| 
Dec. 14, 1907.] 

FOREST AND STREAM. 
937 


returned before noon with the limit. At the 
lose of the season there are some left, and as 
the corn matured late and is still mostly in the 
fields, they should winter well. There is also a 
fair amount of nuts though of poor quality. The 
season was so very late they did not fully mature. 
Chestnut blossoms were observed as late as Aug. 
rey 
Rabbits were fairly plentiful and not as per- 
sistently hunted as in the past few years, leav- 
ing plenty to go through the winter. 
Quail are practically extinct in this locality. 
I have heard of but one being killed during the 
shooting season. 
The grouse here as everywhere else, so far as 
heard from, have been exceedingly few. One 
year ago, at the close of the season, the covers 
contained birds in plenty. In fact, they had been 
steadily increasing in numbers ever since their 
sale was prohibited, and they certainly wintered 
‘well and were seen in numbers during the early 
| spring. Of what happened to them later no one 
seems able to tell with any certainty. But some 
of our closest observers incline to the opinion 
that the extremely late spring caused the trouble; 
the ground freezing nearly ‘every night during 
the laying and brooding, and after the chicks 
were out—if any hatched. 
Gray foxes have been unusually numerous dur- 
ing the past two years, and some lay the scarcity 
of grouse at their door. All who are interested 
in the noble bird are fully awake to the situa- 
tion and are looking for the cause in the hope 
that a remedy may be found. 







This is ideal country for the ruffed grouse, 
and their steady increase since barter in their 
beautiful bodies has been prohibited has engen- 
dered bright hopes among its many ardent ad- 
mirers. We trust that a single bad year will 
not discourage them and cause them to relax 
their efforts for its protection. The bounty law 
framed by the last Legislature seems to be work- 
ing out well, and may materially assist in de- 
creasing the number of foxes, mink and weasels. 
Some of the most ardent lovers of the great 
out-of-doors, now that the shooting season is 
passed, are turning their attention to fur, and 
some very rich mink pelts have been taken as 
well as other trophies. Bon AMI. 
In the journal of the Maine Ornithological 
Society Mr. Walter H. Rich discusses the scar- 
city of ruffed grouse for that State, and de- 
clares that partridges are as rare there as they 
appear to be in many other localities. His own 
experience is that this year he has seen about 
one-fifth as many grouse as last. 
In considering the causes for this apparent 
scarcity he calls attention to the meteorological 
conditions, and has made a study of the records 
of the weather bureau at Portland, Me. He 
finds that in 1905, the months of April, May and 
June were warm and drier than usual, and that 
therefore there was probably no less of chicks 
from cold or wet weather. 
In April, 1906, he finds a fall of 20% inches 
of snow, with a daily average temperature for 
the months of three degrees below the normal. 
The month of May was about as warm as usual, 
though there was a very heavy rain at the end 
of the month, but the nesting time of the grouse 
was marked by pleasant weather. The rainfall 
for June, 1906, was very heavy. 
There were comparatively few woodcock in 
the fall of 1906, and therefore the grouse were 
more closely followed up. This helped to thin 
out the breeding supply. 
The month of April, 1907, gave 1714 inches of 
snow and the average temperature was four de- 
grees below the normal. In other words there 
were 120 degrees more cold than is usual in 
April. May, 1907, was five degrees colder on 
a daily average, in other words there were 155 
degrees more of cold than in the average May. 
Such conditions may have very seriously af- 
fected the nesting of the birds. 
We heard of one nest in New England—but 
not in Maine—which had seventeen eggs, of 
which only eight hatched. The rapid drop of 
temperature coming at- the wrong time may 
easily kill eggs and prevent their hatching. 
Poor Old Missouri. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The Missouri Legislature of 1903-4 passed an 
act for the protection of fish and game, known 
as the Wamsley bill; thus putting that State 
on the ForEsT AND STREAM platform of stop- 
ping the sale of game, and, in providing for 
paid game wardens, putting it in line with the 
progressive States of the Mississippi Valley, 
which are its neighbors. There ensued two 
years in which the game increased and the game 
butcher diminished. The game dealers and the 
market hunters tried in every way that a law- 
breaker could contrive to break this law, but 
there were paid game wardens who detected 
them and convicted them and the business of 
providing quail from the State of Missouri for 
all creation became a thing of the past. It was 
a good law and hurt nobody but the game deal- 
ers and the market hunters; it did hurt them. 
The game of Missouri is worth nearly a 
million dollars a year. Under the Wamsley law 
the equivalent of this sum of money in the 
yearly game supply was distributed among all 
the citizens of the State who were willing to 
go out in the fields and kill it in its season. 
The game dealers felt that they were bereft of 

