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S 58 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 27, 1909. 
Conservation. 
In his speech before the National Farm Land 
Congress, held - in Chicago last week, W. M. 
Hayes, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, said 
in part: 
‘‘While the Department of Agriculture is em¬ 
powered to co-operate with the States in gain¬ 
ing a knowledge of the wild game birds and 
animals and in protecting useful birds and ani¬ 
mals for the whole people, it is also charged 
with the control and destruction of all pre¬ 
daceous insects, birds and animals, including 
vermin. The help rendered in reducing the 
losses from wolves, gophers, rats and mice alone 
would pay for the price of a good-sized de¬ 
partment of agriculture, but the greater work 
is the investigations and the police control work 
which lead to the reduction of weeds in our 
fields, and of diseases of our crops and animals. 
Not stopping here, the department aids the na¬ 
tional and State officers in the eradication of 
animal diseases communicable to man. And 
while the department directs most of its ener¬ 
gies to economic ends, sometimes work is done 
of general scientific interest which may prove 
to have large economic value. Thus the studies 
of the life histories of mosquitoes made easy 
the discovery of the relation of one species of 
that insect to yellow fever and made possible 
the control of that dread pest by destroying the 
mosquitoes. In a present case the mapping of 
the zone inhabited by certain ground squirrels 
and the invention of methods for their destruc¬ 
tion will come in good play in preventing these 
animals from remaining permanently the hosts 
of fleas which transmit the bubonic p'ague to 
people, as do the fleas of rats. The area occu¬ 
pied by the infected squirrels being known, and 
the means of destroying them having been de¬ 
vised, they, as well as the rats in the nearby 
city, can be destroyed and the source of rein¬ 
fection removed. 
“One of the most widely recognized achieve¬ 
ments of the Department of Agriculture is the 
formation in the public mind of a demand for 
a public forest policy, and the organization of 
a Forest Service which is rapidly becoming ade¬ 
quate to take care of our immense public and 
private timber crop. The forest conservation 
movement is snatching our forested acres out 
of the condition of land devastation to which 
they seemed doomed, as the Chinese forests 
were destroyed. Our forests are made useful to 
those who live near them, to those who utilize 
the waters they conserve, to all who use wood 
products, and to all who need the larger amount 
of food which can be grown beside forested 
areas. T he saving in the prevention of forest 
fires which cost us thirty millions of dollars 
annually would alone pay the expenses of ad¬ 
ministering the national forests for a decade. 
Our eight hundred and fifty million acres of 
original forests reduced to five hundred and 
fifty millions, of which only two hundred mil¬ 
lions now carry mature virgin forests, with 
three hundred and fifty millions in all degrees 
of dilapidation because of a wasteful harvest¬ 
ing and forest fires, represent a present value 
of approximately seventy-five hundred million 
dollars, one-fifth of which, or one and a half 
billion dollars, is on public forest lands. Con¬ 
gress is gradually building up a public service 
to c«ire for the nearly two hundred million acres 
of national forests, in area nearly as large as 
the States of Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska 
and Illinois, only about half of which is covered 
with merchantable timber. At present some¬ 
thing over a hundred trained foresters and 
twenty-eight hundred helpers administer this 
vast property.” 
Storm Brings Game. 
Omaha, Neb., Nov. 20.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The reign of golden autumn was 
rudely ended out this way last Sunday by a 
fierce onslaught from the north of cold winds, 
rain, sleet and snow. And the big ducks, which 
had been lingering some few hundred miles to 
the north of us, came down in tremendous quan¬ 
tities, and sportsmen lucky enough to hustle out 
had two days of unprecedented shooting. Every¬ 
body got the limit along the Platte and the 
Loup, as well as on the lower sandhill lakes and 
marshes. While a great preponderance of the 
birds were mallards, there was a goodly sprink¬ 
ling of canvasbacks, redheads, blackjack and 
widgeon, while the geese came in in fairly good 
numbers also. Several big kills were made along 
the Platte between Clark’s and Silver Creek as 
well as near Conrad, Willow and Brady Island, 
A fair number of Canadas are still dotting the 
bars and feeding in the fields, but the ducks, 
save the hardy old mallard, which will stick till 
the final freeze-up, have levanted. 
