126 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Maeoh 17, 1881. 



That is what I call an "inaccuracy." He asks me so many 

 questions that I cannot impose upon your good nature by 

 taking up space enough to answer all of them ; but some I 

 ■will reply to as briefly as possible. My object in going to 

 New Brunswick was the hope of being able to combine fish- 

 ing and shooting. I returned there because I liked the coun- 

 try and the men that we hired as guides and had sport that 

 sa'tisfled me, although it has been by uo means phenomenal. 

 AYith regard to the expense, I do not care to say anything 

 more than that it has been by uo means a cheap trip, judged 

 by Sir. Pay's standard. 1 have not and do not propose to 

 publish an account of our trips, because, although they have 

 resulted in a great deal of recreation and recuperatiou, they 

 have been very uneventful and would not interest anybody ; 

 and I do not, oia the strength of a few weeks' annually Spent 

 in the woods, feel competent to give advice to anybody ou 

 any subject, — always excepting the right; of warning the 

 public against evident misstatements and' exaggerations. 



Having said this much it will be no more than right for 

 me, however, to make the following statements as to what 

 my knowledge of the country has (ought me with regard to 

 its advantages as a resort, for parties seeking sport, A_ party 

 going at the right season, to the proper places, and having 

 proper guides, will be pretty sure to get very good trout 

 fishing, much more so than' in the Ariirondacks or in the 

 Slate of Maine. Guideaand canoes are cheaper, and the cost 

 of board at the taverns and inns is less, although the accom- 

 modations, outside of the large towns, are very poor. At 

 the proper season very line snipe shooting can be had, also 

 plover, curlew, dough birds, yellow legs, etc Ducks and 

 geese are abundant, hut not easy to gel, at, Partridges near 

 the settlements are not very plenty; six is the largest bag I 

 ever made. As tp taking down dogs I must persist in laying- 

 more stress on mv own experience, than on the fact that, 

 somebody told Mr. Fay that be better bring a "bird" dog 

 with him. I ruined a very promising young setter, who Was 

 nicely broken and only needed experience, by taking her up 

 to the l'ii. brig ntr region some yearn ago, where the habits of 

 the ruffed grouse are, or were, exactly the same as in the 

 Provinces. 



Two years ago I took up to New Brunswick a Gordon 

 setter that I thought a great deal of, and found him abso- 

 lutely useless for partridges. He was very useful simply as 



i ; i,i irvcr, but few setters or pointers could stand the ex- 

 posure of heing used to retrieve ducks and geese during the 

 later pari of September, to saynothing of the chance of spoil- 

 ing the delicacy of their mouths in tackling so powerful a 

 bird as a broken-winged black duck or wild gander. There- 

 fore. 1 repeat what I said before, that Ihebest dog to take is a 

 good retriever, in , water spaniel, Chesapeake Bay dog, or 

 the regular English curley coated retriever, if such a one 

 can he got. If air. Fay has not shot enough over dogs to 

 be able to understand thai because a setter or pointer is of 

 use in western quail ami grouse shooting by findingthe game, 

 pointing it and standing Staunchly on point until the sports- 

 man comes up, and that it does not follow necessarily that the 

 same dog will be of use in partridge shooting, where the birds 

 are so tame that they will simply walk away from the dog, and 

 will not get up unless the dog rushes in on them, we simply 

 cannot artrue on the subject, 



The chances of getting a caribou or moose would, 1 think, 

 bo infinitesimal except after the snow fall in the autumn. 

 Bears are very numerous, but I never knew of a sportsman 

 BftWngone. ' Lastly, the fact that a license of §20.00 in New 

 Brunswick and |BOJ)0 in Nova Scotia, is exacted from non- 

 residents should not be forgotten. 



With regard to the information asked about Gaspe Point, 

 as I s&ppose he refers to the salmon rivers that empty into 

 the Gaspe basin, i. e., the Dartmouth Fork and St. Johns, I 

 can tell him that if he wets aline in either of them he will 

 have to do one of three things, either get, an invitation to fish 

 there from one of the lessees, or hire the right to fish there 

 from the lessee, or poach ; and in case he does the latter, I 

 can guarantee him that in spite of his previous experiences, 

 questions will be asked. 



