Forest and Stream 
Copyright, 1906, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 




Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. | 
Six Months, $1.50. ) 

NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARC 


The object of this journal will be to studiously 
promote a healthful interest in outdoor recre- 
ation, and to cultivate a refined taste for natural 
objects. Announcement in first number of 
Forest AND STREAM, Aug. 14, 1873. 
HIVE GAME FOR STOCKING, 
THE transplanting of quail for stocking pur- 
poses has been carried on for so long and with 
such a degree of success that the importation of 
birds from other places is now recognized as one 
of the most practical and profitable enterprises to 
which individuals and clubs wishing to provide 
better shooting can apply themselves. There are 
sections of the country where the birds are in 
abundant native supply and large unmbers 
might well be spared for such restoration of shoot- 
ing elsewhere without in any appreciable degree 
affecting the home resources. This being the fact, 
the transfer of birds from one place to another 
for the purpose named should have recognition 
in the law as a legitimate part of game preserva- 
tion and restoration. 
There should be no difficulty in devising a per- 
fectly practicable and safe system for the transfer 
of live quai! from sections of the country where 
they are abundant and may well be spared to 
other localities where they are needed for the re- 
stocking of covers. This could be done by mak- 
ing such transfers a part of the official service 
of the game commissioners of the States inter- 
ested, the actual work to be done by their agents 
precisely as fish are now transferred and planted 
by the agents of the fish commissioners. Under 
such a system, if the Massachusetts Association, 
let us say, wished to procure quail for putting out 
in that State, it would make application to the 
game commission, which in turn would apply to 
the game commission of Kansas. Through its 
properly authorized and responsible agents the 
Kansas commission would capture the birds 
and ship them to the destination named by the 
Massachusetts commission, where they would be 
received by accredited agents of the commission, 
to be cared for and liberated by them. By such 
simple arrangement might the capture, export and 
introduction of live birds for stocking purposes 
be conducted on any scale meeting the demand, 
and without the possibility of the privilege of 
transporting live game being abused by dealers 
who would send the birds to market. It might 
be practicable te go further and provide for the 
licensing of responsible dealers in live birds, their 
shipments to be under official supervision and 
subject to official regulation. 
Such a simple system being feasible, there can 
be no excuse for a continuation of the existing 
conditions under which the public-spirited enter- 
prises of game stocking clubs and associations are 
hampered and thwarted. Why should we not 
apply to the problem of game restoration a modi- 
cum of common sense and that spirit of give and 
take which has prevailed in the exchanges of 
. 
fishes and the stocking of public waters? We are 
convinced that a movement to this end by the 
commissions of States interested would result in 
the required modification of the game laws to per- 
mit such an interchange of game. 
S. H,. KAUFFMAN. 
S. H. KaurrMan, President of the Evening 
Star Newspaper Company, of Washington, who 
died on March 14, was a man of large affairs, and 
was closely identified with the promotion of many 
interests which make for public good and a 
higher plane of living. He suggested the estab- 
lishment of the National Museum, and it is to his 
initiative that we owe this admirable institution. 
He was president of the Cocoran Art Gallery. 
Mr. Kauffman was always a devoted angler; 
he was a member of the Woodmont Rod and Gun 
Club of Maryland, the Blue Ridge Rod and Gun 
Club of Virginia, and the Percy Summer Club, 
of New Hampshire. He was one of the oldest 
readers of the Forest AND STREAM and a valued 
contributor to its columns. 

DOMESTIC GAME. IN 
MARKET. 
WE reported last week the introduction of a 
bill in the New York Legislature to permit the 
sale in close season of certain game birds im- 
ported from abroad, and handled under condi- 
tions which would render them always subject to 
identification and distinguishable from _ native 
American species. The list designated in the 
measure under consideration comprised the black- 
cock, the rebhuener, redleg, lapwing, Egyptian 
quail and hazel hen. These species were ap- 
proved by the game authorities and by the sports- 
men in attendance at the hearing when the 
measure was discussed, on the ground that none 
of them resembled our own birds and could not 
therefore serve to shield traffic in American game. 
On closer scrutiny and more deliherate examina- 
tion we are of the opinion that the hazel hen 
should not be included in this list, for the reason 
that it bears such a resemb!ance to our own 
ruffed grouse. Though a smaller, darker bird 
than our ruffed grouse, or partridge, it is never- 
theless very similar to it, and the head—espe- 
cially in the female bird—is very like that of the 
ruffed grouse. It is also to be suggested that the 
female of the blackcock, known as the gray hen, 
might well enough be mistaken by an inexperi- 
enced person for the head of a sage grouse. It 
is obviously impossible to have an ornithologist 
on duty night and day at all restaurants and at 
each game dealer’s. The law should be in such 
form that it can be easily enforced, and _ that 
there shall be as little opportunity as possible for 
misunderstanding and dispute. 
In principle the proposed measure is an expe- 
dient one. As we have said, the only purpose of 
preventing the sale of native game—and we be- 
FOREIGN AND 
H 24, 1906. § 
VOL. LXVI.—No. 12. 
| No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
lieve that such prevention should be in force the 
year around—is the preservation of the game as 
an object of pursuit for recreation. The only 
purpose of prohibiting the sale of foreign game 
is to prevent its serving as a cloak for the clan- 
destine traffic in native game. To such an ex- 
tent as foreign birds may be marketed in the 
United States without affecting unfavorably the 
preservation of our own game, the traffic in them 
may not be interfered with on any ground of 
expediency or of justice to the commercial inter- 
ests involved. On the contrary, if the supply of 
foreign birds shall meet the demand for game, it 
will in that way remove in a large degree the 
inducement to illicit trading in our own native 
birds, and prove a distinct factor in the enforce- 
ment of the protective laws. 
Tue California quail is gradually making its 
way around the world. The Natal Government 
has undertaken to import a stock for the Govern- 
ment game reserve, where it is hoped the Ameri- 
can bird may be acclimatized along with the black 
game from Europe. In South Africa they have 
trouble with predaceous vermin in their game 
refuges, just as we do with the mountain lions 
and coyotes in the Yellowstone National Park. 
Polecats destroy the birds, and leopards and wild- 
cats devour the young of the rhebok, grysbok 
and the klipspringers, whose very name one 
might think would enable them to escape; and 
baboons swarm and devour young ducks and 
birds. 
ad 
It is reported that a Berlin professor has ac- 
complished the analysis of natural albumen, and 
has succeeded in producing some of the ingre- 
dients naturaily. Consul Pike writes to the State 
Department: “The vast importance of this dis- 
covery will be better comprehended when we 
realize that the introduction of this artificial food 
will reduce the disastrous effects of bad harvests, 
pestilence, etc., to a minimum, and cause famine 
to become a thing of the past.” It may also put 
a quietus on that ridiculous story about the tak- 
ing of millions of wild duck eggs in Canadian and 
Alaskan wilds, and shipping them by. the carload 
to the albumen factories. 
ad 
Peculiar interest attaches to the Martha’s Vine- 
yard heath hen as a remnant of the old bird 
life of New England, maintaining a precarious 
existence in the face of untoward influences 
which might well long since have blotted it out. 
The Vineyard bird has withstood the snare and 
the gun, the pursuit of the man after meat, and 
the yet more unrelenting quest of the killer ,for 
“scientific purposes.” If ever bird deserved im- 
munity from the rapacity of mankind, this one 
does; and the intelligence that Massachusetts has 
now prohibited absolutely the taking of the heath 
hen will be received with decided satisfaction. 
