NEW YORK, THURSDAY, DEC. 17, 1874. 



PULEX IRRITANS— FLORIDA.* 



FATIJ Florida, enchaiuine imd sunny land 

 Of astum silica and a eliuiure bland; 

 Low murmuring unrto n ■ ■■: ' n li rand, 

 Grey vines Uy gontb sepliyra fanned, 



Willi lovely scenes upon either hand, 

 Thy fleas are us many a* grains of sand. 



And fearfully made is this wonderful mile, 

 Fitted to eoniincr in foray and light, 

 Agile and tierce as demon or sprite, 

 S[, alin- a march in the darkness of ni B hi, 

 BrtWC as a soldier whose cause 19 tight, 

 Ah I valor is nothing; .seek safely in flightl 



Yes, a terrible Beast Is the Flori.lian flea, 

 A scandalous fellow indeed,^ he; 

 The bloodthirsty nwcal he biteth me! 

 Attaclceth we. a'nl affirightelh she, 

 Milking himself intolerably free, 

 In a manner really unpleasant to see. 



:Nor enreth he whom he may be on, 

 Bi«h hied prince, or low bred peon. 

 Crawling about, feeding perfectly free on 

 The purest Wood, in heraldic tree on, 

 And we venture to say that Foncc de Leon, 

 In his Florida life, had many a Ilea on! 



Theory {not Darwinian) of the origin of Pltlt® Trrilans:— 

 The Devil one morn, cross after a spree, 

 As blue and upset as a Devil could be, 

 Without any soda, and no eau <le (if. 

 Gathered his Imps, and announced to theirglee, 

 As n last, most infernal, triumphant idee. 

 The tint coal ill disguise, the Florida flea. 



Anticipated mult if the Vulex Imtatufidly realised — 

 A wicked .top does this small seed bear, 

 l-or ii makoih full many a good man swear, 

 And pious lip-, ever guarded with care, 

 Exclaim -'old Scratch I ' instead of a prayer, 

 Wlnle in many a way more foul than fair, 

 lias II jarred wiih corses the Florida air. 



Lemn. to l.e itiwetsed by Hn P<ihs Irritant upon, those who tee "good in 

 everything:"— 



'Tin a sml, sad moral, the rose and the thorn, 

 Thai hopes will widen-, iho' brightly horn. 

 Thai i" fairest hreasts heat hearts forlorn, 

 That I he dearest smii- may lie used in scorn, 

 Thai i lie brightest 1 md carressed by the sea. 

 Ha- its thorn and lis. banc in the Florida flea. 



• first member to impress its 

 ' observer, who may feel in- 

 ! construction. Sec Kucyclo- 



*The m.iiuli or Pntex Initana w 

 wonderful adaptability upon the ill 



l.-re.ojdiulh.- loll.,, me ... - ..;■■ 

 pedin Briitameu. Vol. IX. p. 6 Ui 



'The mouth is compwod of a hihinm, two almost membranaceous 

 mandibles, a pair of in ivillie. each furuisheil v.iih a palpus of from live 

 to -Ix articulations, and of a labium of foiueinarginaiious, heating two 

 quadri-articnlate palpi." L. W. L. 



finier 



§port U\ th$ 

 bottom. 



DV FAHKAN WYDE. 



For Forest, and Stream. 



lw>mippt 



THE extensive tract of lowland, forest and swamp, 

 known us (lie Mississippi "Bottom," is one of the 

 various regions in different quarters of tlic globe to vdiicli, 

 at one time and another, I have resorted in search of sport; 

