October, 1892.] 



AND OOLOGIST. 



151 



The Partridge is not only fond of 

 the fruit of the winter-green, but enjoys 

 the tender leaves of this plant ; while 

 towards spring, when the berries are 

 scarcer, he indulges in quantities of buds 

 of the alder and white birch. 



The few sources of the food supply here 

 mentioned is very far from being complete, 

 but it shows that Nature has no lack of 

 material, and can get up quite a feast for 

 our feathered friends' Christmas dinner. 



Harry Gordon White. 



Gloucester. 



In Good Greenwood. — I. 



When I was a youngster I pi'obably 

 made more different kinds of a fool of 

 myself than most youngsters do ; and 

 when I didn't do it myself I let somebody 

 else do it for me. The following story 

 shows how I did it once, and the sequel 

 explains fully why I do not give dates and 

 locality. 



I was trailing a deer. It was getting 

 late in the day and he seemed to be feed- 

 ing along, so I sneaked as quietly as I 

 knew how, and I knew how to do that 

 part of the business better than most boys, 

 old or young. It was pine sapling growth, 

 with low spots of grass and scrubby bush, 

 and the buck backed and filled through 

 these places and bothered me a good deal. 

 I was passing round one of these feeding 

 spots when I heard some Jay Birds scold- 

 ing a good bit of a ways off and concluded 

 that the deer must have made a jump or 

 two and agitated their feelings ; so I made 

 a break toward the noise, and sure enough 

 there was his trail again among some 

 higher saplings and making toward a big 

 bay gull beyond. Here were a lot of hog 

 tracks, too, scattered in confusion and all 

 running away from a place where some- 

 body seemed to have been raking pine 

 trash. I would have passed it right by if 

 the track I was on had not gone directly 

 through it and I saw it had been raked 



over since the deer passed. As I puzzled 

 here a minute I noticed flies swarming 

 about the heap of pine trash and at the 

 same instant my eye fell upon some panther 

 tracks. That settled it. The buck was 

 free now ; for under the heap of trash was 

 a fresh killed hog and I knew the panther 

 could not be far oft". A wide circuit round 

 the spot showed me where he had gone off 

 into the same bay gull the deer had en- 

 tered, so I chose a favorable spot to lee- 

 ward of the dead hog and sat down at the 

 foot of a small tree with a bush in front of 

 me and both barrels cocked. I had a few 

 serious thoughts over the situation at first, 

 but as the hours wore on I began to lose 

 all ideas of any accident and was only 

 afraid that the game might put off his 

 coming till it was too dark to see to shoot. 

 It was only a few minutes before sundown 

 and I was scratching little squams and 

 coons in the sand with a stick when I 

 heard a noise, and there was the old 

 panther pawing the trash from her buried 

 prey and two young cubs boxing with 

 each other like a pair of kittens — kittens 

 about a yard long. Now these same kit- 

 tens complicated the affair a bit, for I 

 wanted them, too, if possible, and had only 

 one shot for both. The old lady offered a 

 tempting side shot but the children were 

 eight or ten feet apart. I waited several 

 minutes for a favorable change of position, 

 and at last they grappled and rolled over 

 and over in a close embrace, but the mother 

 was back to me. As she raised her head 

 the young ones parted. Then she turned 

 her side again and the two joined in 

 another tussle, so I gave her the right bar- 

 rel just back of the bone of the fore leg 

 and she went up in the air screeching like 

 forty devils. Then I found out mistake 

 number one ; the smoke hid the cubs. 

 Mistake number two was in not giving 

 the old one the second barrel, which I had 

 ample chance to do after they had left. 

 So I had to camp on the trail. In the 