SUCCESS, 
a million dollars of business a year. It was a 
good business, for they bought at about a dollar 
a dozen, throwing out the spoiled birds, and 
sold for about three dollars, so that when this 
law was repealed by the Legislature of 1906-7, it 
was in the intrest of the game dealers, and no- 
body else. And Governor Folk, a modern 
“apostle of reform,” approved the bill which 
repealed this righteous act and enacted in its 
stead an iniquitous one, despite the protests 
of man~ citizens. It is true that the present bill 
forbids the sale of game killed in this State, but 
it declares in section 33 that: 
“Nothing in this act shall be construed to 
prohibit the shipment of game and fish during 
the open season into this State from other 
States and Territories, nor the sale of such 
game and fish so shipped into this State during 
the open season.” 
All that was required to make this a_ perfect 
game dealers’ law was to abolish the paid game 
warden, and this was done, in other sections of 
the law, except in so far as the law provided for 
one game warden, on a salary, but left him with 
no paid deputies, merely providing that the sheriffs 
and their deputies of the various counties should 
be ex-officio deputy game wardens, without pay. 
What is the result? Game on sale in the mar- 
kets bv the wagon load, shot nobody knows 
where and no one whose business it is to inter- 
fere caring. One man was seen on the streets 
of St. Louis with over a hundred quail in his 
possession at one time. The game dealers are 
in their element. They “wink the eye” and send 
out their circulars, and the supply floods the 
market. An attempt was made in this act 
which handed over the game to the dealers to 
make it hard for decent people to go very far 
afield to hunt, by providing in adjoining coun- 
ties to the one in which a hunter resides a 
license fee of one dollar; but for all other coun- 
ties, and each one hunted in, a separate license 
fee of two dollars and a half, with the usual fee 
of fifteen dollars for nonresidents. In other 
words, this statute divides the citizens of 
Missouri into two classes: those who cannot or 
do not go outside of the county in which they 
live to hunt, who are not required to pay for 
a license; and those who wish to go outside 
their own counties, who must pay. 
This law was intended, evidently, to strike at 
the residents of the city of St. Louis, since that 
city is not in any county, and of this latter class 
two subdivisions are made. Those who only 
hunt in an adjoining county have to pay a 
license of one dollar; but those who go into 
any other county must pay a fee of two dollars 
and a half for each county they hunt in; in other 
words, the law is a rank discrimination against 
certain citizens of all parts of the State and a 
shameful discrimination against the citizens of 
St. Louis, so far as the privilege of hunting is 
concerned. As to handing over the game of 
Missouri to the game dealers, it is a disgrace to 
the age we live in. A painstaking Tarbellian 
study of the springs of action having to do with 
the passage of such a law and its approval by a 
governor might afford valuable instruction in 
the abstruse science of legislation. 
The Missouri game law is ridiculed by the 
press, lauded by the game dealers and anathe- 
matized by almost every one else. 
GrorRGE KENNEDY. 

New Publications. 
Tue Dancinc Mouse. A Study of Animal Be- 
havior, by Robert N. Yerkes, Ph.D. New 
York. Macmillans. Price, $1.25. 
The dancing mouse, whose peculiarities of be- 
havior Dr. Yerkes has been studying, is an 
oriental variety of the common house mouse 
which has the habit of whirling about, racing 
in circles, and in other ways displaying extra- 
ordinary activity. The study of the animal ac- 
tions has given Dr. Yerkes material for a book 
of nearly 300 pages, the first of a series being 
published by the Macmillans on Animal Behavior. 
It is copiously illustrated by drawings and con- 
tains a mass of curious and interesting observa- 
tions. The author gives clear accounts of the 
result of his long experimental study of the danc- 
ing mouse’s capabilities, physical and mental, and 
by giving his methods of research has given the 
volume more or less the character of a text 
book. There is much of natural history in the 
volume, some of it quite technical, but there is 
in the work a great deal of interest. 

CAMPING AND TRAMPING WITH ROOSEVELT. By 
John Burroughs. Illustrated. New York. 
Houghton, Miffin & Co. Price, $1.25. 
In this little volume of scarcely more than 100 
pages are found two of Mr. Burroughs’ fasci- 
nating studies of outdoors in which President 
Roosevelt is the central figure. One of these 
deals with the trip made some years ago to the 
Yellowstone Park and other Western points, of 
which Mr. Roosevelt himself has given us an 
account in “American Big Game in its Haunts.” 
The other treats of the President at home. Both 
are designed to emphasize what is very well 
known, that the President is an excellent field 
naturalist, that he knows far more about the 
birds and mammals of the United States than 
most men. The studies are full of Mr. Bur- 
roughs’ own peculiar charm of telling. 

The Whittaker Pigeons. 
SAcINAW, Mich., Nov. 26.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: On page 811, in your issue of the 23d, 
I am made to say that the Whittaker flock of 
passenger pigeons was at St. Louis. This is a 
mistake. I should have said at Milwaukee. 
W. B. MErsHoN, 