Ab I do not, however, imagine that he purposes to hsh 

 without the proper credential^ I suppose that he is lucky 

 enough to have one of the other resources to fall back upon, 

 and 1 congratulate him most sincerely on his good fortune, 

 and wish him all possible success. As far as his advice not 

 to go for a person goes I should be willing to leave it to any 

 unbiased reader as to which of us two has been gone for 

 most savagely. I accept, however, my castigation in good 

 part and should be most happy to shake hands, only if I ever 

 should have that pleasure, I should re-iterate the only point 

 that 1 have been trying to prove, and that is, that neither 

 good salmon fishing nor good shooting are to be got in a few 

 days and at a small expense in New Brunswick, nor tor that 

 matter in any other place, that is known to Mao Mao. 



OCTOBER REVERIES. 



YepeaeenuiiOls! , , 



Ye clinging pastures 'neatn the rocky slopes, 



Where dienlilllig kllie. 'Will liaillil'Jf fOX ,111(1 grOUSS, 



Feel ran W 





nvtliia. 



hand and roam 



The ruggea 



Their fellow 







nvyirig Dot 

 rlades below 1 



. ■ 







iiBle woods! 



WJthluUiyi 







. It rod 



iyoutl ltd 1 







:• .l.e— . 



Which, wn 





Its downward night, 



Kissed lovd 







The spring 

 Which, mo 





earned of at its base, 



Ton roughl 













mat when 



Hum-: h:.pli 





fflW 



IV ilHOliel 





lthkcen report 



Tneiflnu-o 







Thence!. .11 







And throbl 



intr pulses heat it 





To lar-ntf 



,.Wle..t-,lie'..: 1 vm 



r hounds. 



The stern 1 



,!.•,,!. ll..;i.:Ol-lj:, 



Dane mood, 



So lately w 

 Ujcoamlci 





i spouse, 

 the bright 







■gettuwess. 



And yet no 



i all forgot I sun 



oft my thoughts 



In pleasan 





(Ji-.iv branches lace 



Their netw 



1 . ■ 





k secluded pool 

 overhead the hawk 

 t wtug, 

 om stubbles brown, 



Fill np the 





the hour. 





all 1 catch thy ru 





Thy mellow golden tiuu 0, Jv 



atine talr, 



And view nice at thy loveliest, i IcnVy cue! 

 in the bright garb ol thy October nays 



WsmvoaTU Wjujbwobth. 



SNAKES— FACTS AND FABLE. 



SIR JOSEPH BANKS was the first to explain the snake's 

 mode of progression. Placing his hand under a mov- 

 ing coluber he felt the ribs come forward like the feet of 

 the caterpillar The ribs are so many pairs of levers, by 

 means of which the serpent, moves. The vertebra; forming 

 the spinal column are joined together by ball and socket 

 articulation, thus securing the greatest possible freedom of 

 motion. 



To each of these vertebra are attached a pair of ribs ; the 

 small ends of these ribs are not united to a sternum, but to a 

 siugle scale ou the abdomen by means of a slender cartilage 

 and a set of muscles. The ribs are the snake's legs and act in 

 progressive order like the legs of the centipede, each pair bring- 

 ing forward the scale to which it is attached. Therefore, the 

 snake is helpless if placed on glass or polished metal. 



The snake is without an eyelid, hut his optics are perfectly 

 protected by a hard, transparent membrane over each. In 

 spring when just ready to shed his skin he is almost bliud, as 

 then he has two scales over his eye. If we examine the head 

 we will see that the bones of which it is composed instead of 

 being firmly locked together as in mammalia are separate, 

 and retained in their places only by the skin and ligaments. 

 The lower jaw is formed of two bones united in front by a 

 lax membrane. 



