Wild Beasts

"One hundred African lions, 40 Bengal tigers, 20 leopards, 100 pumas, 150 black bears, 1,000 buffaloes, 500 elk, 500 deer, 400 wild boars, 400 peccaries, 40,000 ringneck pheasants, 10,-000 Hungarian partridges, 5,000 bobwhite quail, 400 wild turkeys, 400 wild peafowl, 400 wild guinea-fowl"--it was not the handbill of a bigger and better circus nor a page from Livy, but the proposed stock list of the Pacific Coast Sportsmen's Club, Inc., of Los Angeles. A fortnight ago, a director of that corporation declared it would fence off 50,000 Californian acres--20,000 for carnivorous creatures, 30,000 for milder fauna--and save U. S. sportsmen the trouble of trekking over the globe for exotic prey. There would be "annual buffalo hunts"; one would bag one's lion or leopard "between a game of tennis and a round of golf." Further details of so imaginative a venture were lacking.

Last week, the Izaak Walton League announced itself to be desirous of money offerings from U. S. sportsmen to make up a Christmas present to the elk herds of the Jackson Hole Region, Wyo. The present would be in the form of lands adjacent to Winter Elk Refuge and of an emergency hay fund, to supplement Federal and State appropriations in starvation winters. Said Dr. E. W. Nelson, Chief of the U. S. Biological Survey: "And a real present in the spirit of the Christmas season it will be!"