Scorecard

CON EDSKI VANQUISHED

The endless battles between the outdoors-man and those who would destroy his dwindling supply of lakes and streams in the sometimes spurious name of industrial progress do not always end happily for him. But last week one of them did.

Just as striped bass spawning grounds in the Hudson River are being threatened by a proposed power plant, so the spawning beds of the Volga River sturgeon, and thereby almost the entire world supply of black caviar, have been threatened recently by Soviet plans to build a hydroelectric station near the mouth of the Volga. The station would reduce the spawning area from 1,111 acres to 25.

Anticipating attack, the powermen's public relations man devised a slogan: "One cannot enter communism without power, but will be admitted without black caviar."

Dig they must, they said.

It sounded like great stuff on Madisonskaya Ulitza but it did not work. Into the fray came, of all publications, the U.S.S.R.'s Literary Gazette, with an article signed by eight top authors, some of them biologists. The theme: conserve the sturgeon.

Last week the Literary Gazette reported proudly that the sturgeon was saved. The Central Committee of the Communist Party and the Council of Ministers had vetoed the power plant proposal.

Now if, in this country, one or another of our highbrow literary magazines would only take up the matter of the Hudson's striped bass, it could be a long stride forward. We suggest The Hudson Review.

THE HIGHER THE SLOWER

With the help of University of New Mexico track stars and an old compression chamber he wangled from the Navy, William A. Bynum, a young physical education professor, is conducting tests to find out how Olympic athletes will perform in 7,800-foot Mexico City.