It is this peculiar formation of cranium and jaw that gives 

 to the mouth of the serpent such marvelous power of expan- 

 sion. All snakes when shedding their skins crawl out of the 

 front part first, quitting the tail last. 



Venomous serpents have two effective fangs which are re- 

 placed, so that if the perfect ones are removed or broken 

 others are soon ready to supply their place. In all arboreal 

 snakes the tail is very long and highly prehensile. All spe- 

 cies of venomous snakes common to the U. S. have short 

 tails and are none of them climbers. 



Audubon pictures the rattlesnake chasing a squirrel up a 

 tree, and Waterton says that he climbs trees by muscular 

 contraction, which no snake can do. All arboreal suakes 

 ascend the trunks of trees in a stra ; gbt line, and not, by wind- 

 ing around them. The rattlesnake cannot climb a tree at all, 

 yet he gets all the squirrels he requires by the power of his 

 evil eye. 



A friend of mine some years ago captured a very large 

 rattler and put him in a box j wheu he went to look at him 

 next morning he found him dead, with a gray squirrel fast 

 against his fangs. Wilson describes in glowing language 

 a wonderful battle that he witnessed between a mocking- 

 bird and black snake, in which the bird was an easy victor, 

 leaving her enemy mangled and dead at, the roots of the mag- 

 nolia tree in which were her " babes in the nest." Now you 

 can whip a rattlesnake into ribbons with a twig, but the 

 black snake (Jiascadion <vnxtrict<>r) dies hard. Frank 

 Buckland says that the proper way to kill a snake is to leave 

 his head alone and strike him on the tail. I found last sum- 

 mer in a meadow, some weeks i.fter the harvest, a large 

 black snake that, had lost almost half its length by the scythe 

 of the mowing machine. He was alive and active. His 

 tail had been struck, but death was not instantaneous, as 

 Mr. Buckland promised it would be. A mocking bird would 

 be utterly incapable of injnring a black snake in any way 

 1 have heard from rnany a rustic marvelous stories of the 

 deadly hoop snake. He has, they say, near the extremity of 

 his taif| and at right angles with it, a long, sharp spur like 

 that of a cock, but hollow and filled with deadly venom 

 Taking his tail in his mouth, like the great Midgard serpent, 

 he rolls with wonderful rapidity down the slopes of hills, 

 and if any animal is in his path ho strikes it with his 

 poisoned weapon and death is instantaneous. If by chance 

 he strikes a tree the leaves wither and it, is dead within an 

 hour [ I have conversed with different people who claimed 

 to have seen and killed many of these snakes, and yet, such 

 animated hoops have never rolled over any part of the good 

 green earth. While hunting in the Alleghames last autumn, 

 a gentleman told me tin; following snake story: "Yes," he 

 replied in answer to a query from me, " there are plenty of 

 rattlers here. I once found a den of them on the river bank 

 among the rocks at the foot of the cliff yonder. I could not 

 get to them, you see; so I waited until the first September 

 frost, and then threw over to them a quantity of straw. I 

 knew that as the nights grew chilly they would creep into 

 this to keep warm. So after a while I went out to the cliff 

 and threw over into the straw a blaziug pine torch, and soon 

 the whole was wrapped in flames. Such rattling and hissing 

 I never heard before. Hundreds of them were in there, and 

 most all were burned up, and the oil ran down the rocks and 

 floated off upon the water. Some emerged half roasted 

 from the flames, with head and tail erect, wild with pain, 

 and fought each other till they died." 



All snakes are excellent swimmers, and can cross wide and 

 rapid streams. Many serpents will hybernate together, fre- 

 quently of different species, rolled up in balls and hid away 

 hi caves and cliffs. Mr. Buckland says that there is a singu- 

 lar snake in South Africa whose principal food is the eggs of 

 birds. His teeth are in his stomach, otherwise, he states, the 

 contents of the eggs would be wasted, as the shells would he 

 broken against his teeth were they placed in his mouth as in 

 other snakes. I once saw a wood-cutter sever a large black 

 snake with his axe, and out there tumbled a half dozen or 

 more of the eggs of the ruffed grouse, not one of which was 

 broken. They appeared to be fresh, and had evidently just 

 been swallowed. It is believed by many that this black 

 rascal kills the. rattlesnake, crushing him in his voluminous 

 folds, bites his head off, and s a allows him 1 No snake can 

 bite off another's head. They can neither masticate nor 

 separate their food ; they must bolt it entire or not at, all. 

