872 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 26, 1910. 
Mmm Factory Loa.ds 
A WORD TO THE WISE! 
The Hunting Season is again with us, and the sportsmen seeking the most reliable and 
effective ammunition must inevitably choose PETERS FACTORY LOADS — the kind 
that have surpassed all amateur trap-shooting records. 
Do not be deceived nor accept a substitute. PETERS SHELLS will kill deader, further 
and oftener than any others. You do not have to take our word for it—just try them. 
If you are already a user of PETERS, you do not need this advice—the chances are 
1000 to 1 you will continue to do so. 
Remember the first requisite— PETERS SHELLS. They will operate and shoot per¬ 
fectly in any standard make of gun. 
THE PETERS CARTRIDGE COMPANY. CINCINNATI. OHIO 
N»w Y.rk: 98 Chambers St. T. H. KELLER, Manager 
San Francise.: 
6W-812 Howard Streot. 
New 8rleant: 321 Magazine St P. R. LITZKE, Manager 
J. S. FRENCH, Manager 
VALUE OF BIRDS TO GARDENERS. 
J. Simpson, of St. John’s Nurseries, Chelms¬ 
ford. in a lecture to the Ipswich Gardeners’ As¬ 
sociation, cited some remarkable facts relating 
to birds and their effect on farms and gardens. 
Jackdaws, he said, were of special utility, one 
that was shot this year having been found to 
have no fewer than thirteen wireworms and four 
chafer grubs in its mouth. A barn owl he pro¬ 
nounced to be worth its weight in gold. 
Examination in relation to a pair of owls re¬ 
sulted in the discovery of the remains of 997 
field voles, 726 mice, 469 cockchafers, 205 rats 
and 97 sparrows, beside a number of frogs, etc. 
F. Woolnough, curator at Ipswich Museum, re¬ 
plying to one member who said he had a row 
of plum trees that was absolutely ruined each 
year by bullfinches until he had to cut down the 
trees, stated that in March he examined the 
crops of thirteen bullfinches and in twelve cases 
the contents consisted' entirely of insects and 
only one had traces of buds. 
He believed blackbirds and thrushes thor¬ 
oughly earned the toll they took of fruit by the 
way they helped the gardener all the rest of the 
year. The blackheaded gull he had found was 
one of the most valuable birds in England, as 
it was especially fond of “leather jackets,” a 
most injurious insect with a life of four years 
as a root-eating larva before it became meta¬ 
morphosed into a cockchafer.—London Stand¬ 
ard. 
ONE WAY TO SETTLE IT. 
Deer have become so plentiful in the western 
part of Massachusetts that an open season has 
been declared covering the six days from Nov. 
21 to 26 inclusive; and it is said that the farmers 
are preparing to remain indoors during that 
week as a precaution against the reckless and 
unskilled hunters who will fill the woods at 
that time. 
The Denver Republican says that one would 
suppose that an open season for deer would 
hardly be demanded in so densely populated a 
State as Massachusetts and in so old a part of 
the country. But it is accounted for by the 
fact that for many years deer shooting in that 
State has been prohibited. The result has been 
that the animals have become a nuisance, de¬ 
stroying much of the crops grown by the farm¬ 
ers in the western part of the State. In fact, 
so great has been this damage that the State 
has made provision for reimbursing the farmers 
for losses caused by deer. 
It is probable that following this year the 
prohibition upon killing deer will be continued 
without intermission for a long time, for in six 
days the hundreds of hunters who will fill the 
woods will kill enough deer to do away with 
all complaints on account of damage to crops. 
TRUE NATURE STUDY. 
I confess that this short cut to animal psy¬ 
chology through the laboratory interests me 
very little, says John Burroughs in McClure’s. 
Laboratory experiments can lead to little more 
than negative results. They prove that the ani¬ 
mal does not know and can not do under arti¬ 
ficial conditions, but do they show what it does 
know and can do under natural conditions? 
I grant that you can prove in your labora¬ 
tories that animals do not reason—that they 
have nothing like our mental processes. But 
the observer in the field and woods, if he ex¬ 
ercise any reason of his own, knows this. We 
see that the caged bird or the caged beast does 
not reason, because no strength of bar or wall 
can convince it that it cannot escape. It cannot 
be convinced, because it has no faculties that 
are influenced by evidence. It continues to 
struggle and to dash itself against the bars, not 
until it is convinced, but until it is exhausted. 
Then, slowly, a new habit is formed—the cage 
habit, the habit of submission to bars or tethers. 
Its inherited habits give place to acquired 
habits. When we train an animal to do certain 
“stunts,” we do not teach it or enlighten it, in 
any proper sense, but we compel it to form new 
habits. We work with the animal until it goes 
through its little trick in the same automatic 
manner in which its natural instincts were wont 
to work. 
I do not care to know how a laboratory coon 
gets his food out of a box that is locked; but 
I should like to know why he always goes 
through the motion of washing his food before 
eating it, rubbing it in the sand or sawdust or 
strips of his cage, if no water is handy. I 
should like to know why he is fond of shellfish, 
and how he secured them, since he is in no 
sense an aquatic animal. In the laboratory you 
may easily learn how a mink or a weasel kills 
a chicken or a rat; but how does it capture a 
rabbit by fair running in the woods or fields, 
since the rabbit is so much more fleet of foot? 
In the laboratory you might see a blacksnake 
capture a frog or a mouse; but how does it 
capture the wild bird or the red squirrel in 
the woods? It is this interplay of wild life, the 
relations of one animal with another, and how 
each species meets and solves its own life prob¬ 
lems, that interests us and can afford us the 
real key to animal behavior. 
MAKING A GUN STOCK. 
In the office of the Secretary of State is a 
very fine table'made of a good many thousands 
of small pieces of wood. It is a work of fine 
art in woodcraft and always attracts the atten¬ 
tion of visitors. 
“How in the world was that ever made?” said 
one visitor the other day. 
“That isn’t hard to make,” said Tom Botkin, 
Assistant Secretary of State. "That’s easy. It 
is like a story of an old friend of my father’s and 
the gun stock he made. A party of these men 
were out hunting, and this man broke his gun 
stock in some way or other. It was just about 
nightfall when the accident occurred, and inas¬ 
much as he was very anxious to do some shoot¬ 
ing early the next morning, he decided to fix 
up his shooting iron. Finding a walnut fence 
rail, he set to work. His only tools were an 
ax and a big pocket knife. All night long he 
labored vigorously at his task, and by morning 
the gun stock was finished and back in place 
and worked like a charm. 
“How did you do it?” asked one of the num¬ 
ber, greatly surprised. 
“Very easy,” was this old hunter’s reply. 
“No trouble at all. Just get a piece of wood 
about the size and kind that you want and then 
whittle away all that you want whittled away. 
When you have all the wood cut off that you 
don’t want you have a gun stock.”—Kansas 
City Journal. 
