vey, in the Department of Agriculture. Each ad- 
ministration has been maintaining its own warden 
service, which has frequently resulted in duplica- 
tion of wardens in the same district, while the very 
limited appropriations for the purpose left great 
areas of the Territory without any enforcement of 
either game or fur laws. 
The present laws have become obsolete and a new 
Alaska game law passed the Senate at the last ses- 
sion of Congress and has been favorably reported 
by the House Committee on Agriculture. When 
this becomes a law it will render it much easier 
to build up the game and fur resources of the Ter- 
ritory, which will mean so much to its future. For- 
tunately, within the last few years the people of 
the Territory have been gradually awakening to 
their real value and the need of conserving the 
game and fur resources, 
NEW WILD LIFE REFUGE TO BE 
ESTABLISHED 
HE Upper Mississippi River Wild Life and 
T Fish Refuge bill was passed by Congress and 
became a law on June 7 on approval by the 
President. This act authorizes the acquisition and 
setting aside as a wild life refuge of about 300,000 
acres of swamp and low lands along the Mississippi 
River between Rock Island, Ill., and Wabasha, 
Minn. The act carries no appropriation, however, 
for the acquisition of these lands, merely authoriz- 
ing funds to be appropriated for the purpose. The 
limit of the appropriation authorized is $1,500,000 
for the acquisition of areas and $50,000 for ad- 
ministrative purposes, $25,000 of the latter sum to 
be expended by the Secretary of Agriculture and 
$25,000 by the Secretary of Commerce. The Gov- 
ernment, therefore, has no funds at present to pro- 
ceed in the purchase of land or in the establishment 
of an administrative force. When the necessary 
appropriations are made by Congress and the areas 
have been acquired, the Secretary of Agriculture is 
to have jurisdiction with respect to wild birds, 
game animals, fur-bearing animals, trees, wild 
flowers, and plants, and the Secretary of Commerce 
jurisdiction over the fish and other aquatic animal 
life. These officials are authorized to make suitable 
regulations governing hunting and fishing on the 
areas acquired. 
LOWLY CARP MADE EATABLE 
IETING—the cause of worry to many a wo- 
man—changes the lowly carp to a fine-fleshed 
table delicacy. 
From Lansing, Iowa, and Genoa, Wis., come the 
reports of carp farming as extensive as cattle 
ranches. Commercial fishermen are engaged in the 
newest enterprise in the age-old endeavor to make 
the “leatherback” a fish comparable to bass, trout, 
salmon and others well known. 
At Lansing a firm of fish dealers manages an 
extensive carp “farm.” In a baylike inlet of the 
Mississippi River they have formed a deep pool 
fed constantly by ice-cold artesian wells. Carp 
are seined from their mud wallows in the Missis- 
sippi and placed in the ice baths of the farm. 
In the cold waters they begin to live anew. . 
Their food consists of corn and barley—for this 
» Page 537 
strictly cereal diet holds them at their weight and 
combines with the cold waters in making the flesh 
firm and tender, at the same time giving it a new 
flavor. 
Three or four months after they make their in- 
itial plunge into the ice water, men with huge nets 
dip them out and place them aboard specially con- 
structed tank cars, to keep them alive while they 
are shipped to eastern markets. 
Extremely large carp are not taken, the general 
average being three or four pounds. Some extra 
large ones weigh ten pounds. 
Hating a “dieted carp” or “corn-fed carp” is 
easy, for they have only a few large bones. In the 
East demand for the slick, clean ‘‘corn-feds” is 
great, fishermen report. 
DRUGS AFFECT FISH 
N the “Journal of the American Pharmaceutical 
Association,” some interesting experiments 
with fish are related. “Mr. Shelford provided a 
shallow tank for them into which water flowed at 
one end with a drug in solution and at the other 
end without the drug. The outlet was in the 
middle, so that the fish had complete freedom to 
swim away from the drug or into it and to select 
any concentration. His first experiment was with 
Carbon dioxide, giving the fish a kind of attenuated 
plain soda-water. They swam into it and backed 
away again with protruded lower lip and lifted 
gills, but, despite what seemed like coughing and 
gulping, they did not turn away from it. Per- 
haps they were practicing up against a sporting 
life to come. With morphine there was no appar- 
ent rejection even at first. They soon become suf- 
ficiently addicted to it to swim over to the inlet 
of the morphine solution and stay there. Some 
kept away from the greatest concentration, while 
others became regular dope fiends. With cocaine, 
after a short exposure they refused to leave the 
solution inlet and remained close to it until they 
died from its effects. With ethyl or grain alcohol 
they soon learned where a solution of about 10 per 
cent was to be found and stayed there as long as 
possible. They are reported to have become ‘semi- 
intoxicated,’ but just how drunk a semi-intoxi- 
cated fish is would be difficult to say. 
LATEST GAME LAW AMENDMENT 
The open season for hunting wild ducks (except 
wood ducks, for which a continuous close season 
is provided), wild geese and brant in that portion 
of the State of New York outside of Long Island, 
now is from September 24 to January 7, inclusive. 
The Secretary of Agriculture recently adopted and 
the President approved an amendment to the Fed- 
eral migratory-bird treaty-act regulations prescrib- 
ing the above period as the open season, which con- 
forms with the season fixed by an act passed at the 
last session of the State legislature. 
In this open season the Federal regulations also 
include coot, gallinules, and Wilson snipe or jack- 
snipe, but as the State season provided on these 
birds is September 16 to December 31, a conflict 
is created, as a result of which these last-mentioned 
birds can be killed only from September 24 to De- 
cember 31 without violating either Federal or State 
laws. 
