♦ 
Forest and Stream 
Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $1.50. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1910. 
VOL. LXXV.-No. 5 
No. 127 Franklin St. New York. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1909, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
George Bird Grinnell, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary, 
Louis Dean Speir, Treasurer, 
127 Franklin 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. 
WHAT BOBWH1TE EATS. 
Bobwhite is highly esteemed by the sportsman 
and is coming to be justly valued by the farmer, 
who will some day regard this game bird as his 
best friend. 
No one knows definitely what the annual rav¬ 
ages of insects cost the United States each year, 
but many people have made estimates as to this 
which, in the very nature of things, can hardly 
be more than guesses. Nevertheless a Washing¬ 
ton entomologist has estimated the yearly tax 
chargeable to insects in this country at nearly 
$800,000,000. 
Besides this, the farmers’ crops are constantly 
being crowded out, and reduced in value and 
volume by the noxious weeds that grow among 
the crops. If statistics could be gathered to 
show the value of the time and material ex¬ 
pended by the farmers of a town, county or 
State in fighting weeds and insects, we imagine 
that the total would amount to many millions 
of dollars for the whole country. While all this 
is more or less guess work, the farmer himself, 
who has to carry on the battle, knows what the 
battle means. More exact knowledge is required 
of the life history of those birds which are work¬ 
ing for the benefit of the farmer, and the be¬ 
ginning of this knowledge is to be found in 
Miss Nice’s paper on the “Food of Bobwhite.” 
The experiments reported were carried on for 
more than two years and are of the utmost in¬ 
terest. It has been demonstrated that bobwhite 
eats 129 different kinds of weed seeds. A single 
bird has eaten 12,000, 18,000 and 30,000 seeds of 
one kind of weed in one day. The daily average 
amount of weed seeds eaten was about half a 
ounce. The known list of insects consumed in¬ 
cludes 135 species, many of them very injurious. 
A single quail ate in a day 1,350 flies; another 
5,000 plant lice; another 1,532 insects. 
It is not necessary to multiply adjectives over 
the conclusions deducible from the careful ob¬ 
servations made by this young observer. They 
are most creditable to her and most useful to 
the public. We have had before at different 
times records of the contents of the crops of 
quail that had been killed, but no previous rec¬ 
ord of the food habits of these birds carried 
over years. Miss Nice has made a contribution 
to biology which is of high and practical value. 
We shall refer to it again. 
MR. SHIR AS’ MOOSE. 
Naturalists and big-game hunters will read 
Mr. Shiras’ paper on the moose of the Upper 
Yellowstone Valley with deep interest. 
That in a single locality three types of antlers 
like those figured should be carried by what ap¬ 
pear to be adult male moose seems extraordi¬ 
nary. The fact that moose are gathered to¬ 
gether in large numbers in this narrow valley, 
in which they seem to spend all their time, pre¬ 
sents a view of moose life that we believe 
has not previously been suggested. Apparently 
these moose never wander upon the hillsides, or 
in any way expose themselves to the observa¬ 
tion of the casual traveler. As. Mr. Shiras sug¬ 
gests, there may be other localities where like 
conditions prevail, and it is possible that the 
moose of the Rocky Mountains of Montana and 
Wyoming may be more abundant than has been 
supposed. 
That the annual spring overflow of the delta 
of the Upper Yellowstone makes that flat region 
impracticable for small rodent life is another 
novel announcement. The absence of these ro¬ 
dents from the district readily explains the per¬ 
manence of the shed antlers of the moose, and 
it was this permanence that first called Mr. 
Shiras’ attention to the absence of rodent life. 
While naturalists are familiar with the fact that 
the shed antlers of the deer family and the 
horns and sometimes the bones of other ungu L 
lates are commonly gnawed and perhaps eaten 
by many rodents, this is not so well known to 
the average man. 
In the valley of the Upper Yellowstone, Mr. 
Shiras has found an almost unknown section 
from which he has brought back food for 
thought alike for the learned, the serious and 
the fun-loving. The adventures of his grizzly 
bear of two years ago still call up smiles. 
PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES. 
Although in many parts of the United States 
the private game preserve is unpopular, we may 
feel sure that it has come to stay, and this is as 
it should be. 
For many years Forest and Stream has been 
advocating the establishment of game refuges— 
preserves where useful wild animals, birds and 
fish shall be protected from the attacks of all 
their enemies, including their bitterest enemy, 
man. Of such game refuges belonging to the 
public a few exist, but they are very few; half 
a dozen national parks, three or four Federal 
game preserves, a few wild waterfowl reserves 
and a few small reservations set aside by various 
States. The list of these—-except the waterfowl 
reserves—up to the year 1904, was printed in the 
last volume of ‘the Boone and Crockett Club’s 
books, “American Big Game In Its Haunts.” 
If the people of the United States and the 
citizens of the various S+ates had been foresee¬ 
ing enough to set aside such reservations a quar¬ 
ter of a century ago, they might in a large de¬ 
gree have taken the place of the private pre¬ 
serves which now exist in so many places, and 
which have been estimated to number for the 
whole country not less than 500. As time goes 
on this number will increase, and as it increases, 
the localities where game of one kind and an¬ 
other will be wholly protected or will be sub¬ 
ject to only moderate shooting, will increase. 
All this makes for an increased number of head 
of game saved over each year, and so is for the 
general good. The various ducking clubs on the 
Great Lakes, and along the Atlantic coast in 
some of the Southern States, are refuges where 
birds are shot in much smaller numbers than 
they would be if the land were open to the 
whole public. 
Canada has taken hold of this matter of na¬ 
tional parks and game refuges in a way that 
promises great things for the future. 
The feeling that the landholder has no right 
to keep off from soil that he owns anyone who 
wishes to go on it to hunt or fish used to be 
much stronger than it is to-day, and we may 
feel sure that as time goes on the idea that game 
should be protected will no longer be thought 
selfish, or un-American, but will be regarded as 
wholly natural and praiseworthy, and on the 
whole for the benefit of the public at large. 
It is feared that Captain Joshua Slocum, who 
sailed the little sloop “Spray” around the world 
several years ago, and recorded his experiences 
in a book, has been lost at sea. In November, 
1908, he sailed alone in the Spray from Vineyard 
Haven, bound south. The sloop was spoken 
once by a steamship, but that was the last time 
she and her skipper have been heard from. It 
was Captain Slocum’s intention to pass the win¬ 
ter cruising in the West Indies, but his presence 
in those or other waters has never been reported, 
*, 
George W. Miles has been appointed Commis¬ 
sioner of Fisheries and Game of Indiana, to suc¬ 
ceed the Rev. Z. T. Sw r eeney, who resigned re¬ 
cently to engage in business. The new commis¬ 
sioner is reported to be in favor of the policy 
of game bird propagation established by his pre¬ 
decessor. 
Our cover picture this week will remind read¬ 
ers of scenes similar to the one depicted there. 
Small inland streams offer irresistible attractions 
to the easy-going canoeist, who has found them 
navigable for greater distances than was be¬ 
lieved possible before the light canoe became so 
popular. 
m 
James W. Brackett, of Phillips, has been ap¬ 
pointed chairman of the Maine Fish and Game 
Commission, to succeed Leroy T. Carleton, and 
Blaine S. Viles is the new member of the board. 
