was arrested and held 
in bail for selling the plumes. The counsel for 
the feather importers’ association says that it 
will carry the law to the U. S. Supreme Court. 
It is well known that the aigrettes, which have 
been so generally worn in women’s hats, are the 
special breeding plumage of certain herons. Be¬ 
ing worn only in the breeding season, the birds 
must be shot at that time in order to obtain 
the plumes, and being killed when they have 
young ones, the young necessarily starve to 
death. At this season no fear of man and his 
firearms will keep the old birds from bringing 
food to their young, and is only necessary for 
a plume hunter to find a rookery and to wait 
there and kill the birds as they come in. 
There are two American species of egrets from 
which these plumes come, but in other parts of 
the world there are certain similar white herons 
which bear a like breeding plumage. Two of 
these are found in Australia, and a Melbourne 
ornithologist, A. H. E. Mattingley, has written 
to the Emu an account of what he saw at a 
rookery which had been visited by plume hunters 
and from which a large proportion of the old 
birds had been killed. He says: 
“Notwithstanding the extreme heat and 
myriads of mosquitoes, I determined to revisit 
the locality during my Christmas holidays in 
order to obtain one picture only—namely, that 
of a white crane, or egret, feeding its young. 
When near the place I could see some large 
patches of white, either floating in the water 
or reclining on the fallen trees in the vicinity 
of the egret’s rookery. This set me speculating 
as to the cause of the unusual sight. As I drew 
nearer, what a spectacle met my gaze, a sight 
that made my blood fairly boil with indignation. 
There, strewn on the floating waterweed and 
also on adjacent logs, were at least fifty car¬ 
casses of large white and smaller plumed egrets, 
nearly one-third of the rookery, perhaps more, 
the birds having been shot off their nests con¬ 
taining young. 
“About 200 of the young were left to die of 
starvation. This last fact was betokened by at 
least seventy carcasses of the nestlings, which 
had become so weak that their legs had refused 
to support them, and they had fallen from the 
nests into the water below and had been miser¬ 
ably drowned, while in the trees above the re¬ 
mainder of the parentless young ones could be 
seen staggering in the nests, some of them fall¬ 
ing with a splash into the water as their waning 
strength left them too exhausted to hold up any 
longer, while others simply stretched themselves 
out on the nest and so expired. Others, again, 
were seen trying* in vain to attract the attention 
of passing egrets, which were flying with food 
in their bills to feed their own young, and it was 
a pitiful sight indeed to see these starvelings 
with outstretched necks and gaping bills implor¬ 
ing the passing birds to feed them.” 
The Bureau of Biological Survey, of which 
Henry W. Henshaw is chief, has just issued a 
circular telling of the “Distribution of the Amer¬ 
ican Egrets.” It is illustrated by two maps of 
North America, which show by black dots where 
birds have been found. Persecution by plume 
hunters has driven these birds from much of 
the area over which they were once found in 
great abundance. 
The great white heron (Herodias egretta) was 
formerly one of the most widely distributed of 
the whole family of herons. It occurred over 
the whole United States, and even sometimes in 
Southern Canada, south to Patagonia. It was 
enormously abundant along the Gulf Coast from 
Louisiana to Florida, and also along the larger 
rivers of the Mississippi Valley through Wiscon¬ 
sin and Indiana. It often occurred in New Eng¬ 
land and bred in numbers in California. Almost 
everywhere it has been exterminated. 
The snowy egret (Egretta candidissima ) had 
almost the same range as its larger relative, but 
did not go quite so far south, only to Chili and 
Argentina. The Southern United States, espe¬ 
cially the swamps of the Gulf coast, were favorite 
breeding grounds for this bird, but it was also 
found in great abundance in swamps of the 
lower Ohio, and formerly there were extensive 
rookeries in Southern New Jersey. 
It is only by rigid protection that these beau¬ 
tiful birds may be saved, and such protection 
surely should be given them. 
Little Chief Hare. 
On the 16th of August, 1911, at a point near 
a little lake known as Grass Lake, about six 
miles due south of Lake Tahoe, at an elevation 
of approximately 8,000 feet, I 'saw a little chief 
hare. 