 for there, at certain seasons of the year, an abundant, va- 

 riety of game is to lio found, The Bottom is not to be rec- 

 ommended to anybody as the right place to go, either in 

 the Summer or in the Fall, for ai these seasons the unfor- 

 tunate .sojourner is so sorely afflicted with the tropical heat, 

 the ague, and the mosquitoes and oilier blood-sucking in- 

 sects, as to make life seem well nigh intolerable, and death 

 a blessed relief. Bat with the first mouth of Winter the 

 pleasant, limes begin, and for two or three months there- 

 after the man who loves a genial .sky and bracing atmos- 

 phere, a rough labyrinthine territory to explore, in, work 

 for his guu in variety and abundance, and last, though not 

 least, very good living, 1 hut man will find in the Missis- 

 sippi Bottom all these attractions. It has been my lot to 

 shoot on both sides of the river; but I prefer the Eastern 

 shpre, although the mallard in Arkansas has always seemed 



to me to be a bird of bigger size and brighter plumage than 

 his kinsman of Mississippi Of course, that is nothing 

 more than a mere fancy. At a distance from any of the 

 towns, Hie country on the Arknnaas side is sparsely settled, 

 and my recollections of it are not the plestsnnlest. Many 

 a weary mile have 1 ridden in search of a cup of cold 

 water, and often have I been turned away from rude cabins 

 and log hills almost always with the same answer — a scowl, 

 and a slam of tin rickety door. But 1 have found an ex- 

 cuse for such rude treatment,, similar as it was to the jn- 

 hospitality Goldsmith's "Traveller" may have experienced, 

 — where ihe rnde Corinthian Jioor 

 Aeainst the houseless stranger sinus i lie door. 

 I say I have found an excuse for it, in the sickness prevail- 

 ing among the. people, for all seemed to be wan and yel- 

 low', worn out and shaking with the fever and ague. 



No 9UCh miserable experiences mingle in my recollec- 

 tions of Mississippi— only happy memories recur to me in 

 thinking of that rich State. It cannot with propriety be 

 called an Arcadia, but there is nothing in it to repel any 

 one somewhat used to roughing it, and not afraid to wet 

 his aukles. The temperature at this season of the year is 

 apt to be changeable, and the ice of the morning is often 

 melted at noon. A roaring log fire is very desirable at 

 night, especially in the airy frame houses of the Bottom, 

 raised olT the ground on trestles as they sometimes are, to 

 keep them free from the damp. Nevertheless, it is no dif- 

 ficult matter to put oneself in a perspiration tramping 

 through the woods in the day time. But what a country it 

 is for sport, when once the aquatic birds begin to fly South! 

 Here they find great scope of open water, and great score 

 of cornfields. The crops that are grown in the Bottom 

 are corn, cotlon, and sorghum — the corn averaging eight 

 feet high, and the cotton five feet— and the fields are now 

 no doubt white with cotton not yet gathered. But the cul- 

 tivated land is a mere patch in comparison with the extent 

 occupied by Ihe swamps, the woods, and the canebrakes. 

 Let me try to describe the features of the region. 



Immediately behind the levee, constructed to keep the 

 "Father of Waiers" within bounds, there is generally a 

 cypress swamp, a belt of cottonwood trees, or a canebrake 

 — the canes being so dense that a man on horseback has a 

 hard and painful job of it to get through their ranks, the 

 while they conduct a vigorous bastinado on every part, of 

 bis luckless body. After all, lie may fail to penetrate. 

 Behind these swamps and canebrakes lie the cultivated 

 fields and the tracts of "deadening," in which the tree 

 trunks lie rotting, or stand upright, black, charred, and 

 spectral, amid the tall rank grasses. How like ghosts these 

 black trunks look in the dusky twilight, as they loom up 

 from the vaporous ground and are dimly outlined against 

 the murky heavens! And what a hard time you would 

 have getting a "colored brudder" to puss in their awful 

 Vicinity after dark! In these fields of "deadening" the 

 deer lie ruminating, and dogs give tongue ere they have 

 been iu their covers many minutes. Deer are to be had 

 either by still hunting them, or by running them before the 

 dogs; but as the former method requires not only great ex- 

 perience, but also an accurate, knowledge of lite country, a 

 stranger will find the other the more productive and satis- 

 factory of the two. Although some of the planters in the 

 Bottom keep their own packs of bounds, yet it will be as 

 well for the sportsmau, if he go South with the intention of 

 running deer, to take along a couple of dogs. The people 

 are generally very ready to point out. Ihe deer passes, or 

 "stands," and I must acknowledge that wilh or without 

 dogs I never found myself in a difficulty, or came away 

 disappointed. However, it should be borne in mind that a 

 letter of introduction, though not absolutely requisite, will 

 be found a never failing "open sesame" to the hospitality 

 ami good offices of the people. 



