282 TI-IE NATURAI.IST OF THE ST. CROIX 



Letters From Mr. Boardman to Charles Ilallock 



Calais, Maine, Marclx 5, 1899. 

 Dear IIaixock : 



I received your card, also a copj' of The Osprey some days 

 ago. T had engaged the pliotograph man to take my pretty 

 picture for you, but upon the day it stormed, and I did not go, 

 and my daughter said she must go with me, I suppose to fix me, 

 so I miglit look young as you used to see me. My daughter has 

 been sick with grippe ever since, l)ut I hope to be able to send 

 along the photograph soon. 



The Osprey paper is quite a good thitig ; T have taken it ever 

 since it was started in California under anotlier name. Coues used 

 to write some good things for it and now is head manager. Please 

 accept my thanks for your compliments in the last Forest and 

 Stream . 



There was a paper of a week or two before by Mr. A. E. 

 Brown of New York asking for correspondence about young bears 

 and I wTOte my experience with them to Forest and Stream. 

 They are a queer lot. 



At Lake Jessup, in Florida, I made the acquaintance of Capt. 

 Brock, a great hunter, who told me of bears in Florida as large as 

 any north, but the skins I used to see were all of a small breed of 

 bears. I wrote Prof. Baird about the large bears, as I w^as told 

 by Mr. Brock, and he wanted a skin. Brock also told me of 

 wolves in Florida as black as any bear and also but rarely a black 

 Lynx rufus. I got good skins of the black wolf, and a poor skin 

 of a l)lack Lynx rufus, but of good color, only the feet were cut off. 

 I sent them to the Smithsonian for their skin collection. From 

 my southern friends I leain that the cold snap destroyed many 

 birds even in Middle Florida, besides every flower and most 

 everj' green leaf. Here we have Imd quite a fine winter, not as 

 much suow^ as usual. The great ))llzzard did not get up to us. We 

 had quite a gale and about six inches of snow, but the weather 

 was not as cold as in Washington, D. C. There have been only 

 nine daj'S this winter when the steamboats could not get up to 

 the upper part of the city to delivei- Boston freight. The sleigh- 

 ing now is about gone. Sincerely j^ours, 



Geo. a. Boardman. 



