In Alaska, our ever thoughtful and forehanded Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture has by legal proclamation at one stroke converted the whole of the Kenai Peninsula into a magnificent moose preserve.  This will save Alces gigas, the giant moose of Alaska, from extermination; and New Brunswick and the Minnesota preserve will save Alces americanus.  But in the northwest, we can positively depend upon it that eventually, wherever the moose may legally be hunted and killed by any Tom, Dick or Harry who can afford a twenty-dollar rifle and a license, the moose surely will disappear.

The moose laws of Alaska are strict—­toward sportsmen, only!  The miners, “prospectors” and Indians may kill as many as they please, “for food purposes.”  This opens the door to a great amount of unfair slaughter.  Any coffee-cooler can put a pan and pick into his hunting outfit, go out after moose, and call himself a “prospector.”

I grant that the real prospector, who is looking for ores and minerals with an intelligent eye, and knows what he is doing, should have special privileges on game, to keep him from starving.  The settled miner, however, is in a different class.  No miner should ask the privilege of living on wild game, any more than should the farmer, the steamboat man, the railway laborer, or the soldier in an army post.  The Indian should have no game advantages whatever over a white man.  He does not own the game of a region, any more than he owns its minerals or its water-power.  He should obey the general game laws, just the same as white men.  In Africa, as far as possible, the white population wisely prohibits the natives from owning or using firearms, and a good idea it is, too.  I am glad there is one continent on which the “I’m-just-as-good-as-you-are” nightmare does not curse the whole land.

THE MUSK-OX.—­Now that the north pole has been safely discovered, and the south pole has become the storm-center of polar exploration, the harried musk-ox herds of the farthest north are having a rest.  I think that most American sportsmen have learned that as a sporting proposition there is about as much fun and glory in harrying a musk-ox herd with dogs, and picking off the members of it at “parade rest,” as there is in shooting range cattle in a round-up.  The habits of the animal positively eliminate the real essence of sport,—­difficulty and danger.  When a musk-ox band is chased by dogs, or by wolves, the full-grown members of it, bulls and cows alike, instantly form a close circle around the calves, facing outward shoulder to shoulder, and stand at bay.  Without the aid of a gunner and a rifle, such a formation is invincible!  Mr. Paul Rainey’s moving pictures tell a wonderful story of animal intelligence, bravery and devotion to the parental instinct.