536 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 3, 1909. 
showed lesions on the way to repair. It may 
be assumed that the disease was of foreign 
origin and was introduced here by domestic 
fowls or pheasants; for the coccidia are carried 
by chickens and pheasants, but are not nearly 
as destructive to them as to American species 
as, for example, the turkey, ruffed grouse and 
Bob White. 
The organism of this disease is voided by 
fowls or pheasants upon the ground, from 
which it is picked up afterward by native birds 
with their food. Experiment shows that 
turkeys raised on ground where no fowls and 
no diseased turkeys have run for years are quite 
free from this disease; but they sometimes con¬ 
tract it even then. This may be explained by 
the fact that small birds that feed about poultry 
yards may pick up and carry the disease. Dr. 
Philip B. Hadley, of the Rhode Island Experi¬ 
ment Station, informs me that fully 80 per cent, 
of the English sparrows examined there carried 
the disease although most of them were not 
seriously affected by it. Another infection that 
has appeared but once at the Sutton hatchery 
is a grouse disease also believed to be of 
European origin. In 1907 eight quail from the 
South were found dead at one time from its 
effects. The Southern outbreak of this disease 
caused a loss of fully 80 per cent, of the birds 
received from the South, but did not affect birds 
kept apart from them. Dr. Tyzzer believes 
that the promiscuous introduction of pheasants, 
partridges and grouse from Europe is likely to 
result in the introduction of diseases which 
may prove very serious to American game 
birds. In January last I saw a lot of quail and 
Hungarian partridges confined in the same pen. 
The partridges appeared in good health, but the 
quail soon began to die off rapidly. One was 
examined and found to have died of coccidiosis. 
This is suggestive to say the least. 
Such precautions were taken against dis¬ 
eases at the Sutton hatchery in 1908 that there 
was no serious outbreak. Nevertheless the 
young grouse soon sickened and died from 
other causes, possibly from lack of suitable con¬ 
ditions in the brooders. 
Dr. Tyzzer said that birds that were sent to 
him from Sutton for examination were attacked 
by a black mould (Aspergillus finnigatus), a 
pigeon breeder’s disease. This produced nodules 
in the lungs. It went by the name of chicken 
pneumonia at the hatchery. There were also 
three forms of bacterial disease noted. Dr. 
Tyzzer is not sure that the bacterial diseases 
are necessarily fatal, but thinks it possible that 
they may be induced or aggravated by unhealth¬ 
ful conditions in the brooders, and may not be 
troublesome under conditions more favorable 
to health (the amebic disease is fatal, in most 
cases, under any conditions). This indicates 
again that the chief cause of the death of many 
of the young quail in 1908 was a lack of proper 
care or knowledge by the attendants. 
It is doubtful if grouse or quail can be raised 
successfully unless they are isolated from 
poultry and pheasants. In two instances quail 
chicks that were being reared by bantam bens 
at Sutton contracted disease from the hens and 
died. Hens were used mainly to incubate the 
eggs, which were taken away on the last day 
and hatched in an incubator, that the chicks 
might not be exposed to infection. Old and 
quiet hens were successfully used for this pur¬ 
pose and broke few eggs. 
There is a possible chance that grouse or 
quail immune to these diseases may yet be 
found in some locality, or that immune birds 
may in time be bred. At present, however, 
success turns on controlling the conditions 
under which the birds are reared. 
Edward Howe Eorbush. 
[to be concluded.] 
Nebraska Sportsmen and Game. 
Omaha, Neb., March 27. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: The Nebraska sportsman of to-day 
confronts conditions immeasurably different 
from those that prevailed ten or fifteen years 
ago. Since she assumed the dignity of State¬ 
hood, the transitions have been more marked 
in character than all those combined that took 
place before, and we may well believe that a 
quarter of a century to come will not see other 
changes as radical or complete. The three most 
salient features of the period covered by the 
labors of Forest and Stream have been the 
multiplication of sportsmen, the decrease of our 
natural game resources and the development 
of the game protection and preservatory idea. 
Each one of these may be appreciated fully 
only by those old enough to compare the 
present with the past, in which they had part. 
