
Thinks Passenger Pigeons Were 
Drowned 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
EING a reader of your magazine, 
I must say that I was deeply 
touched by the article of Dr. V. Bene- 
dicto, of Cuba. My mind has been at 
sea the same as the doctor’s, concerning 
the loss of our once numerous flock of 
passenger pigeons. Being on a farm 
well onto ten years in my younger days, 
the subject of passenger pigeons was 
never passed up and I was eyes and 
ears to hear some of the old-timers 
who actually saw and shot into these 
flocks. Truly it was murder, wantonly 
to destroy as they did. Now it may 
seem a joke to some, but the writer 
\speaks of what he has actually heard 
from men who lived the lives of out- 
door men and thought twice before they 
spoke or wrote once, and when they did 
write or speak it wasn’t fiction but the 
truth as real sportsmen would tell it 
away from a camp fire. 
It was not unusual when firing into 
a flock heading for its roosting place 
at night, into the heavy woods, to get 
a bushel basket full of pigeons, and one 
shot was enough, as they were so thick 
they couldn’t be missed. And when 
they would start migrating it would 
take hours for them to pass, as the 
sky literally was full of pigeons. Mil- 
lions and millions of them. So far so 
good as to numbers. Now about the 
total extinction of these birds which 
seems a total mystery to the whole 
world at large. 
| It seems as though “the sea has 
Swallowed them up” would be about 
the right term to apply to this case. 
As we know, the wild pigeon bunched 
or flocked, and migrated. Now, ac- 
ieding to articles in different maga- 
‘tines, the way I figure it out is that 
they were heading for South America 
i 


on their migration and were overcome 
by a storm, swept into the ocean and 
drowned. Sailors who passed through 
the “death belt” reported their vessels 
riding days and days through the bodies 
‘of drowned pigeons. 

J. D. WILDE, 
| Cleveland, Ohio. 

14 
_ (Many letters have been received in 
regard to the disappearance of the pas- 
‘senger pigeon and it appears that the 
subject has an universal interest. To 
date, however, no one has been able to 
clear up the mystery satisfactorily. 
So many subjects come up for dis- 
cussion in the Letters’ Section that we 

believe it best not to devote any. 
more space to the passenger pigeon 
‘question until current problems have 
been attended to.—Editors.) 
a 


A Certain Method of Recapturing 
Escaped Animals 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
i NegSeih een to the papers, a valu- 
able baboon in Central Park 
menagerie escaped from its cage, and, 
although still confined in the building, 
had eluded all attempts of the keepers 
to recapture it by lassoing, cornering, 
snaring, etc, so had to be shots 
Apparently the keepers do not know 
a certain simple method of securing a 
dangerous animal when at bay. This is 
one which, in my early days, was com- 
monly used for ’coons, lynxes, wildcats, 
etc. We would fasten one, or perhaps 
two, fox traps, firmly on the end of a 
'10-foot pole, open and set the traps, 
then, with a man at each pole, push the 
traps toward’ the animal. As it strikes 
the pan deliberately, or treads on it, 
the animal is at once a prisoner. 
For a larger animal like a baboon, 
a wolf trap would have been necessary, 
but four men with four heavy traps on 
poles, could have got that baboon in 
a few minutes. As these traps are 
smooth-jawed, and if necessary may be 
muffled with a rag, the valuable animal 
would not have been injured at all in 
the recapture. 
The menageries I know have catching 
nets for escapes, but, strange to say, 
none of them seem to have realized the 
effective simplicity of the muffled trap. 
ERNEST THOMPSON SETON, 
Greenwich, Conn. 
The Size of an Elephant’s Brain 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
ECENTLY I saw a piece of ignor- 
ance displayed in a sporting maga- 
zine, which, while it doesn’t amount 
to much, shows how misrepresentation 
often leads a sportsman astray. What 
I refer to is the discussion relative to 
the size and shape of an elephant’s 
brain that appeared in a recent issue 
of a contemporary of FOREST AND 
STREAM. One writer contended the 
elephant’s brain was the size and shape 
Diagram Showing Brain 

Front” View 

Cavity of Tho Elophant 
Where spine 
of a man’s fist, while the other had an 
equally fantastic theory to expound. 
Without any idea of entering the lists 
of this profound discussion, I shall give 
you the rigorously exact measurements 
of the brain capacity of a young, but 
full grown tusker shot last year in 
Indo-China. The skull was split from 
ear to ear disclosing the brain which 
filled the cavity. The measurements 
of this cavity were as shown in the 
rough diagram printed on this page. 
This information may be of value to 
some prospective African or Indian 
hunter, and with that hope in view, I 
have penned these few lines. 
JOHN CONSIDINE, 
Major of Cavalry, U.S. A. 
Philippine Is. 
A Day With Small Mouth Bass 
DEAR FOREST AND STREAM: 
N reading FOREST AND STREAM I take 
delight in some of your stories. I 
have been a lover of the fishing and 
hunting life and of course your maga- 
zine appeals to me. 
I have a friend, Robert Stockton, 
and he and I fish a great deal together. 
With his fishing launch (Tags) we go 
to the mouth of the Clinton River, 
which empties -into Lake St. Clair. 
Then in some favorite spot we drop 
anchor to see who gets the first small 
mouth bass. Most always it’s Bob. 
But at times we have been so dis- 
couraged that we are ready to go for 
smaller game. When Bob says, “I have 
a hunch, get me a small minnow hook, 
bait it with a worm and I’ll catch a 
few small perch,” he then makes an- 
other cast for the bunch and bang— 
that’s what they were feeding on, and 
that’s what they wanted. 
From then on we get the limit and 
they are some bass for weight. The 
largest was 6% pounds and it is a rare 
thing to get them that size. It takes 
experience to handle them. 
We use from 50 to 75 feet.of good 
linen line in 15 to 20 feet of water and 
fast current. H. R. BAsBcock, 
Mt. Clemens, Mich. 




sins skull 




Sidv View 

553 
