May 20, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
775 
and from dark brown to rusty red, and they are 
sometimes white. As a general rule the females 
have less red on them than the males, but they 
are a little smaller. The Tasmanian opossum is 
nearly always a handsome rich brown. The 
short-eared opossum is dark gray or black, while 
the long-eared or common opossum from the 
inland districts is light gray or more or less 
rusty red. 
The fur of specimen from the cold mountain 
regions and Tasmania is dense and silky. Those 
from Western Australia are smaller and fre¬ 
quently brown and have fine silky fur, while 
■others from the islands off the south coast of 
Australia, from the mainland in the State of 
South Australia, and from the northern territory, 
show further differences. 
Seeing the high prices that the skins of these 
animals are fetching, it behooves our farmers 
to give them very care¬ 
ful attention and to 
breed them on commer¬ 
cial lines. The usual 
method of killing all 
that can be caught 
■should be discontinued. 
A breeding stock should 
he established, and only 
the surplus sent to the 
•sales. Thus every tree 
will become productive 
by providing food for 
the animal which will 
find a ready sale at a 
remunerative price, and 
the income of the farm 
-or station will be in- 
increased by several shil¬ 
lings for every good- 
sized gum tree on the 
place. The opossum is 
a quiet, inoffensive little 
animal and very easily 
■caught, since he will 
readily enter an ordi¬ 
nary drop-door trap if 
baited with a lump of 
pollard or a piece of bread. A simple method 
of keeping stock would be to place a number of 
small boxes, large enough to hold one individual, 
in the trees in an accessible position. The opos¬ 
sums would be glad enough to use them to sleep 
in during the day, and could be caught and ex¬ 
amined at any time required. A proportion of 
one male to three or four females would be the 
most economical number to have, and a little 
observation would show how many could be kept 
•on any given area. 
Exclusive farming would pay best on the high¬ 
lands in the southeast of New South Wales, in 
the Gippsland district of Victoria or in Tasmania, 
for the heavily timbered country would enable 
the maximum number to be carried per acre, and 
the skins produced would command the highest 
market price. It certainly would be an advan¬ 
tage to grow such cheap crops as kale or maize 
for the animals, and to plant saltbush and pas- 
palum wherever they would grow. This would 
considerably increase the carrying capacity of 
the land. Although opposums drink water, 
they are often found far distant from it, and 
seemingly live for months without a permanent 
supply. Probably the green leaves give all the 
moisture required. 
The Use of Game. 
Seattle, Wash., March 23.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: You know my opinion as to game pro¬ 
tection and game preserves and my plan for 
game and fur propagation under private man¬ 
agement if properly protected. I must differ 
with the view held about a scramble for 
animals. 
Take beaver, for example. Very few people 
know how to catch them alive and handle them 
for breeding. Besides, most of the so-called 
wild beaver are already on ranches and land 
owned by farmers who are interested either in 
getting rid of them or in holding them for their 
increase. As it is now in most States, the law 
does not permit the catching of the beaver, but 
landowners do this, law or no law, because they 
have a right to protect their property if they do 
YOUNG COYOTES IN NEBRASKA. 
Courtesy William A. Bartlett. 
not want meadows flooded or irrigating d; tches 
drained. They should be allowed to catch these 
beaver alive or let someone else do so for propa¬ 
gating purposes. 
The same reason applies to most of the game 
animals in the neighborhood of the great game 
preserves — parks, National or State. Extra 
strong fences are required to keep the animal 
from getting into the hay stacks let alone the 
ranchman’s fields or pastures where the game 
is driven from its winter range by starvation, 
owing to the enormous increase. The surplus 
game should be devoted to some human bene¬ 
fit, should be used for food, and ranchmen who 
would care to go to the trouble and expense 
should be encouraged in its domestication for 
profit. Very few would care to try the experi¬ 
ment, though Colonel Pickett used to tell me 
a story of a man he knew who raised elk for 
meat and fed his hands on it. 
I do not think there would be any money in 
rearing antelope except in a very few places 
and under very favorable conditions. We know 
that most animals can be domesticated, and I 
believe can be made profitable both on public 
and private game preserves. Elk could be made 
profitable on small ranches, and then there would 
not be an argument that the right to domesticate 
game was in the hands of the rich only. If 
favorable legislation is desired, the law must be 
made popular and agreeable to the mass of 
voters, because in the West where most of the 
parks and preserves will be, there will be the 
new order to consider, and any unpopular law 
will be soon revoked by the people. 
The Yellowstone National Park ought to sell a 
few thousand elk until the number is down to 
about the capacity of the park to support, and 
game going out—becoming the property of the 
States they enter—should be protected to a cer¬ 
tain extent from indiscriminate slaughter. The 
loss is not so much in the number of animals 
killed and secured by hunters as in the number 
wounded by inexperienced and excited persons 
that are never found, that become food for coy¬ 
otes I am inclined to believe that 50 per cent, of 
the game lost gets away 
only to die or suffer. 
Let us by all means 
have laws to encourage 
the domestication of 
game and not its indis¬ 
criminate slaughter. I 
do not believe in in¬ 
creasing the size of the 
parks to afford food and 
winter range for the 
game as it increases, be¬ 
cause the settling up of 
the country has changed 
all old conditions. Rather 
distribute the increase, 
either by sale or gift, to 
parks or to individuals 
who capture them them¬ 
selves. 
The surplus beaver and 
other fur of the parks 
could be treated in the 
same way. As to trap¬ 
ping under Government 
control outside the park, 
I take no stock in it 
whatever, as I have very 
little respect for the ability of the State or 
Government officers who usually have such 
things under their charge. We see enough of 
it under the game wardens of Montana. When 
appealed to by individuals as to summer killing' 
of game, they would not make any move what¬ 
ever. It is many years since I have tried to get 
some law passed to protect the individual in the 
domestication of fur and game that I have about 
give up trying to do anything. I tried to get 
Montana and Washington to do something, but 
without result. A foolish law introduced in 
Montana would, if passed, make a State game 
preserve a lot of summer range for cattle and 
sheep, where the elk would not find anything to 
eat in winter, and that too without any protec¬ 
tion except on paper and to no surveyed boun¬ 
daries. The Slate will not fence it and it will 
do little good. Wyoming has a State game pre¬ 
serve that was made, it is said, to keep the gun¬ 
ners from adding it to the Yellowstone National 
Park, and it is called a winter range. There 
the snow falls deeper than in the Yellowstone 
National Park and hardly an animal attempts 
to winter. The country where the Southern 
herd used to winter is mostly taken up by 
ranchers, and outside ranges are pretty well fed 
