272 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March 2, 1912 
Mr. Thompson’s Work Appreciated. 
Caruthersville, M.O., Feb. 19.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: Of late I have noticed with great 
admiration the articles by John W. Thompson, 
of Doniphan, Mo., and I believe I voice the sen¬ 
timent of a great many readers in asking for 
more of them. What chiefly attracted me to 
them has been the wonderful knowledge of wild 
life displayed in everything Mr. Thompson has 
written. Possibly no writer to the sportsmen’s 
press of late years has shown such intimate 
knowledge of the denizens of the woods and 
streams. 
My home is at Cleveland, and I travel in this 
district occasionally and met Mr. Thompson a 
few days ago. He is rather a quiet, unostenta¬ 
tious man, but his remarkable work in en¬ 
forcing the game law to the letter is very aston¬ 
ishing, considering the vast territory and the 
lawless element he is obliged to contend with; 
in fact, the only real thing on the force. 
I am always anxious to say a good word for 
the only real sportsman’s paper and would be 
pleased indeed to see more in print from the 
source mentioned above. W. R. Greib. 
Winter Killed. 
Las Animas, Colo., Feb. 21.—Editor Forest 
Stream: After the most severe winter weather 
experienced for twenty years, we are able to 
compute approximately our loss of feathered 
life. Seventy-five per cent, of the quail have 
succumbed throughout the irrigated district, and 
about twenty-five per cent, of meadow larks. 
In the rough cedar-covered sections south of 
the Arkansas River the loss among the quail 
was much lighter. The ground sparrows suf¬ 
fered severely, while the English sparrow seems 
to have come through in good shape. Many 
cottontail rabbits starved to death, while the 
deep light snow of January made the jackrabbit 
easy prey for hawks and coyotes. 
Through January and the earlier part of 
February the prairie dogs were buried under 
the crusted snow, and now they are to be seen 
apparently as numerous as ever. So far as I 
can learn, these animals provide no winter food, 
but hibernate as occasion requires. 
On Jan. 15, while driving, a jackrabbit 
jumped from under a soapweed just in front 
of my team, and was pounced upon by an eagle. 
The bird’s talons were so deeply imbeded that 
he had some difficulty in loosening them. I 
was so nearly upon him before he extricated 
himself from the rabbit that my horses shied. 
I watched the bird closely and observed that he 
did not use his beak. The rabbit was a large 
one and was killed instantly, the eagle’s talons 
penetrating from either side through the vitals. 
F. T. Webber. 
Hearing on the Conservation Bills. 
The second day’s hearing before the joint 
Senate and Assembly Committee of Forest, Fish 
and Game at Albany on the bill to amend the 
conservation law in relation to lands, forests 
and public parks, developed lively opposition on 
the part of lumbermen to sections 88 and 89 
providing for State regulation of cutting on 
private lands and for taxation relief for re¬ 
forested lands. Some representatives of lum¬ 
ber companies contended that the law regulat¬ 
ing cutting to a minimum of eight inches for 
the conifers and twelve inches for hardwoods, 
except on permission from the commission to 
meet certain conditions of wooded areas, was 
unconstitutional. Gifford Pinchot and other 
representatives of the Campfire Club contended 
that the police power of the State could be em¬ 
ployed to save the Adirondack forests. Chair¬ 
man Roosevelt of the Senate Committee was 
of the opinion that the bill met the requirements 
of the constitution. 
A representative of the Brooklyn Cooperage 
Co., a subsidiary of the Sugar Trust, declared 
that his company was in favor of good forestry 
and preserving the forests. This prompted 
Forester Pinchot to report that the forests in 
which the Brooklyn Cooperage Company had 
lumbered presented the worst scenes of devas¬ 
tation and waste which he had encountered any¬ 
where east of the Rockies. 
The Conservation Commission agreed to re¬ 
stricting the limitation of private cuttings to 
the forest areas within the blue line. 
The lumbermen contended that the bill gave 
the commission arbitrary power. Its advocates 
contravened that and declared that public senti¬ 
ment now demanded the exercise of a State 
control that would put a stop to the wholesale 
denuding of the forests which protect the great 
watersheds of the State. 
A Dreary Picture. 
Montclair, N. J., Feb. 24. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: I saw in a recent issue of Forest and 
Stream that the Conservation Commission of 
New York State had for free distribution 30,000 
pheasant eggs and 5,000 pheasants. It is cer¬ 
tainly encouraging to note such efforts to restock 
our depleted game covers. 
