

JULY 13, 1907.] 
FORESTIAND STREAM. 
| 

Results of Protection. 
RareicH, N.-C., July 1—Editor Forest and 
Stream: The spring, save the latter half of 
March, was a cold and gloomy one, and June was 
like an ordinary April for the most part. The 
birds are in good shape, however, and many 
young coveys of quail are observed. It is very 
certain that many more birds escaped the guns 
than usual, so there are numbers of old ones. 
The Audubon laws are being very strictly en- 
forced in the up-country. Governor Glenn’ has 
recently appointed several wardens. There will 
be unusually heavy crops of field peas, this being 
the food the quail prefer to all others, 
To-day I received the following very interest- 
ing letter from Secretary T. Gilbert Pearson, of 
the North Carolina Audubon Society: 
“[ have just returned from a trip of inspection 
to the breeding colonies of sea birds on the 
islands now owned by the State Audubon Society 
and located in Pamlico Sound. The principal 
breeding places are Royal Shoal Island and 
Logged Lump. These are low-lying islands of 
only a few acres each, they are composed of-sand 
and sea shells, and have no trees, the only vegeta- 
tion being some grass and a few shrubs on the 
higher parts. 
“This is the fifth summer of our work and the 
results of protection have been wonderful. 1 
counted 2,500 eggs of one species, the large hand- 
some royal tern., About 1,000 of these eggs lay in 
a space twenty feet wide by too feet long, one or 
two eggs to the nest. When the birds sat on 
their eggs one could not see the sand between 
their bodies, so closely do they sit. They have 
become very tame, too, being accustomed as they 
are to the presence of Game Warden Jennett. | 
approached within fifteen feet of this great fleck 
and photographed them repeatedly. Later I lay 
flat on the sand and slowly crawled to within 
seven feet of the nearest birds sitting on their 
eggs. You know IJ am rather short and round, so 
perhaps they took me for a lusty sea turtle that 
had come out of the sea for a little walk on 
the beach! 
“Nature is very unkind at times to her crea- 
tures. On June 18 a high storm tide swept part 
of the island. Over I,000 eggs were washed into 
the sound and at least as many more were left 
in great windrows among the shells at the high 
water mark. A few days after this a heavy hail 
storm smote the island and we found over 200 
young gulls and terns that had been stoned to 
death by the thunder king. But despite these 
devastation the birds'are increasing rapidly. The 
species breeding in the» protected colonies are 
laughing gull, royal tern, roseate tern, Wilson’s 
tern, least tern, black skimmer and American 
oystercatcher.” Frep. A. OLps. 
A Curious Maple Tree. 
BesIpDE the road from Indian Lake to Cedar 
River Flow, in the Adirondacks, there is a tree 
that has attracted a great deal of attention from 
sportsmen tourists en route from North Creek 
to the Moose River country. There are in 
reality two trees that take root in the ground, 
but at a height of about thirty feet the two 
trunks have grown together, and above the junc- 
tion there is but one solid, smooth trunk, with 
branches here and there as on any other tree 
of this Kkind—hard maple. : 
In the picture, which was made last Febru- 
ary when the snow was more than three feet 
deep, the tree on the left gives the impression 
that it has been blown against the central one 
of the three trees in the immediate foreground, 
but a careful inspection will show that the left- 
hand tree is completely merged in the central 
one, and above the place where both join there 
is nothing unusual in the formation of the 
trunk of the larger tree, and no seam or gap 
shows. 
It is not at all unusual for two maples to 
grow together, but almost invariably they 
branch out again, showing the two separate 
sets of branches at points from five to fifteen 
feet above the ground; but it is seldom two 
trees of this species start out separately from 
roots twelve or thirteen feet apart and after 
many years of independent growth are grafted 

