Animals: More Game Birds

Harry Bartow Hawes, the chubby Senator from Missouri whose pretty daughter got married last week (see p. 42), wrote a letter last week to Joseph Palmer Knapp of Crowell Publishing Co. In it he stated that he had decided not to be president of Mr. Knapp’s newly formed foundation, More Game Birds in America, Inc. Last September he had accepted the position, had agreed to give up his political career, spend his energy increasing U. S. game birds at a salary of $35,000 per year (TIME, Sept. 15). At that time he had understood that the organization was to be national in scope, was to have its headquarters in Washington. “Your subsequent determination,” he wrote in his resignation, “to maintain the headquarters and executive offices in New York, contrary to our agreement and over my vigorous objection and your selection of all officers from New York City . . . robs the foundation of its proposed national character and limits its activity. … I believe my efforts will be more effective in a broader field.”

The More Game Birds in America foundation opened its offices fortnight ago in Manhattan. Unlike most other bird societies, its aim is propagation of birds rather than conservation. The members believe that U. S. game birds are being destroyed by “vermin” and starved, not shot to death. Land drainage, which has dried up the marshy places where ducks feed, is partly responsible for the fact that there are only about one and three-quarters wild ducks left for every U. S. citizen. Inspired by the British system whereby game birds have increased 900% since the War, Mr. Knapp has formulated a plan for farmers to raise wild fowl, use their spare lands for feeding places, collect from hunters who come to their farms to shoot. Each bird will be banded, may be marketed. The selling of hunted wild fowl is now prohibited by all the States.

To test his theory, Mr. Knapp tried raising ducks himself on Currituck Sound, N. C. He successfully hatched out 54% of his eggs. Many a game specialist has experimented along the same lines. Bobwhite quail have been bred for ten years by William B. Coleman, in Virginia. Eugene M. Simpson, superintendent of Oregon State Game Farm is now trying to rear grey partridges on a large scale. This week the commission meets in Manhattan to elect another president in Senator Hawes’s place. Among founders of the More Game Birds in America foundation are Publisher Thomas Hambley Beck of Collier’s Weekly; Col. Arthur Foran, Comptroller of the Port of the City of New York.