Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/533

Rh A Curious Finger Print. How Did the Letters Get There?

HE photograph on the right shows a finger print taken of a recruit to the National Guards, mustered into the Federal service. Part of the examination of each recruit consists in the making of an impression of the ball of the fore finger on a special blank prepared plentiful to others where, so far for the purpose. The recruit signs the blank and affixes his seal in the form of a finger print.

When the attention of James Dechene, the recruit in question, was called to the impression which he had made, he was as much surprised as the examiners at the raised letters shown. His occupation had been that of a tool dresser for oil well operators, before he enlisted. The tools which he handled were large, and the end which he would naturally hold was always cool or cold, so that there seemed no explanation as to how he received the lettering on his finger nor as to what the word was of which they formed a part. He could not remember having received any burn or handling any heated stamped metal.

Transplanting Wild Animals to Stock the National Parks

THE United States is carrying on a very interesting work in exchanging the wild animals of one region for those of others—transplanting elk and deer and Rocky Mountain bighorns from regions in known, they have not lived. Some of the animals are being shipped long distances.

Wvoming is full of elk; the herds in the Jackson Hole country are the largest of any of North American wild animals since the days of the countless buffalos. But the big Yosemite National Park of California, with its three quarters of a million acres, until recently had no elk, or at least only a very few scattered specimens. But the elk shipped in from Wyoming have become very much at home and are breeding and multiplying rapidly, adding to the charm and picturesqueness of this popular national playground. The photograph shows a carload of yearling elk shipped by the Government from Jackson Hole down into Colorado.