April ii, 1908.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
573 
.ho interfered witli him. This man was once 
deputy warden himself. 
I 1 hear these stories nearly every day. From 
.hat I have run across in the northern counties 
1 Michigan and have seen at home I have con- 
luded that there is migh*y little respect for our 
ame and fish laws. 
Spring shooting in Michigan is now on full 
ilt, showing that public sentiment has not yet 
ully awakened to the necessity for saving bird 
ife. W. B. Mershon. 
A Bone Mine in Arkansas. 
Through portions of the Ozark Mountains in 
Arkansas the rocks are furrowed by fissures and 
oneycombed with caves. In one of. these fis- 
ures was found by Mr. Waldo Conard, while 
respecting for lead, a real bone mine of very 
reat interest. This was in April, 1903. Some of 
he bones, sent on to Prof. F. W. Putnam of the 
American Museum of Natural History, reached 
’rof. H. F. Osborn and by him were turned 
>ver to Mr. Barnum Brown, who investigated 
he locality, collected a vast number of jaws, 
skulls and other bones of animals large and 
small. The results of his investigations and of 
his study of the bones found there have just been 
published in Part IV., of Vol. IX., of the Me¬ 
moirs of the American Museum of Natural His¬ 
tory. 
The paper is one of extraordinary interest. It 
contains descriptions of two new genera and 
twenty new species of mammals, lists of the ani¬ 
mals whose bones were found, a dozen large and 
beautiful plates, some of them containing twenty- 
five figures, together with remarks bearing on the 
conditions which existed when these bones found 
their resting place in the Ozark fissure. 
The locality is about 15 miles south of Will- 
cockson, Arkansas, and about a mile north of 
the Buffalo River. It is near the top of the hill, 
at an elevation of more than 1,000 feet. When 
first discovered the fissure was quite filled up 
with large stones, rocks and clay, but further 
down in the fissure the drip from the limestone 
has formed a nearly solid bed of stalagmite 
which has cemented together much of the ma¬ 
terial in the holes. The bones were more or less 
soft and friable and very likely to go to pieces 
when cleaned from the surrounding earth. All 
traces of organic matter had disappeared, and to 
preserve the bones it was necessary to soak them 
in a solution of gum-arabic in order to harden 
them. Very few of the bones were found asso¬ 
ciated. It would seem as if many of them had 
been dragged into the hole by the animals which 
very likely inhabited it when it was a cave. 
Of the animals found there and in extraordi¬ 
nary numbers are mice, shrews, moles, bats, 
weasels, skunks, minks, fisher, gray wolf, two 
species of foxes, black bear, half a dozen species 
of cats, several extinct, one of them a sabertooth 
tiger, beaver, hares, an extinct horse, an extinct 
peccary, three species of our deer, an animal 
allied to the muskox, and a few amphibians, rep¬ 
tiles and birds. No evidence of the existence of 
man was found, neither his bones nor his imple¬ 
ments. These fossils were accumulated toward 
the end of the Pleistocene, which corresponds 
roughly with what is commonly known as the 
glacial period. 
Of the thirty-seven genera and fifty-one species 
found in the Conard fissure, four genera and 
twenty-four species are extinct. 
Conditions of Wild Life in Alaska.* 
BY MADISON GRANT. 
The opening of the twentieth century found 
lie game in the old Territories of the United 
States well on the road toward the conditions 
hat precede extinction. The bison had been 
iractically gone for two decades; the mountain 
heep had been exterminated throughout a very 
arge part of its original range, and the num- 
ier remaining in remote mountains was sadly 
•educed; the wapiti, while still living in herds 
lumbering many thousand', was rapidly with- 
Iravving to the vicinity of its last refuge, the 
Vellowstone Park; and the pronghorn of the 
ilains was disappearing with increasing rapid- 
ty, due to the spread of the use of the barb- 
vire fences on its former ranges. 