Charlie Metz, proprietor of the famous Metz 
preserve and sanctuary north of Cody, says he 
went out Monday morning to the north lake, 
Raccoon, on his place, and that he never in all 
his career before saw so many birds. He said 
the open water was fairly packed with them, 
while the hillsides were painted white with snow 
geese. He did not take his gun, as he had had 
a surfeit of shooting the day before, but en¬ 
joyed the rare spectacle even more than he did 
the sport of the previous evening. That night, 
late, the birds took up their journey southward, 
and all through the dark hours until almost 
dawn their chatter and the swish of their wings 
was heard as they swept over the lodge on 
Three Springs. 
It was certainly a grand issue of the quack¬ 
ing hordes, and thousands of flocks streamed 
over Omaha, all through the morning hours of 
Tuesday. 
Conrad Young, Floyd Smith and Sam Cald¬ 
well were on their preserve near Shickly, and 
Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning bag¬ 
ged 101 birds, most all mallards, but with a fair 
number of canvasback and redheads. 
Eddie George, George Mayne and Jake Hess 
were at their lodge on the Tyson Flats and killed 
birds until they were tired. I went to Fuller¬ 
ton on the Loup Tuesday evening and enjoyed 
the tail end of the flight, Sam Richmond, Gerard 
and myself collecting a mixed bag of thirty- 
four, among which were four Hutchins’ geese 
and eight jacksnipe. Bob Anderson and Ed 
Fowler shot at the mouth of the Elkhorn and 
did well, two goldeneyes, a drake and a hen, 
being in their kill. These birds are extremely 
rare here these days and Anderson has had the 
pair mounted. 
Hunters are still going out, and while some 
are getting fair sport on belated mallards, it is 
labor lost in most cases, Still I have had grand 
shooting over the icy Platte as late as Christ¬ 
mas day, and in some localities where there are 
running spring-fed creeks to be found the birds 
remain here through the winter. 
Although there has been no open season on 
quail in Nebraska this year, the birds have not 
been as plentiful for years. There is a story 
current that the present prohibitive law is in¬ 
operative, as the Legislature, it is alleged, failed 
to repeal the old law. However, I have heard 
of no one molesting the birds, but have written 
to Warden Geilus for the truth of the matter. 
In any event the continuous close season was 
uncalled for and ill-advised, as a hard winter 
is sure to all but exterminate the birds. The 
sportsmen should have been vouchsafed at least 
a two weeks’ open season. 
Prairie chicken shooting, while extremely diffi¬ 
cult, is at its best so far as the excitement is 
concerned. Most any 1,000 acre cornfield is good 
for its “pack” of hundreds, but they flush wild 
and fly far. Still one bagged bird is a glory and 
a joy forever. Prospects look fine for another 
year if the homesteaders do not clean up the 
birds in the nesting season. 
A few antelope are reported along the Dismal, 
having been driven from the foothills by the 
storm and snow. Sandy Gkiswold. 
Fight with a Poacher. 
A press dispatch from Albany says that D. C. 
Speenburgh, a game protector employed by the 
State Forest, Fish and Game Commission, 
notified Commissioner Whipple that he had been 
attacked by an Italian at Johnson Hollow, in 
the Catskill Mountains, on Sunday, Nov. 14, and 
that he shot and probably killed the foreigner. 
Speenburgh lives at Hunter, Greene county. 
He had been after Italians who work on the 
Delaware & Eastern Railroad and who have 
been violating the game laws. On Sunday Speen¬ 
burgh followed two Italians into the Catskills. 
One got away from him. The other carried a 
shotgun and dared Speenburgh to fol'ow. The 
inspector went after his man and the Italian 
ran. Speenburgh tried to get through a barbed 
wire fence and became entangled in it. The 
Italian then turned on the inspector and filled 
him full of buckshot. Extracting himself, 
Speenburgh went after the Italian and fired at 
him with a .38 caliber revolver. The inspector 
saw the foreigner fall and get up again and 
run. He was lost to sight in the mountains. 
Speenburgh then went back to Hunter and 
had his wounds dressed. He thinks the bullets 
he fired had fatal effect on the Italian and that 
his dead body is now lying somewhere in the 
mountains. 
American Breeders’ Association Meeting 
The sixth annual meeting of the American 
Breeders’ Association will be held at Omaha, 
Neb., Dec. 8, 9 and 10. The meeting places are, 
for Wednesday, the Hotel Rome, and for Thurs¬ 
day and Friday the National Corn Association 
Halls on the exposition grounds. The session 
of Wednesday will be devoted chiefly to animal 
breeding, that of Thursday to committee reports 
on heredity and' that of Friday to p’ant breed¬ 
ing. The secretary of the association is W. M. 
Hayes, Washington, D. C. 