The young sportsman of to-day knows several 
of our once common and high-class game birds, 
such as the whooping and sandhill crane, the 
turkey, ruffed grouse and the woodcock, 
through the reminiscences of their older com¬ 
panions only, or by what they glean from 
books. Of these birds the turkey, ruffed grouse 
and woodcock are gone, and the whooping and 
sandhill crane so extremely rare that it is the 
individual especially favored of fortune who can 
ever hope to see them in the regions that once 
knew them so well. So, too, with the Canada 
and white goose and the rest of the game birds, 
of which the supply and the shooting are in 
marked contrast with the abundance and the 
conventional license of fifteen years ago. 
While in this country we are still in sad 
straits as to our big game supply, there is 
abundant reason for encouragement. As sports- 
ment we have been blind, but to-day we see. 
If proof of this is all that is wanted, it may be 
found in our codes of game laws yearly be¬ 
coming more stringent in their restrictions and 
provisions. Whereas in the old days the notion 
that the killing of big or other game might be 
confined to anything else than the endurance, 
skill and whim of the shooter, would have been 
resented by the average sportsman, we have 
now come to the color of hair and eye stage, 
where we recognize that we may take game 
only “in the manner, to the amount, and for 
the purpose,” duly set forth in the law. In 
short, we have acquired an entirely new way 
of looking upon our game resources, and en¬ 
tirely new appreciation and recognition of the 
relations which hold between the individual 
sportsman and his fellows with respect to the 
game supply. In the past fifteen years we have 
advanced a hundred-fold in real, solid horse 
sense. 
Th«: myriads of sportsmen now where there 
was u single one before mean, too, that the 
game will be all the longer spared to us. When 
those who were enlisted in protection were 
comparatively few, they were weak in influence 
and their cause was weak. Now that the many 
are concerned, their cause is strong. We have 
reached and passed the limit in indifference and 
negligence as to our game and fish; all signs 
of the times point to enlarged public appreci¬ 
ation and concern, and to a system of game 
preservation to conserve the resources of the 
forest, field and stream. The evolution of 
sportsmanship has been noticeable, effective and 
thorough. 
It is one of the singular things of bird life, 
that the beautiful, graceful king of the air, the 
redtail hawk, is nowhere found so numerously 
as about the little landlocked lakes of our West¬ 
ern sandhills. I have seen scores of them on 
my semi-annual hunting trips, and seen more 
about the Pine Ridge marshes in a single fall 
than in all my life together before. While 
crouched in a blind in the rice or reeds on a 
calm October afternoon it is not uncommon 
to see fifteen or twenty of these handsome but 
wary birds a-wing at the same time. They are 
inordinately fond of wildfowl flesh, and but few 
crippled ducks escape them. They circle above 
the rice and rushes, this way and that, in and 
out, now mounting high the ethereal dome, now 
sweeping low until the tips of their rufous wings 
sweep either the rice tips or water’s surface, 
here, there and everywhere, until their keen 
eyes detect the hiding redhead, teal or mallard, 
when down they dart, like an arrow leaving 
the bow, and it is death to the ducks. Although 
I have never found a nest of redtail hawks, I 
know that they breed in the sandhills and build 
their nests in the sands, as there are no rocks 
or ledges, trees, snags or any sort of lodgment 
where they can deposit their eggs and perform 
the duties of hatching and rearing their young. 
F. M. Eaton, of Thedford, tells me the pros¬ 
pects for a good chicken crop throughout 
Thomas county the coming summer could not 
be better. Last season in this same neighbor¬ 
hood the birds were afflicted with a strange 
malady in July and August and died off by 
hundreds. The sportsmen attributed this fatal 
disease to the rose bugs, which were tremen¬ 
dously abundant last summer. These bugs, it is 
a well established fact, will kill poultry, and the 
supposition is that they are equally dangerous 
as a fpod to the chicken and grouse. 
Mr. Eaton is also authority for the statement 
that a band of twenty odd white-tail deer are 
haunting the brakes along tbe Dismal River, 
ten miles south of Thedford. Fourteen of the 
bunch were seen feeding in a low swale along 
the river two or three weeks ago, and during 
the round-up last fall tewenty-one deer were 
seen by the different cattlemen of that section. 
That these deer are really there is borne out 
by the assertion of Henry Murphy, who resides 
fifteen miles northeast of Seneca. When duck 
shooting at Mr. Murphy’s ranch last fall, he 
told us about the existence of several deer in 
the vicinity, and one of his sons killed one the 
previous winter. Sandy Griswold. 
All the game laws of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and nozv in force, are 
given in the Game Lazvs in Brief. See adv. 