But it occurred to me as I read this announce¬ 
ment, what is being done to save the ruffed 
grouse? Year after year this splendid bird is 
relentlessly hunted down, and in spite of legis¬ 
lation or through lack of it, continues to dwindle 
in numbers, so that in many parts of the East 
it is extinct. And still comes the annual distri¬ 
bution of European birds and eggs. The State 
authorities certainly do not hope to give the 
American sportsmen a game bird more worthy 
of the name than the ruffed grouse. Pheasants 
have qualities that recommend them both to the 
gunner and to the farmer, and should be wel¬ 
comed to our covers, but not at the expense of 
our native birds. An adequate portion of the 
time and money at present spent in raising and 
liberating foreign birds should be devoted to the 
propagation of the grouse. It has been success¬ 
fully reared in confinement in the past, and it 
is a waste of words to have to argue such action 
for the future. The ruffed grouse is surely 
going. Northern New Jersey is a fair example 
of that fact. 
This condition can be remedied, though; of 
course delay only removes success further be¬ 
yond. And let me protest against the sentiment 
sometimes expressed of a proneness to be satis¬ 
fied with foreign substitutes for our native birds. 
It would indeed be a dreary picture to imagine 
the American sportsman returning home after 
a day afield with only a bag of Hungarian par¬ 
tridges, because the still October woods no 
longer echoed to the drumming of the ruffed 
grouse. J. J. Welch. 
Violations of the Fish and Game Laws. 
San Francisco, Cal., Feb. 20.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: Japanese fishermen operating on the 
east side of the bay have become careless in re¬ 
gard to the size of the fish retained by them. 
Many complaints have been made of late to 
the effect that ducks have been slaughtered in 
the marshes about Vallejo after nightfall, but 
the offenders have been wary and escaped arrest 
until a few days ago. Deputy Armstrong man¬ 
aged to get near three offenders one evening and 
cornered them in a boat in the tules. Two of 
them got away, but the third, Louis Nicholas, 
jumped out of the boat, hoping to be able to 
swim away. Instead, he sank in the soft mud 
and refused to come ashore for two hours, but 
at the end of this time was glad to give him¬ 
self up. He then gave the names of his two 
companions, Owen Genty and Ben Sage, who 
were arrested later. 
Deputy fish and game commissioners are stilt 
active in their raids on restaurants and markets 
in San Francisco, and large quantities of game 
are being seized. As a result of these raids, 
many of the prominent restaurant and hotel 
owners have signed an agreement with the com¬ 
mission permitting deputies to enter their places 
of business at all times without a search war¬ 
rant for the purpose of seeing that the law in 
regard to the limit quantities of game is not 
being violated. 
On Feb. 3 a raid was made by the deputy com¬ 
missioners on transfer companies, and over 1,000 
wild ducks were seized. These game transfer 
companies have been formed for the purpose 
of getting around the provision of the law that 
specifies that no one shall have more than 
twenty-five ducks in his possession in one day. 
It has been found that in almost every instance 
the ducks were consigned to the man who con¬ 
signed them, the transfer company being merely 
a dummy. These companies will no longer be 
recognized as legitimate transfer concerns and 
express companies will not be permitted to de¬ 
liver to them more than the legal limit of game. 
All other shipments will have to be delivered 
direct to a designated consumer. The American 
Game Transfer Company has applied for an in¬ 
junction against the commission seizing further 
consignments of game, but this has not been 
acted upon. Golden Gate. 
Game Birds Hard Hit. 
Norwalk, Conn., Feb. ig.-—Editor Forest and 
Stream: The abnormal cold spell, which has 
held the country in its grasp for the past six 
weeks, has caused great suffering among the 
ducks in this locality. The shores of Long 
Island Sound have been ice bound, the ice ex¬ 
tending over a mile out into the Sound and 
leaving no shallow open water for the ducks 
to feed in. 
I have had several cases brought to my notice 
of black ducks being picked up on the ice, they 
being nothing but skin and bone and unable to 
fly. It was reported that there were large num¬ 
bers on the breakwater at Stratford, and that 
thirty-eight ducks were found dead. This seems 
very strange in the case of a migratory bird and 
causes one to wonder why they did not move 
further South. 
Black ducks have increased to a marked de¬ 
gree since spring shooting was stopped, and it 
