Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year, 10 Cts. a Copy, ^ 
Six Months, $1.50. I 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1911. 
, VOL. LXXVI.- 
' No. 127 Franklin St. 
-No. 18 
New York. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1911, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
George Bird Grinneix, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary, 
Louis Dean Speir, Treasurer, 
127 Fra'nklin Street, New York. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful in¬ 
terest in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate 
a refined taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
THE WYOMING ELK. 
Soon after the appropriation by Congress of 
$20,000 to care for the Wyoming eik, which each 
winter starve in considerable numbers in Jack¬ 
son's Hole, the Department of Agriculture took 
up the matter. E. A. Preble, of the Biological Sur¬ 
vey, was sent out to Jackson’s Hole, and is still 
there gathering data with regard to last winter’s 
destruction, and seeking for a means to prevent 
its repetition. It is reported that he concludes 
that the loss was about 5,000 elk, mostly calves. 
People wholly ignorant of the elk and its 
habits write of a great force of cowboys and 
L nited States cavalry which, when summer 
comes, shall round up the elk and drive them 
away—say to the Big-Horn Mountains—but this 
is one of the absurdities only to be written of 
by people quite unacquainted with the subject. 
Elk cannot be herded in any region, and least 
of all over rough and timbered mountains. 
On the other hand, it is learned that some 
lodges of the benevolent society of Elks have 
furnished the funds to crate and transport a 
dozen elk from Jackson’s Hole to the Govern¬ 
ment buffalo pastures in Montana and Oklahoma, 
thus following the good example set last winter 
by the Boone and Crockett Club with the ante¬ 
lope. The animals are already on the way to 
their new home. This movement may well 
enough stimulate other lodges of Elks to similar 
action, and the net result of all this agitation 
cannot be other than good. 
The removal and distribution of these elk is 
greatly to be desired, and the funds at hand 
should assist in getting many of them out of 
the country. This is a process, however, which 
will have to be kept up indefinitely, and is in 
no sense a so'ution of" the Jackson's Hole elk 
problem. 
At the approach of winter the elk come down 
from the high mountains in the effort to follow 
their old-time migration route, are stopped in 
the neighborhood of Jackson’s Hole and starve 
there, and then in spring the survivors return to 
the mountains and have their young, to return 
south again in autumn and to starve again the 
following winter. The same thing has been 
going on for years, and no plan has yet been 
devised for remedying the difficulty. 
IN PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND. 
The last annual report of the Department of 
Agriculture of the Province of Prince Edward 
Island contains an interesting paper on bird pro¬ 
tection. Up to the year 1906, the enforcement of 
the game laws was in the hands of police officers 
and constables, who usually troubled themselves 
very little about the law’s provisions. In that 
year, however, a new game act including the 
protection of useful birds was passed, and the 
P. E. 1 . Fish and Game Protection Association 
was formed, its members being made fish and 
game guardians to serve without pay. 
The membership roll of the association has 
increased each year since, until now it contains 
more than 550 members. These have done much 
good work in their various localities by enforc¬ 
ing the law, and also by educating the people by 
personal effort, by lectures and by the issue of 
leaflets, all showing how the various species of 
birds affect the interests of the farmer and so 
of the community. The association’s work has 
attracted attention in the United States and 
Canada. It is believed that the protection of 
useful birds which prey on noxious insects and 
on small mammals has reduced the destruction 
of the agricultural output of the country by 
these creatures fully one-half. 
The report is accompanied by a list of the 
principal birds of the Province illustrated by 
a number of photographs, and this report, which 
is likely to have general circulation, ought to 
do much good. The association cannot do bet¬ 
ter than continue its work of education until 
it has shown to the residents of Prince Edward 
Island how important to the welfare of the 
Province is the protection of its useful birds. 
DIES HARD. 
The old saw that a lie will travel a league 
while the truth is putting on its boots is as true 
to-day as ever, and it is true also that it takes 
officers declared that a careful investigation 
showed that millions of the eggs of wildfowl 
were annually collected in Alaska and Canada 
and shipped into the United States for com¬ 
mercial purposes. Senator Mitchell, of Oregon, 
brought the matter up in Congress and asked 
for an appropriation of $5,000 to send an agent 
to Alaska to investigate the matter. 
Meantime Forest and Stream had begun to 
make inquiries to learn whether in fact any such 
importation of wild duck eggs took place. No 
evidence and no facts could be had from the 
people who told the story. Those who had de¬ 
clared that they had the evidence, when ap¬ 
plied to for this evidence, declared that they 
themselves did not have it, but could get it—and 
then were never heard of again. By careful in¬ 
quiry Forest and Stream learned that the trans¬ 
portation companies had never carried eggs, that 
none had been received at the ports of entry of 
the United States, and that the albumen trade, 
which was supposed to be using the eggs, knew 
nothing whatever about these wildfowl eggs. 
1 he investigation was so complete and the lack 
of evidence so impressive that the story soon 
came to be known as the great duck egg fake, 
and for some years those who had started it 
declined to talk on the subject. 
Every now and then, however, references like 
this one in the New Orleans paper are printed, 
and to-day there are probably not a few people 
who have forgotten all about the exposure of 
the fake, but still have vague memories of the 
original story and regard it seriously. It dies 
hard. 
A Western magazine recently stated that 
nearly five hundred squirrels from Vermont had 
lately been liberated in Central Park, New York- 
city, the gift of Mrs. A. F. Smith, and that hun¬ 
dreds of squirre’s have been killed by automo¬ 
biles. Distance lends enchantment to this view, 
as to others. The facts are that although Mrs. 
Smith s offer to liberate gray squirrels in the 
man} \eais to correct a false story that has park has been accepted, not one squirrel has as 
once gained currency. The great duck egg fake 
of 1894-5 furnishes an example. 
A recent editorial in the New Orleans Daily 
Picayune says that formerly the collection of 
millions of the eggs of wild birds in Canada 
threatened to cause the practical extermination 
of the vast flocks of ducks and geese which an¬ 
nually go south to escape the winter, but that 
Canada took the matter up and stopped this egg 
collecting. This is the repetition of an old story 
which had currency for three or four years, 
until in 1895 Forest and Stream made an in¬ 
vestigation which exploded it. The tale seemed 
to account for the scarcity of wildfowl by re¬ 
lieving spring shooters of their responsibility and 
was taken up and fathered by an organization 
which called itself the National Game, Fish and 
Bird Protective Association, some of whose 
yet been received. Efforts are being made to 
secure gray squirrels in Vermont, but to catch 
one-tenth as many as mentioned will require time. 
The Central Park squirrels are suffering from 
improper feeding at the hands of visitors; from 
the efforts of vanda's, who regard them as so 
much food to be taken by stealth; and from the 
forays of small boys armed with catapults. 
Motorcars kill few if any squirrels. The aver¬ 
age visitor feeds roasted peanuts to the squirrels 
when they should have hard-shelled nuts. Their 
teeth and digestion suffer. Park watchmen find 
one dead now and then near the walks, appar¬ 
ently in good condition. Instead of a decrease, 
there is a steady increase in the number of squir¬ 
rels in the great park, and they have been thinned 
out at times by shooting and by transfer to other 
parks. 