Behind the swamps and canebrakes, behind fbo culti- 

 vated fields and the tracts of "deadening," stretches the 

 great forest, encroached upon at intervals by patches of 

 cleared land, and intersected by lengthy bayous and broad 

 lagoons. These are the "Winter haunts of aquatic birds, 



and this is a veritable sportsman's paradise, rivalling the 

 hypothetical hunting grounds of the red man. Here the 

 sportsman may bag ducks and geese innumerable, and 

 swims also, if he can stalk them. All kinds of water fowl 

 are as thick as blackberries in August, and may be shot in 

 many places where they are easily recovered at the cost of a 

 wetting; but when one has to thread his way among the 

 lagoons and bayous, a good retriever is an almost indis- 

 pensable assistant. Some of the lagoons are of great ex- 

 tent, and nre almost invariably provided with a skiff, a dug 

 Out, or a floating machine of some sort, the use of which 

 is generally to be had without any trouble by an applica- 

 tion to the neighboring planter, whose properly it is. Tw 

 my mind, duck shooting atloal is belter than duck shooting 

 on Urrafii'iiut. Pushing out from the little core where the 

 skiff has been moored, let the spoilsman paddle inwards 

 one of the clumps of reeds Which dot the surface of the 

 water here and there like little islands, and let huh run the 

 skiff close by its edge, or even a short way among the 

 reeds, so as to leave a fringe of them between his craft and 

 clear water. By Ihcse means he is placed fairly in con- 

 cealment. The birds in the neighborhood have of course 

 been disturbed by this ju&nenvrc, but before very long a 

 string of ducks flies overhead, anil when once the firing 

 has begun all the water fowl on the lake are set in commo- 

 tion by the noise, and one train after another sweeps past 

 within easy range and in rapid succession. Indeed, it very 

 soon becomes necessary to s6i about removing the dead and 

 wounded birds, aud though it is with considerable reluc- 

 tance that one proceeds to paddle to and fro to find the 

 birds he has hit, especially when the game is so plentiful 

 as to give even a breech loader little rest; yet the duty 

 should not be omitted or loo loug postponed, and no dis- 

 abled bird should be allowed to creep into sedges to linger 

 on in pain. When the birds have all been picked up, the 

 position should be changed to another chimp of reeds; for 

 ducks may soon become shy of the spot where their enemy 

 lies concealed when once it is discovered, and are certain 

 thereafter to give it a wide berth. Swan are also to be 

 found ill considerable numbers on these lagoons, but are 

 not easy to get within range of; yet I have seen them very 

 readily tumbled over by making a bullet ricochet along the 

 ice. The best sort of place to post oneself to shoot ducks 

 and geese in the morning and in the evening is among the 

 rows of cornstalks in some field with a pond in it, as many 

 fields iu Ihe Bottom have; or, at least adjacent to some 

 water, A man with an observant eye very soon discovers 

 the right spot, and is successful in his sport accordingly. 

 Flocks of wild turkeys are often to be met in the woods in 

 the Bottom, and, for my part, I prefer them to come across 

 my path, for 1 have not been very fortunate when I set out 

 to hunt, them with premeditation. Often I have invited 

 them to my neighborhood with dulcet notes blown upon 

 the shank bone of one of their own kind, but my invita- 

 tions have been iu vain. They either did not hear my call, 

 or, having heard, deigned not to give it the slightest heed, 

 a circumstance which, while it has caused me to abate 

 some of my pretensions to be a master of the sporting 

 craft, has unquestionably raised the turkey in my respect 

 as a bird possessed of some, small modicum of sense, all 

 reports lo Hie contrary notwithstanding, t have never had 

 an opportunity to entrap them by menus of a decoy bird, 

 but at dawn of day I have lain in wait for them at their 

 roost on Ihe persimmon tree, and have carried off most of 

 the brood. It is the early bird that gets the worm, and 

 this early method of circumventing the turkeys is the only 

 satisfactory method I have learned in my experience. 

 There is only one difficulty about it— the difficulty of find- 

 ing out their roosting place, but the roost found, one must 

 be a very indifferent sportsman if he do not find the tur- 

 keys also. If the visitor lo the Bottom can enlist the aid 

 of any of the. local Nimrods, he may probably vary the 

 monotony of his sport with an occasional bear hunt. The 

 bruin of the Bottom is far from being a formidable ani- 

 mal, and is rarely iu a humor to molest anything bigger 

 than a shote, or sucking pig; but when he has been smoked 

 out of his hollow tree, or teased out of the cozy quarters 