ADIRONDACK MAPLES GROWN TOGETHER, 
together by accident, as is evident in these trees 
referred to. 
While planning an Adirondack snowshoe trip 
last winter, our companion mentioned _ this 
curious tree and asked us to remind him not to 
forget it when we should pass through the 
region in which it, grows. At the iime it 
seemed odd that we should make a note of a 
curious tree growing among millions of others, 
and search for it in passing, but an inspection 
of the tree itself will repay any one who may 
be passing along the Cedar River road. 
Sullivan County Wild Pigeons. 
West Park, N. Y., July 5.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: In early June I made a trip to Sullivan 
county to verify a report of wild pigeons having 
been seen there. I found two persons who had 
seen the pigeons, one of them an old farmer 
who knew pigeons as well as I did. I heard of 
two other men working in a stone quarry who 
saw them. The pigeons were seen on the after- 
noon of May 23. It was a large flock, contain- 
ing probably a thousand ‘birds; it was going 
northeast. The locality was a few miles north of 
Livingston Manor, near the Beaverkill. I am fully 
convinced that the pigeons were seen. 
About the same time President Roosevelt re- 
ported to me that he had seen a small flock of 
pigeons near Pine Knot in Virginia. He saw 
them several times, and later verified his observa- 
tions through a friend of his living in the same 
locality. There is no doubt at all about his havy- 
ing seen the passenger pigeon there. ° 
JoHN BurroucGHus. 
. 
Birds in Hamilton County. 
MoreEHOUSEVILLE, N. Y., July 3.—Editor Forest 
and Stream: Like your correspondent Ramon I 
have often wondered what has becdme of the 
quantities of bobolinks I used to see some twenty 
years ago; but away up here in the southwestern 
corner of Hamilton county I have again found 
them fairly plentiful out in the clearings. It was 
a real treat to have them sail tinkling over one’s 
head once more. é 
The cedar waxwing is a common bird up here, 
and I have known for some years past of its. fly- 
catching propensities. At a camp I used to stop 
at some eight miles south of here I could always 
count On seeing them making their headquarters 
in the top of an old dead spruce, from which 
they would do their circling for flies and other in- 
sects. 
Just now I can hear the veery at almost any 
time of the day in among the spruce and balsam, 
but to see him is not so easy. 
* I have made three different camps lately and 
at each was delighted to hear the wood thrush 
sing at daybreak. Down my way in the Hudson 
Valley he is one of our common summer resi- 
dents, but I was unaware that he was found up 
here. 
The rose-breasted grosbeak is common up here 
and I often hear him singing in the woods, as 
well: as the white-throat sparrow, or peabody 
bird; but to me this latter bird never says, as 
we are told in the books, “Old Sam Peabody.” 
I have heard the cuckoo several times lately 
and also a whip-poor-will several evenings not 
very far from the house. CARARIG. 
An Expedition to Alaska. 
On Friday, July 5, Mr. Madison Grant, of New 
York, secretary of the New York Zoological So- 
ciety, and also of the Boone and Crockett Club, 
left this city on an extended trip to Alaska. Mr. 
Grant’s object in going is to make investigations 
into the fauna of Alaska, with special reference 
to the game conditions. With him goes Mr. L. S. 
Quackenbush, of New York, who represents Prof. 
Henry Fairfield Osborn, of the American 
Museum of Natural History. 
Among the objects of the expedition will be 
the gathering of vertebrate fossils from some of 
the deposits of northern Alaska, where these 
fossils are often washed up from the cliffs in the 
course of hydraulic mining. The fossil beds of 
Eschscholtz Bay on Kotzebue Sound are of course 
well known. 
A rumor more or less vague has come down 
from Alaska of the existence of the body of a 
mastodon—or mammoth—frozen into an ice cliff 
This story will if possible be traced to its source 
Such finds have been made in Siberia on more 
than one occasion. It is of course possible that 
the rumor may have foundation, but as yet the 
evidence in support of the story seems slight. 
Friends of the American Museum of Natural 
History contributed the fund-for the expedition, 
which will probably return in October. 

