414 
FOREST AND STREAM 
July, 1918 
FOREST and STREAM 
FORTY - SEVENTH YEAR 
FOUNDERS OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETY 
GOVERNING BOARD : 
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, New York, N. Y. 
CARL E. AKELEY, American Museum of Natural History, New York 
FRANK S. DAGGETT, Museum of Science, Los Angeles, Cal, 
EDMUND HELLER, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 
C. HART MERRIAM, Biological Survey, Washington, D. C. 
WILFRED H. OSGOOD, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Ill. 
JOHN M. PHILLIPS, Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
CHARLES SHELDON, Washington, D. C. 
GEORGE SHIRAS, 3rd, Washington, D. C. 
WILLIAM BRUETTE, Editor 
TOM WOOD, Manager 
Nine East Fortieth Street, New York City 
In the region referred to, the importance of this work 
of preservation is slowly coming to be recognized and 
several areas have been set aside where no molestation 
of the birds is permitted. It is to be wished that the 
feeling which has resulted in the setting aside of state 
game refuges—as in Minnesota and North Dakota—may 
so increase that individual land owners or groups of 
land owners about a body of water will agree that on 
this water no shooting shall be done. In individual cases 
action such as this has been taken as, for example, where 
the owner of Island Lake, a considerable body of water, 
has for many years protected the fowl on this lake. 
Where it is practicable, Federal reservations should be 
made, covering pieces of water occupied by wild fowl 
in summer, as well as state refuges in far greater num¬ 
bers than as yet existed. 
To increase our wild fowl as much as possible is a 
worthy work, in which all legitimate means should be 
employed, and this is one such means. We may believe 
that when the Enabling Act has become law and active 
steps are taken to enforce the Migratory Bird Law and 
the treaty with Canada, checks not now existing will be 
put on the killing of wild fowl. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL WILL BE TO 
studiously promote a healthful interest _ in outdoor recrea¬ 
tion, and a refined taste for natural objects. Aug. 14 , 1873 
WESTERN WILD FOWL REFUGES 
HE general stopping of spring shooting, the passage 
of the Federal Migratory Bird Law, but, above all, 
the improved sentiment among men who use the gun 
have resulted in a great increase in our wild fowl. This 
means not only more sport for those who use the gun, 
but an addition to a delicate and important food supply 
which for many years has been decreasing. We should 
all do what we can to foster this increase, and the means 
are at hand. 
Men who forty or fifty years ago traveled through 
Iowa and Minnesota and over what was then termed the 
great plains will not fail to recall the vast hordes of 
water fowl which bred in every pond and slough. If the 
season was early enough, broods of downy young covered 
the water, and when alarmed hurried to the shelter of 
the grass about the pond. If it was autumn and the 
nights were chilly, flocks of fowl were seen coming from 
the north and dropping into every open resting place, or 
perhaps rising in great clouds from the ponds that the 
traveler approached. 
In Minnesota, North and South Dakota and parts of 
Nebraska, there are wide areas dotted with pools, ponds 
and lakes which are still frequented by great numbers 
of wild fowl, though of the old time pools and ponds 
many have been drained and have come under the plow 
to produce crops. Nevertheless, there is a great terri¬ 
tory where wild fowl still breed, and not only wild fowl, 
but also many of the larger wading birds, and besides 
these, terns, gulls and grebes. 
So numerous are the nests in some of these lakes that 
of late years several eastern men interested in game 
breeding have sent out to certain breeding grounds in 
Canada or the Northern Lhiited States, to collect the 
eggs of certain species of ducks, which they have had 
hatched out there, and the young raised by hand, for 
transportation to preserves here in the east. 
Measures should be taken to protect the waters where 
these birds breed. This protection is essential, for if 
the birds are pursued while nesting or rearing their young 
they will abandon the place. 
PRACTICAL SCIENCE 
HE so-called practical man is rather disposed to make 
fun of the labors of his scientific fellow citizen, 
but this levity often means only that the practical man 
lacks information. 
Students of science work to accumulate knowledge, 
believing that when acquired this knowledge will benefit 
humanity. In a thousand ways, it has done this. At a 
scientific meeting last winter a symposium was held, deal¬ 
ing with the question of what zoology has done for hu¬ 
man welfare. Of the addresses made two were of special 
interest to us of the United States. 
In one Dr. Hugh M. Smith, U. S. Fish Commissioner, 
reviewed very briefly the beginnings and progress of 
the sane and beneficent fishery administration of the 
United States from the time, forty-seven years ago, 
when Prof. Baird set the movement on foot. Prof. 
Baird—then perhaps the greatest of living zoologists— 
had the vision* to look into the future and to see what 
fish culture jnight do for our food supply. He engi¬ 
neered and set on foot the movement and was followed 
by a great number of other men, who have helped to 
push the work forward, to make it more perfect and of 
greater extent and usefulness, not only to the people of 
the L T nited States but of the world. By the work of 
these men the production and consumption of fish food 
has been greatly increased. Examples of special work 
are seen in the study of the oyster and the improvements 
made in fostering the oyster industry, now grown to such 
great proportions. In the lobster industr}', the failure 
of some states to follow the teachings of zoology has 
made the lobster a scarce and high priced food. Zoologi¬ 
cal investigations have made the collection of pearls 
from fresh water streams of the west an important in¬ 
dustry. All these matters have a direct bearing on the 
material welfare of our people. 
Prof. Henry B. Ward discussed the influence of zool¬ 
ogy on the physical welfare of man. Our primitive an¬ 
cestors, with their stone weapons, had to fight the lion 
and the bear and other large carnivora, and in later 
times it became necessary to greatly reduce the numbers 
of injurious small animals, a process going on today un¬ 
der the auspices of the Biological Survey. Finally, in 
recent years, it was discovered that minute insects that 
suck the blood are transmitters of disease and death. 
A mosquito is the host which transmits malaria or yel- 
