Beaver lodge on an island in the Red Deer River three miles above Tolman Ferry. This lodge sheltered eight beavers in 1910. In 1911 it was deserted, the burrow having been opened by trappers

Some people who live near the rivers say that because the beavers cut down so many trees they should not be protected. From my own observation, they destroy only young poplars which at best make very poor fence posts. If rigidly protected for another twenty years they will increase to such numbers that many may be killed each year thereafter, under proper restriction, without seriously decreasing the supply. Thus a source of considerable wealth may be conserved and one of the most valuable furbearing species be perpetuated.

AN EXPLANATION

AN article appeared in the December, 1911, issue of the JOURNAL entitled "Fossil Hunting by Boat in Canada." It was the intention of the writer to describe the unique method of securing fossils and to give some of the observations that seemed most interesting.

It was not claimed nor intended to be understood that this was the first time that fossils had been secured from the Red Deer River. Their existence has long been known and fossils had previously been collected from the river by members of the Canadian Geological Survey.

BARNUM BROWN

A

THE PORCUPINE IN MAINE

1

RECENT addition to the variation series for the Darwin hall is a fine albino Canada porcupine, obtained from "Flint, the Porcupine Man," who turns the porcupines of Maine, usually considered a nuisance, to good account by harboring them in his woodlands and supplying them to zoological gardens. Some years ago the state of Maine put a bounty on porcupines, the principal result of which was to show that the state's supply of porcupines was greater than its supply of dollars. A letter received from Professor W. Lyman Underwood of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology states authoritatively the situation in Maine, and all who have studied the question of the country's wild animal life in regard to preservation, where not directly in opposition to the interests of man, will appreciate the following quotation:

For several years prior to 1903 some of the lumbermen of Maine tried to get the legislature to do something to exterminate the porcupines, which they claimed were killing a great many hemlock and poplar trees. To this end in the year 1903 the town treasurers of the state were authorized by the legislature to pay a bounty of twenty-five cents for each animal that had been killed, the front feet and the nose to be handed in as evidence. The state appropriated four thousand dollars to pay these bounties.

As you know, the legislature of Maine meets only once in two years. In the two years in which this law was in effect over 146,000 porcupines were killed and paid for at an expense of something over $36,000. In the little town of Princeton, Maine, whose population then was 1100, the treasurer paid the bounty on 2600 porcupines in the first eight months. At the next meeting of the legislature the law was very properly repealed.

In my opinion more timber was lost in the two years in which the bounty was in effect than could have been charged to the porcupines for half a century. Porcupine hunters were responsible for this loss of timber. Men and boys roamed the forests after porcupines. Many fires were started by irresponsible people; trees were cut down to dislodge the animals where the hunters did not carry any guns. I have heard timber owners themselves speak of the damage done by the hunters.

From my own personal observation I have never seen any very extensive damage to trees done by porcupines. Now and then I find a poplar tree whose top has been pretty well eaten up, and sometimes small hemlocks where the bark has been taken off by these animals. Of course they do get into a good many camps and do some damage in that way, but personally I would much rather see the creatures around in the woods than have them exterminated.

1 Among the exhibits in course of preparation for the Darwin hall, are series illustrating variation under domestication and variation in nature, the last to include such accidental or abnormal variations as albinos and melanos.

MUSEUM NOTES

SINCE the last issue of the JOURNAL the following persons have been elected to membership in the Museum:

Patron, MR. JOHN A. GROSSBECK;

Life Members, MRS. CHRISTOPHER M. BELL, MRS. JOHN G. McCULLOUGH, MRS. JAMES MCLEAN, MRS. WILLIAM F. MILTON, MRS. WILLIAM WALTER PHELPS, MRS. BYAM K. STEVENS, MISS ROSINA S. HOYT, MISS IDA H. OGILVIE, HON. JOHN B. JACKSON, DR. AUSTIN FLINT, JR., and MESSRS. RICHARD Canfield, EDWARD PEARCE CASEY, PERCIVAL FARQUHAR, MAX C. FLEISCHMANN, DALLETT FUGUET, GEORGE L. HARRISON, JR., WALTER SCHUYLER KEMEYS, CHARLES W. LENG, JOHN D. RYAN and L. STUART WING;

Sustaining Members, MESSRS. LOUIS BREY amd J. K. ROBINSON;

Annual Members, MRS. JOHN S. BARNES, MRS. F. FORSCH, MRS. THOMAS HASTINGS, MRS. GEORGE GRANT MASON, MRS. WILTON MERLE-SMITH, MRS. THEODORE F. RANDOLPH, MRS. OGDEN MILLS REID, MRS. SAMUEL SLOAN, MRS. ANDREW H. SMITH, MRS. FREDERICK A. SNow, MRS. EDWARDS SPENCER, MRS. E. C. STURGES, MRS. GEORGE H. TAYLOR, MISS R. A. POLHEMUS, MISS HENRIETTA PRENTISS, MISS CORNELIA PRIME, MISS JOSEPHINE C. SMITH, REV. W. H. OWEN, JR., and MESSRS. ASHBEL H. BARNEY, CHESTER A. BRAMAN, REYNOLD COHEN, C. L. COLLINS, RICHARD C. COLT, FREDERICK H. CONE, RUSSEL DART, L. C. DEMING, ROBERT A. FLIESS, GEORGE J. FORAN, A. A. FOWLER, ARTHUR H. HAHLO, FRANK B. HIGHET, CASPAR W. HODGSON, GEORGE F. KLEINBERGER, WOLCOTT G. LANE, JOHN E. MADDEN, CHASE MELLEN, DAVID M. MINZESHEIMER, A. HENRY MOSLE, JAMES M. MOTLEY, W. P. NORTON, WILLIAM A. O'CONNOR, ARIO PARDEE, EUGENE C. POMEROY, RUEL W. POOR, WILLIAM B. POTTS, RICHARD C. RATHBORNE, G. THEODORE ROBERTS, CHARLES G. ROCKWOOD, WILLIAM H. ROCKWOOD, HERBERT A. SCHEFTEL, J. C. SLOANE, WILLIAM H. SOULS, GINO C. SPERANZA, HOWARD W. STARR, S. FREDERIC TAYLOR, J. H. TOWNSEND and FREDERICK K. VREELAND.