He was about thirty feet away from me on 
some slide rock below a little snow bank. He 
had a long straw in his mouth, doubtless meant 
for his treasury of winter supplies, and stopped 
nearly a minute to examine his visitor. The 
large round ears, the color, the shape of the 
animal were unmistakable. 
I do not know what the range limit of these 
animals is, but I was interested in meeting a 
specimen so much further south than any which 
I had previously seen. G. H. Gould. 
[The little chief hare, formerly known as 
Lagomys princeps, has now been put in another 
genus, Ochotona. This is divided into a number 
of well marked forms, some of which are called 
races and others—separated from their relatives 
by considerable distances — are regarded as 
species. 
The northern range of Ochotona princeps is 
given by field naturalists as being in the Jaspar 
House region of Western Alberta and adjacent 
portions of British Columbia. Over Central 
British Columbia the little chief hare is not re¬ 
ported, but in extreme Northern British Colum¬ 
bia it appears in one of its forms ( 0 . collaris) 
and extends over much of the mountain region 
of \ ukon and Alaska, near the base of the 
Alaska peninsula and the Cook Inlet region, and 
about the upper waters of the Stewart, White, 
I anana, Kantishna, Macmillan and other rivers. 
We have seen the little chief hare in the 
mountains which separate the Frazer River 
watershed from that of the Smiikameen in 
Southern British Columbia. 
A form of the little chief hare is found in 
the mountains of Oregon and California south 
of the region of Mt. Whitney; and in the main 
Rocky Mountains another form is found from 
the United States boundary south to the Beaver 
Mountains in Utah and in most of the moun¬ 
tains in Colorado south to the Silverton region.— 
Editor.] 
Red Squirrels in the Water. 
Iroy Hills, N. J., Sept. 1 8.—Editor Forest 
and Stream: In your Sept. 16 issue a corres¬ 
pondent, Mr. William M. Foord, mentions see¬ 
ing a red squirrel swimming in a lake at some 
distance from the shore, and asks if squirrels 
habitually take to the water of their own accord 
in order to go from place to place. 
On Moosehead Lake in Maine I have often 
seen red squirrels swimming from the shore to 
an island or vice versa, between islands, or even 
between two points along the shore. They are 
strong swimmers, and must certainly use this 
means of going from place to place voluntarily. 
I think some of them must come to grief 
however, while out on the lake where the ever- 
watchful gulls can discover them, for on Hog¬ 
back Island, where there is a large nesting colony 
of herring gulls, one can almost alwavs find the 
remains of squirrels, which look as if they had 
been brought there by the gulls. 
1 have never seen any other species of squirrel 
swimming. It would be interesting to know 
whether any of them do, like their little red 
cousin, take voluntarily to the water and swim 
from place to place. Benj. F. Howell, 3 d. 
A Gorilla in America. 
There has recently been received at the New 
Y °rk Zoological Society’s park in the Borough 
of the Bronx in this city a little female gorilla. 
She was brought here by Prof. R. L. Garner, 
who secured her in Ninge Sika in equatorial west 
Afiica, where she was in the possession of a 
native. The little animal is believed to be about 
a yeai old, and is about two feet in height. 
Gorillas have been extraordinarily rare in cap¬ 
tivity. They bear confinement with difficulty, 
and it is a hard matter to discover the proper 
sort of food for them. At least two efforts have 
previously been made to secure gorillas for the 
New York Zoological Society, one having been 
bought in London for $1,000, which died on 
shipboard on the way here, and another having 
been purchased from the animal dealer, Hagen- 
beck, at Hamburg. This one died before it left 
Germany. 
The present specimen is extremely shy, but it 
is doubtful whether it will live long. She seems 
to be fairly strong, and did not apparently suffer 
from the sea voyage. On her arrival at the 
Bronx she seemed ill and refused to eat, but 
the latest advices are that she had somewhat re¬ 
covered and was eating. New Yorkers who wish 
to see this little animal will do well to pay an 
early visit to the Zoological Park. 
