FOREST AND STREAM 
7ir> 
it or near it. We find another illustration in 
New England where bird life is numerous and 
many people believe has, if anything, increased 
of recent years. Wild game also holds its own 
there surprisingly well. We have already noticed 
the increase of deer in Vermont. The great 
increase of moose in Maine is well known. And 
the obvious cause of all this is the immense 
quantities of natural cover still remaining in 
New England. Any observant sportsman travel¬ 
ing through that country notices this; and the 
cover has, if anything, been increased in the last 
sixty years or more by the abandonment of many 
small farms on the rocky and less fertile land. 
Those of us who go to North Carolina in the 
autumn see abundant instances of the effect of 
decrease of cover. This last year there were 
many complaints among the sportsmen and field 
trial people that the game as they put it, could 
be found now only in “pockets” that is in the 
little patches of cover with vast bare spaces to 
be tramped over in between. 
We do not realize-how terribly our country lias 
been denuded of vegetation, thickets, forests and 
water in the last two generations. There has 
been a mania for clearing up everything, sweep¬ 
ing off trees'and thickets as menaces, draining 
and filling up swamps, until there are hundreds 
of thousands of farms without a stick of wood 
on them and compelled to burn coal all the year 
round. I need not go through all the warnings 
the forestry associations have sounded of the 
dangers from droughts at one season reacting 
into excessive floods at another, and the washing 
away into the rivers and ocean of thousands of 
acres of farm soil, unprotected by vegetation. 
I may mention however as interesting that South 
Dakota is said to have taken up the protection 
and propagation of the beaver, because it is 
found that if let alone he builds so many dams 
on a stream that the water is without cost to 
human beings, delayed and stored up in innumer¬ 
able ponds; fertile soil that otherwise would be 
washed to the ocean is accumulated in bottom 
lands; and in looking up his history in the past 
it is found that a large part of the fertile 
meadows and bottom lands east of the Mississippi 
were formed by his industrious work. And yet, 
as an additional illustration of the principle 1 
am contending for we find that lumber people 
want the beaver exterminated because he cuts 
down trees along his stream and because his dam 
sometimes kills them by submerging their roots 
in water. Railroad officials want his scalp be¬ 
cause he will sometimes build a dam in a rail¬ 
road culvert. 
The newspapers recently reported that the 
beavers which have been protected by law in 
Wisconsin have become so numerous that some 
of them on the Wausaukee River built dams that 
flooded the corn fields of two farms. Not al- 
’owed to kill them the farmers kept tearing 
lown their dams, which the animals would as 
often restore, sometimes in a single night. The 
Game Warden was appealed to and by repeat¬ 
edly blowing up one of the clams with dynamite, 
he induced the beavers to leave that spot. The 
old farmer intends to sue the state for $40 spent 
in destroying the dam that gave him so much 
trouble. The incident shows that there are nec¬ 
essarily inconveniences from wild life and it also 
shows how quickly, industriously and effectively 
those wonderful little animals, go at once to 
work to restoring nature to what it was in this 
country one hundred years or more ago. They 
have been one of the forces of geology; and 
must have wrought enormous changes in the 
past. They largely built up and preserved the 
richness of the country, which our race found 
here on its migration. It is curious that the 
oldest and most thrifty nation in the world, the 
Chinese, have learned to imitate the work of the 
beaver. Learning long ages ago of the danger 
to natural wealth from the denudation of the 
soil and allowing it to be carried into the ocean 
by the rivers, they invented a most elaborate 
system for turning aside a large part of the water 
of their great rivers into canals where the rich 
mud in solution could be dipped up and return¬ 
ed to fertilize the land. 
In the severe drought some years ago in Kan¬ 
sas, we found the government of that state of¬ 
fering a premium to every farmer who would 
make a pond on his place. There is the sound 
idea of a bounty system. Offer a bounty or re¬ 
ward to everyone who will restore nature in¬ 
stead of a bounty for ruining nature. May I 
suggest for every state a bounty system with 
graded rewards to every land owner who pre¬ 
serves swamps, thickets, trees, wild life and 
waters? Why should there not be prizes for 
excelling in these benefits to the country? I 
believe that there would be even mores votes 
from it for the politician than from the present 
bounty system of destruction. 
For the encouragement of bird preservation 
we rely largely on people of means, not neces¬ 
sarily millionaires. But what does such a per¬ 
son usually do in establishing a country place. 
He clears up everything so as to make his place 
look metropolitan. He often cuts down forest 
trees and in their place plants mere sticks bought 
from a nursery. He has read of game and birds 
and wants them. But he is convinced from what 
he sees round him, that our native game is a 
failure. He therefore sends to Europe for par¬ 
tridges and pheasants, because he has read that 
these birds flourish most abundantly in Eng¬ 
land not to mention France and Germany, and 
afford excellent sport with immense bags. He 
brings them over to the great delight of the 
neighboring gunners, who pot a great propor¬ 
tion of them before they flee away from his 
bare desert. He forgot to investigate the cover 
and food conditions in Europe; the all year 
round cover and food conditions. 
We have made a number of extensive experi¬ 
ments in this country with the Hungarian par¬ 
tridges, and English or Mongolian pheasants; 
and nearly all are failures. The one success has 
been with the Mongolian pheasants; in the moun¬ 
tains of Oregon where there is plenty of cover 
and they seem to have chanced on food condi¬ 
tions that are right. I know of another fairly 
good success in a heavily forested private pre¬ 
serve in Pennsylvania. But most of the at¬ 
tempts have been ludicrous from the start; and 
show that most of our people who are interested 
in these things do not understand first principles. 
Not a few people now believe that English pheas¬ 
ants, so far as they thrive at all, drive away the 
native quail. 
Let us not waste money on such things until 
we restore cover and food enough for our own 
native game. Meantime, do not blame the hawks 
and crows and this thing and that thing, and 
start out exterminating an interesting part of 
nature you already have for the sake of an 
(Continued on page 733.) 
How Quickly Such Beautiful Specimens Yielded Before the Assaults of Commerce. 