GROUND was broken March 20 for the construction of the new southeast wing facing Central Park, which will add four new exhibition floors to the Museum, the first to be devoted to the geography and life of the sea. Connected with the new wing will be built also a structure to serve as a whale hall, with a balcony and an arched roof through which all the light will enter and of such proportions that the length (174 feet) will be twenty feet greater than that of the wing itself and the width (120 feet) twice as great. The new wing and the whale hall are a part of the comprehensive plan which has resulted from years of careful study given to the subject by the president and trustees who constitute the committee on buildings and plans.

150

THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL

On the evening of April 5, the American Geographical Society and the American Museum of Natural History celebrated in the auditorium of the Museum the third anniversary of the reaching of the north pole by Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary, as well as the attainment of the south pole by Captain Roald Amundsen and the recent inauguration of the Crocker Land expedition. At the same time the Peary Arctic Club, which has for so many years given its loyalty and support to the discoverer of the north pole, publicly pronounced its appreciation of his work by presenting him with its medal of honor. This medal, a five-pointed star three and one-fourth inches in diameter, is of unusual interest because made of sections of the great Ahnighito meteorite brought by Admiral Peary from Cape York in 1897. The sections have been treated with acid to bring out the Widmanstätten lines which prove meteoric origin.

THE afternoon of April 10 was set apart by the Museum as a time to give honor to John Burroughs, naturalist and author. Invitations were issued for an informal reception, at which friends gave personal greeting to Mr. Burroughs on his seventy-fifth birthday and congratulations for his share in awakening America to an appreciation of her wild animal life.

THE subscriptions to the Crocker Land expedition have reached an amount that has justified the chartering of the five-hundred-ton steamship Diana of previous Arctic fame to carry the exploring party to Flagler Bay. Additional subscriptions are now needed that the expedition may be equipped for the most efficient work.

MR. ROY C. ANDREWS writes from Urusan, Korea, of his unusual success in the expedition for whales. His latest letter contains an enthusiastic account of all-night work in preparation of a skeleton of a hump-back 481 feet long. This specimen was chosen from three which had come in during the twenty-four hours, whereas only that number have been taken in all the fifteen other whaling stations during the entire year. Blue whales almost unknown in the region have been secured, as also a killer-whale of unusual size (27 ft. long). The growing scarcity of humpbacks indicates that the effects of shore whaling are making themselves felt.

AN unusually instructive new group has been installed in the hall of insect biology. It demonstrates the life history and habits of the cicada or seventeen-year locust, which is of especial interest because last year was a "locust year" in the vicinity of New York City. The long period of seventeen years is required for the underground development of a cicada brood, but there are many broods or sub-races and the history and distribution of each are on record, so that not only may the appearance of the insects above ground be at more frequent intervals than seventeen years but also each so-called "locust year" is accurately foretold. The cicada group will be described and illustrated in a later issue of the JOURNAL.

IN the auditorium of the Museum on the evening of March 28, Captain Frank E. Kleinschmidt, who has recently returned from a five months' cruise along the coasts of Siberia and Alaska, showed a series of moving. pictures which gave a realistic idea of polar bears, moose, mountain sheep, walrus, and seals.

THE ten-ton block of Grenville (pre-Cambrian) marble containing a glacial pot hole, which was secured in the town of Russell, St. Lawrence County, New York, has been placed in its permanent position at the east side of the archway in front of the Museum. The block was cut from the surrounding marble by the Gouverneur Marble Company and in January when the roads were frozen, was taken to the nearest railway station, loaded onto a flat car and brought to New York where a heavy six-horse truck transferred it to its new abiding place at the entrance to the Museum. The pot hole is two feet in diameter and four feet deep, carved by the swirling waters of some sub-glacial stream during the Great Ice Age, boulders, pebbles and gravel having been the grinding tools.

A LARGE slab showing glacial grooves has been mounted opposite the glacial pot hole under the archway in front of the Museum. The grooves were made during the Great Ice Age by the action of gravel and pebbles under the glacier that covered northeastern North America. The rock is of Devonian Age, came from Kelleys Island and was a gift to the Museum in 1909 by Dr. Charles E. Slocum of Toledo, Ohio.

THE COLOMBIAN EXPEDITION has sent to the Museum a collection of four hundred mammals and two thousand birds. These were collected chiefly on the Quindio trail of the Central Andes, and include specimens from the base tropical zone up to the limit of snow. The specimens from the paramo, that mountain zone lying between the upper limit of trees and the lower limit of snow (12,500 to 15,500 feet), contain many species not before represented in the Museum. The collection as a whole adds greatly to the value of preceding Colombian collections in the light thrown on distribution as affected by altitude and climatic conditions. The combined collections now give sufficient data on which to base a preliminary life-zone map of western Colombia. The expedition on February 14 abandoned Cali, which has been the base for the past year, and started for Popayan en route to the headwaters of the Magdalena Valley, which will serve as a base for future operations.

A CAST of the Gangetic dolphin has been added to the exhibition of marine mammals on the third floor. This dolphin of India has never been found far out at sea, but is restricted to rivers, making seasonal migrations from the deep waters where the rivers empty into the sea to the shallows far up among the hills. The cast is a replica of an original mount in the Natural History Museum at Calcutta.