This rapid diminution of the game animals of 
lie United States was, and is to-day, the in- 
ivitable consequence of the settlement and oc- 
•upation of the best grazing lands. While there 
•emain mountains where the game is relatively 
tndisttirbed, so far as the killing of individuals 
s concerned, and while these ranges in summer 
tppear well adapted to sustain a large and 
>aried fauna, their actual capacity to sustain 
ife is limited to such animals as can thefe find 
-ustenance during the heavy snows of winter. 
Before the arrival of white men. the animals 
■vhich lived in the mountains during the stun¬ 
ner sought refuge in the sheltered valleys and 
oot hills during the cold season. These favored 
ocalities, however, were at once occupied by 
'Cttlers, and the game was deprived of its winter 
eeding grounds. This has, in my opinion, done 
nore to exterminate the large animals of the 
*A paper read at the annual meeting of the Boone and 
rockett Club, by its Secretary. 
West in recent years than the actual shooting 
of individuals. During the closing years of the 
nineteenth century the American people had 
obtained no little experience in game protec¬ 
tion, and had embodied it in Federal statutes 
and the game laws of the various States. Of 
all the regulations established for the preser¬ 
vation of wild life, the most practical and ef¬ 
fective have been found to be, first—the pro¬ 
hibition of hide and head hunting; second— 
the prohibition of market hunting; third, and 
most important of all, the establishment of 
sanctuaries where game could roam and breed 
absolutely undisturbed. The great example of 
such a refuge is the Yellowstone Park, the 
success of which is admitted. 
At the end of the century, the gold discovered 
in the extreme Northwest of Canada and in 
Alaska brought these Territories suddenly be¬ 
fore the public eye. Here was a district of 
enormous extent lying at the extreme limits of 
the continent, and populated by a large and 
varied fauna, practically undisturbed. In the 
last ten years thousands of prospectors and 
miners have gone into Alaska, and in many 
places worked havoc with the game. On the 
whole, however, the destruction of the game 
has not gone far enough to permanently injure 
the fauna of the region if the matter of protec¬ 
tion is taken in hand scientifically in the im¬ 
mediate future. 
We have in Alaska a gigantic preserve, and in 
it are not only several species rich in the num¬ 
bers of their individual members, but also cer¬ 
tain species which in point of size appear to be 
the very culmination of their respective genera, 
as for example, the giant moose. The brown 
bear group of Southern Alaska certainly con¬ 
tains the largest bears in the world, not even 
excepting the great fish bear of Kamchatka, or 
the recent cave bear of Europe. The largest known 
wolves are found in Northern Alaska, and a 
wolverine of exceptional size has been recently 
described. When this great game region was 
first opened up, immediate legislation was 
needed to protect the animals from the de¬ 
liberate onslaught of hide hunters in southeast¬ 
ern Alaska, of head hunters, who attacked the 
moose, sheep and caribou of the Kenai Penin¬ 
sula, and of the market hunters generally 
throughout the coast regions. A game law, 
which certainly proved effective in making it 
difficult for sportsmen to hunt in Alaska, was 
passed, and a revision of this statute is now be¬ 
fore Congress. It is not the intention to discuss 
in this paper the details of the proposed legis¬ 
lation beyond saying that the measure is pro¬ 
posed by the friends of animal life in Alaska, 
and has the support of the best interests in that 
territory. 
The general principles of game protection 
applicable to the situation in Alaska are simple 
It should be clearly understood that the game 
of Alaska, or any other region, does not belong 
exclusively to the human inhabitants of that 
particular region, and that neither the white 
settlers nor the native inhabitants have any in¬ 
herent right to the game other than that con¬ 
ferred by law. The interest of the entire people 
of the United States, and to some extent that 
of the civilized world, is centered in the con¬ 
tinued existence of forms of animal life which 
have come down to us from an immense an¬ 
tiquity through the slow process of evolution. 
It is no longer generally conceded that the local 
inhabitants of any given district have a divine 
commission to pollute the streams with saw¬ 
dust, to destroy the forest by ax or fire, or to 