 Sportsmen should remember that our game birds have no 

 deadlier foe than the black snake, and should show him as 

 little mercy as he has for the young of the quail or the 

 ruffed grouse. 



The Roman historians relate that, the army of Regulus, 

 while invading Africa, was assaulted by a monstrous serpent 

 which they finally succeeded in killing with their military 

 engines. The skin, measuring 120 feet in length, was sent to 

 Rome and preserved as a trophy in a temple until the Nu- 

 mantine war. 



Diodorus Siculus mentions a serpent which was captured, 

 not without loss of human life, in Egypt, and exhibited in 

 Alexandria. He gives the length as 45 feet. Suetonius 

 speaks of one exhibited in front, of the Comitium at Home 

 measuring 75 feet in length. No serpent has ever been seen 

 in modern times that would measure 40 feet. The skin of a 

 snake may be stretched about one-fourth longer than was the 

 living animal 



The loss of human life by the fangs of venomous serpents 

 is frightful. There were killed in British India alone, by 

 snakes during the three years ending 1809, no less than 

 25,664 persons ! The most deadly of all serpents are the 

 cobra-di-capello, of the < irient, and the bush-master, of 

 South America. The fangs of the latter are said to 

 be quite three inches long, and the wounds inflicted 

 by them terrible. Fortunately for us serpents have 

 many enemies, chief of which is man. Swine feed upon 

 them, and they are cut to pieces by the feet of deer. Birds, 

 also, destroy immense numbers; the hawk, eagle, and no- 

 tably the adjutant are famous snake killers. Then they are 

 cannibals, too, and destroy each other. The keeper of the 

 reptile house at the London Zoo saw his two pythons safe at 

 night, and in the morning there was hut one. There was 

 only a foot's difference in their length, and yet the larger had 

 swallowed his mate. 



. The serpent figures in the folk-lore of every nation. The 

 old sea rovers of the North believed that there was a beauti- 

 ful blue snake that wore, on its head a crown of Ore finest, 

 gold, bedecked with the fairest gems. He was king of the 

 snakes, and the followers of Odin searched for him far and 

 near in mauy lands, for whoever wore his glittering crown 

 could not be hurt by stroke of sword or thrust of spear. 



Bridgeport, W. Va. Xil Torbis. 



The snake with teeth in its stomach to which our corres- 

 pondent refers is a very interesting reptile, and deserves, 

 perhaps, a description a little fuller than he gives it In this 

 genus, Deirodon, the teeth are extremely minute, and are very 

 early lost, and the animal goes through life without any 

 teeth in the true acceptation of the term. It is, however, 

 provided with an apparatus which fulfils one office of teeth, 

 although not situated in the jaws. The hypapohyses or ven- 

 tral spines of the posterior, seven or eight cervical vertebras, 

 enter the oesophagus or gullet through the upper walls of that 

 organ, and being sharp pointed and tipped with cement, they 

 must necessarily cut anything that passes by and rubs against 

 them. The serpent swallows the egg without breaking it, 

 and in its passage down the throat it is sawed in two 

 lengthwise by these spines and the contents thus liberated. 



It is probable, however, that the gastric juices of most ser- 

 pents are sufficiently powerful to dissolve the shell of an 

 ordinary egg unaided by any mechanical means. 



WHISTLING TO THE SQUIRRELS AND BIRDS. 



ONE afternoon last summer when out looking for game 1 

 sat down on a pile of rails to rest. Pretty soon I dis- 

 covered to an oak tree, some tw T enty yards away, a red squir- 

 rel stretched at full length on a limb taking a sun bath. 



