


AUG. 31, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

$33 

Canada’s Buffalo. 
Tuat the Canadian Government takes a broad 
view of its responsibilities with regard to its 
recently purchased herd, which so long had its 
home in Montana, is shown by recent expres- 
sions of Hon. Frank Oliver, Minister of the In- 
terior. The buffalo shipped from Montana to 
the vicinity of Edmonton were located at a place 
called Lamont, but this situation is only tem- 
porary and was chosen because it had been pre- 
pared for the reception of an elk herd, and so 
was properly fenced in, and would be a safe 
place for the buffalo. It is not intended, how- 
ever, to keep them there. Nor, indeed, neces- 
sarily to keep them all together. 
Mr. Oliver is quoted as saying: “We have 
for some time been looking for a place suitable 
for a permanent breeding ground for the buffalo 
and I think that we have found one. It will 
be on Battle River, north of the Wetaskiwin 
branch of the Canadian Pacific R. R., and south 
of the proposed Grand Trunk Pacific. The tract, 
which is unsettled, includes four townships, and 
if we can make satisfactory arrangements with 
the Canadian Pacific R. R. and with the Hud- 
son’s Bay Co., who hold a portion of the land, 
this will be the tract selected.” 
The location chosen seems an excellent one. 
It is an open range country, and not well suited 
for cultivation. The fact that it has no in- 
habitants makes it especially available. It is near 
the railroads, so that, if necessary, hay can be 
transported to the herd at all times. There is 
a good water supply. 
While this will be the main breeding ground, 
it is the purpose of the Government to distribute 
surplus males in different parts of the West for 
exhibition purposes, and the department will con- 
sider all applications for this purpose. It has 
been proposed to locate these buffalo on the 
Sarcee Reservation, but there is not sufficient 
room there for all of them. 
The Dominion Government will do wisely if 
it shall establish a number -of small herds at 
different points and breed these buffalo in small 
bunches, changing the blood frequently, as it 
readily can from the animals that it has. This 
we do not doubt will be its course. 
The Banff buffalo herd has increased this year 
to seventy-nine head. fifteen calves having been 
born this year. Last year the increase was only 
twelve. The herd has been at Banff for nine 
years, and in that time only four head have been 
lost, two of these in a fight. 
It will be seen then that the Dominion of 
Canada not only possesses the largest herd of 
wild buffalo in the world, but also a greater 
number of domesticated buffalo than are in the 
hands of any single company or corporation in 
the world. 
The Weasel’s Daring. 
St. AucusTINE, Fla., Aug. 12.—Editor Forest 
and Stream: In reading the Forest AND STREAM 
of Aug. 10 I was interested in the weasel and 
rat story of Hermit Point and I think I have 
even a better one. 
When I was a boy on a New York farm in 
Dutchess county, my father and I were one day 
at work in a corn field, not far from the stone 
wall which surrounded the field, when our atten- 
tion was called by the shrill squeaking of a rat 
which had been caught by a weasel close by the 
wall. As we rushed to the place the weasel let 
go his hold on his half dead victim and slipped 
into the wall. 
Knowing the persistence and impudence of the 
weasel my father picked up the now dead rat 
and winding the long tail about his finger held 
the rat close to the hole into which the weasel 
had disappeared and sent me to the house not 
far away, to bring the gun with which to dis- 
patch him. 
I was gone a very few minutes, indeed, run- 
ning all the way, but on my return saw neither 
weasel nor rat, and was told by my father that 
the weasel had darted out his long slim body 
far enough to catch hold of the head of the rat, 
had drawn it in after him, and the rat’s tail, 
slipping or giving way in my father’s hand, both 
rat and weasel had disappeared within the safe 
recesses of the stone wall. 

