Letters: Dec. 29, 1930

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Herewith is Subscriber Blake's photograph. Governor-elect Harry Woodring. first Democrat to win the governorship in Kansas since 1922, was born in Elk City in 1889. Only boy in a family of several girls, he early learned crocheting, a feat much stressed by his political opponents in the recent campaign. However, his pop corn venture, his banking success, his Tank Corps experience proved him man enough to be elected State head of the American Legion. Thus both he and Republican Frank ("Chief") Haucke, another onetime State Legion head, gained local prominence. Gubernatorial Candi date Woodring defeated Candidate Haucke Nov. 4 by the close margin of 319 votes, following a campaign in which most of the color was interpolated by the Independent Candidate, Dr. John Richard ("Goat-Gland") Brinkley (TIME, Dec. 1). —ED.

"Stool Pigeon"

Sirs:

In The Story of San Michele, a current "best seller," (TIME, Nov. 24) Dr. Axel Munthe describes with righteous indignation the practice in Italy some years ago of putting out the eyes of song birds, which were then used as decoys for the capture of other birds.

I find a parallel for this cruelty, and at the same time the origin of our name "stool pigeon," in The Passenger Pigeon in Pennsylvania, a book compiled some years ago by Col. Henry W. Shoemaker, at present U. S. minister to Bulgaria.

He tells us that in netting passenger pigeons the trappers would blind the decoy birds or "stool pigeons" by sewing their eyes shut with a fine needle and silk thread. The decoys were then fastened by their feet to the stool, which has a circular piece of board six or eight inches in diameter, fastened to a stick four or five feet long, the opposite end of which was placed in a slot in a stake, thus forming a hinge so that the bird could be raised and lowered by pulling a string running to the fowler's hiding place.

Col. Shoemaker says: "By raising the bird and dropping it suddenly it Avas made to flutter as it was going down; and the flying birds, seeing it, would begin to circle around, coming nearer and nearer, until they finally lit on the bed around the stool pigeon. Then the net would be sprung. At once there would be a mass of fluttering, struggling pigeons, with heads protruding through the meshes. The fowler and his assistants would rush to the massacre, which was the crushing of the head of each individual bird between the thumb and forefinger."

MAX HENRICI

Coraopolis, Pa.

Wheat's Life-Span

Sirs:

In the Dec. 8 issue of TIME appeared a statement in reference to the Canadian wheat situation that when the Royal Tomb of Tutankhamen was opened in 1922 some wheat grains and other foods were found; that in 1926 a friend sent a few of the grains to Farmer Sydney Cunningham of Alberta, who in turn sent grains produced by his original "King Tut wheat" to Farmer Charles Borry, who grew new wheat from a crop produced by the original old grains.