nt replied, in effect, "Why import a foreign magpie
when we have in the West a species of our own quite as handsome, and
which could more easily be transplanted?"

The point seemed well taken. Now, I had seen much of the American
magpie in its wild home,--the Rocky Mountains, and the western border
of the Great Plains,--and I _thought_ I was acquainted with it. I knew
that a few complaints against it had been made, but they had seemed to
me very trivial. To me our magpie seemed to have a generally
unobjectionable record.

Fortunately for me, I wrote to Mr. Hershey, Assistant Curator of
Ornithology in the Colorado State Museum, for assistance in procuring
fifty birds, for transplantation to the State of New York. Mr. Hershey
replied that if I really wished the birds for acclimatization, he would
gladly procure them for me; but he said that in the _thickly-settled
farming communities_ of Colorado, the magpie is now regarded as a pest.
It devours the eggs and nestlings of other wild birds, and not only
that, it destroys so many eggs of domestic poultry that many farmers are
compelled to keep their egg-laying hens shut up in wire enclosures!

Now, this condition happened to be entirely unknown to me, because I
never had seen the American magpie in action _in a farming community_!
Of course the proposed experiment was promptly abandoned, but it is
embarrassing to think how near I came to making a mistake. Even if the
magpies had been transplanted and had become a nuisance in this state,
they could easily have been exterminated by shooting; but the memory of
the error would have been humiliating to the party of the first part.

THE OLD WORLD PHEASANTS IN AMERICA.--In 1881 the first Chinese
ring-necked pheasants were introduced into the United States, twelve
miles below Portland, Oregon; twelve males and three females. The next
year, Oregon gave pheasants a five-year close season. A little later,
the golden and silver pheasants of China were introduced, and all three
species throve mightily, on the Pacific Coast, in Oregon, Washington and
western British Columbia. In 1900, the sportsmen of Portland and
Vancouver were shooting cock golden pheasants according to law.

The success of Chinese and Japanese pheasants on the Pacific Coast soon
led to experiments in the more progressive states, at state expense.
State pheasant hatcheries have been established in Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, Mis