I remember another instance in boyhood days 
of a like exhibition of pure impudence on the 
part of a weasel. I was going to a pasture lot 
to catch a horse and carried the rope halter 
coiled in my hand. A weasel crossed the path 
and disappeared in a loose pile of stones close 
by, almost immediately afterward lifting into 
sight his long slim body and _ sniffing at me 
either in contempt or inquiry. 
I struck at him again and again with the coil 
of rope, only to have my labor for my pains, 
as he would always nimbly dodge the blow and 
appear in a minute or so as cool and impudent 
as ever. Finally I suppose he thought he had 
shown me his agility long enough and disap- 
peared, and I went after the horse. 
De Witr WEss. 
Forestry in Minnesota. 
Tue Minnesota law, creating the office of 
forest commissioner, makes it one of its duties 
to disseminate information concerning forestry, 
and his twelfth annual report for the year 1906 
is just before us. 
Minnesota has always been one of the great 
homes of the pine which grew over no less than 
18,000,000 acres of the northern part of the State. 
These pine forests have been cut away during 
the last sixty years, and in a dozen years more 
but little of them will be left. The State holds 
now only 21,000 acres of land expressly set apart 
for forestry, an amount singularly small when 
we consider that Wisconsin has 225,000 acres, 
Pennsylvania 820,000 and New York 1,500,000. 
For a great and prosperous State like Minnesota 
—one of the States, too, that is most forward 
in all good work—the forestry showing is not 
satisfactory. 
Many persons will remember the terrible de- 
struction by fire that took place sixteen years 
ago in Minnesota, and at present the law makes 
the town supervisors fire wardens, and the good 
results of this are shown in the small acreage 
of burned Jand during 1906, the total cost of 
which was inconsiderable. Most of these fires 
are caused by carelessness, whether of persons 
who are clearing land, of campers or of rail- 
ways. 
The forest commissioner preaches good doc- 
trine in his report and tries earnestly to impress 
on the citizens of his State the importance of 
beginning the work of forestry on the scale 
suited the States’ dignity, and to its great natural 
resources. The present report occupies 140 
pages and is fully illustrated. 
The Aoudad. 
For many years naturalists have striven with 
little success to find characters which should 
sharply differentiate the sheep from the goats. 
That they have not succeeded in doing so is 
partly due to the aoudad, an illustration of 
which is found on the front cover of this week’s 
FOREST AND STREAM. It is clearly a wild sheep, 
and yet it has some goat-like characters which 
almost bridge the gap between the goats and 
the sheep. 
This maned sheep is found in the Atlas Moun- 
tains, and is a large and handsome species. It 
is frequently seen in captivity, and the illustra- 
tion is one which we owe to the kindness of the 
New York Zoological Society, which possesses 
a number of these curious beasts. 
The wild sheep of to-day are found in Asia 
and western America, and there are a dozen or 
fifteen different forms, all of them characterized 
by tremendous horns and by short compact 
forms of great strength. All possess great 
climbing ability. In western America we have 
four or five forms, the relationships of which 
are not very clearly known; yet the Rocky 
Mountain bighorn and Dall’s white sheep of the 
north are so widely separated that they would 
hardly be thought likely to intergrade. Among 
the Asian sheep Marco Polo’s sheep stands 
nearly four feet high and has horns something 
like 56 inches in length. The argalli is another 
splendid large species, about the hunting of 
which Prince Demidoff has written an interest- 
ing book. 
Shell Keys Bird Reservation. 
WE recently announced the establishment of 
the Tern Islands Reservation at the mouth of 
the Mississippi River, which embraced all the 
mud lump islets which are continually being 
formed and being destroyed in the mouth of the 
great stream. 
On Aug. 17 there was established the Shell 
Keys Reservation, which includes a group of 
oyster shell keys in the Gulf of Mexico, situated 
about three and one-half miles south of Marsh 
Island, lying at the mouth of Vermilion Bay, 
and about half way between Sabine Pass and 
the mouth of the Mississippi River. Like the 
Tern Islands mud lumps, the Shell Keys are 
very low, standing only three or four feet above 
the water at high tide, and as on the Tern 
Islands Reservation, the Shell Keys are resorted 
to only for breeding purposes by many thos aads 
of brown pelicans and of royal and Caspian 
terns. 
This last reservation, like all the others, has 
been placed in charge of the Department of 
Agriculture, which will appoint wardens to pro- 
tect the bird colonies from egg and plume 
hunters. 
During the months of May and June, 1907, 
the National Association of Audubon Societies 
dispatched an expert ornithologist to examine 
the west coast of Louisiana from Sabine Pass 
to the Mississippi River. The purpose was to 
search for breeding colonies of waterfowl and 
to learn whether any breeding sites found were 
of sufficient importance to be made reservations. 
It is on the report of this ornithologist that the 
Tern Islands and the Shell Keys Reservations 
were established. 
Woodpecker Ways. 
WE are permitted to publish an extract from 
a private letter written to a correspondent by 
Mr. W. B. Mershon, of Saginaw, Michigan. His 
notes on the red-headed woodpecker are interest- 
ing as showing again how wild birds change 
their habits and adapt themselves to new condi- 
tions. The extract is as follows: 
“Do you know that the red-headed woodpecker 
is a berry feeder? I have a colony of these in 
my yard at my residence here and some of them 
stay all winter. The cther day I saw one of 
them perched on one of my raspberry bushes 
eating berries. 
“A few days ago my little girl was throwing 
bread crumbs out to her bantam chickens and 
one of these red-headed woodpeckers was very 
mech interested as well as an English sparrow. 
They would watch for an opportunity to dash 
down and grab a piece of bread and get away 

with it. The bantam rooster would chase them 
and sometimes drive them away before they 
could get the bread. 
_ Another trait: On the cupola of my house 
is a galvanized iron ornament or finial, and the 
old patriarch of the woodpecker family is in the 
habit early in the morning of gettine on this 
ornament and drumming a tattoo with his bill 
and repeating it several times. On a rainy day 
he gets on top of the highest chimney on the 
house and calls.” é 
Catching Beaver. 
Mr. T. E_woop Horer is at present engaged 
in capturing a number of beaver for the New 
York Forest. Fish and Game Commission, pre- 
sumably to be liberated in the Adirondacks. 
He is doing this work for Mr. James S. 
Whipple, Forest, Fish and Game Commissioner, 
and the beaver are to be sent to Old Forge. 
N. Y. Permission has been given by the Sec- 
retary of the Interior and the Superintendent 
of the Park to catch these beaver within the 
park. 
At last accounts Mr. Hofer had six beaver 
and hoped very shortly to secure a number of 
others. If he gets the full number and they 
are put in the Adirondack: region and properly 
protected, they should stock it all in time i 
THE Forest AND STREAM may be obtained from 
any newsdealer on order. Ask your dealer to 
supply you regularly. 














































