Instead of raising my rifle and sending a ball through the 

 little fellow (it's a mighty mean "sportsman" that endeavors 

 to kill all he sees) I decided to give him a little pleasure if I 

 could, so I commenced to whistle the air of that once popular 

 ditty, "I love thee, sweet Norah O'Neil." 



In a twinkling the squirrel was up ou his hind logs, his tail 

 over his back, his head cocked to one side, listening to me; a 

 moment of irresolution and then he scampered down the 

 trunk of the tree to the ground and started toward me ; he 

 came a few yards, stopped, set up on end aud listened again. 

 I was careful not to move, and kept on whistling; after 

 wailing a moment the little beauty came on, jumped up on 

 the pile of rails, ran along within four feet of me, halted, 

 went up on end again, made an umbrella of his tail, tipped 

 his head to one side, looked at me .vith all the gravity of a 

 justice of the peace at his first trial, and yet. if ever a 

 creature's eves beamed with pleasure his did. 



1 did not move, but after a little I abruptly changed the 

 tune to the " Sweet Bye and Bye." Chut ! Why, with the 

 first note of the different tune away went the squirrel. I 

 did not move, only as I shook with suppressed laughter, and 

 as well as I could I kept on whistling. In a minute or two 

 back came the squirrel, going through all the cunning 

 manoeuvres of his first approach, and once more took a seat 

 beside me on the rai s. I watched him, and actually thought 

 he was trying to pucker up Ins mouth aud whistle. 



Once again I changed the tune, this time to "Yankee 

 Doodle," and as before, with the first note of change, away 

 scampered the squirrel. Unable to control my risibilities 

 longer, I laughed aloud, and after- that I couldn't call my 

 little friend to me. 



1 wonder how many of the so-called " true sportsmen" 

 ever seek or think of any pleasure in connection with such 

 beautiful little creatures save the savage and unmanly pleas- 

 ure of taking away their lives ! 



I wonder how many ever go to the dear old woods for the 

 purpose of making a friendly call upon the song birds ! 

 What joyous hours I have spent with them ! What pleasant 

 memories come to me as I write. I remember especially one 

 afternoon last summer which I passed in the woods. I found 

 a leafy thicket and slowly and cautiously crawled into it ; 

 after a little I commenced to hum a low, soothing tune, then 

 1 whistled a little— and 1 am an exceedingly poor singer and 

 whiBtler. Soon there were robins, sparrows, thrushes and 

 other birds sitting in or flitting about in the branches over 

 my head. When I had finished a tune what a glorious con- 

 cert they would give me. Some of them would come close to 

 me, anil I could see the thrill and quiver of their little 

 throats as the melody within them seemed to struggle for ut- 

 terance. O, but I enjoyed myself quite as well as I should 

 using my gun upon legitimate game, and no man loves to use 

 a gun better than I, and few use it more. 



Had a sportsman (?) come along and shot one of these 

 birds, either he or I would have had occasion to purchase a 

 piece of beefstake to put over a black eye. 



At the end of an hour I left that thicket feeling wonderfully 

 recuperated in body, and loving the dear Father above and all 

 the works of Nature better than when 1 entered it, 



I tell you, brothers, if when out, on our vacations we thought 

 a little less about making a large bag of game and sought a 

 little more earnestly to come close to the grea' pure heart of 

 Nature we should be gainers by it. 



" In conclusion "—as I often say on a different occasion— 

 I have read several articles of late which sought to tell what 

 traits werenecessary to constitute a "true sportsman." I sim- 

 ply wish to say what in my opinion a true sportsman will 

 never do. He will never inflict unnecessary pain ; he will 

 never shoot game unless he is reasonably sure that it will not 

 be wasted; he will never kill a song bird, or wantonly destroy 

 a harmless insect ; and he will kill every fish the moment he 

 takes it from the water. J. Fuankb Locke. 



UurnhamvilU, Minn., Feb, 28. 



