102 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



f March 8, 1883. 



There is the note of u brave defier of snow and hitter cold — 

 the muffled drum-beat of the ruffed grouse. It is one of those 

 sounds, of which it is hard to tell -whether far off or near 

 by. But get the direction and try if you can be an un- 

 seen witness of bis performance, for unseen you must be if 

 you would he more than a listener. He is not so absorbed 

 in the calling of his dames but that he keeps, "with his sharp- 

 est of eyes, a vigilant lookout for intruders. Doubtless La 

 the old Indian days the boys were set to stalking the drum- 

 ming grouse, for surely they could have had no better prac- 

 tice to fit them for the kinds of warfare and hunting that 

 were to employ their grown up days. Stoop low as you 

 steal through the undergrowth and tread gingerly on the 

 drying leaves and dead twigs, stepping only to the beat of 

 his drum, when you get in his neighborhood. Now, j'ou 

 are sure you sec in the haze of underbrush, the log he stands 

 on. Lst him drum ouee more and then crawl within sight 

 Of him, but you wait in vain. The show is ended for the 

 present and 3 r ou hear the light rustle of the performer's re- 

 ceding footsteps. You may go forward and examine the 

 stage if you will, he will not object now. It is not always, 

 as some say, a hollow and resonant log, but quite as often 

 like this, crumbling with decay, the redness of the half de- 

 composed wood showing in places through its green cover- 

 ing of moss, noticeably where, the bird has so often stood. 

 Sometime it is one wood, sometime another, but perhaps 

 oftenest pine, where pine grows, or has grown, as that 

 longest resists decay. Such a one becomes time-honored 

 and held in esteem by the grouse, and generation after 

 generation of these cocks of the woods strut their brief hour 

 upon it and sound their spring tattoo. Sometime 

 a rock is put to this use; but whatever the bird stands upon 

 While drumming, there is no perceptible difference to my ear 

 iuthe volume of sound produced. Your particular drum- 

 mer or another oue is at it again not far off: "Boomp— 

 boonip— boomp— boomp. Boomp — boomp — boomp. Boomp 

 boompboompbrrrrrrroomp!" Try your luck again at fol- 

 lowing him up, or hide here, where you can see the log and 

 wait for his return, or take your bearings so that you may 

 crawl within siaht behind a tree next time you hear him. 

 If in one way or another you succeed in getting a front seat 

 at this drum solo, you will see the performer show off at his 

 best, as if the eyes of the world were upon him. Perhaps 

 he fancies the eyes of his world— the brown dames he loves 

 — are peering at him coyly through the screen of brush as 

 he swells his body, raises his ruff, erects his spread tail and 

 with lowered wings proudly struts and wheels upon his log. 

 Then he begins with two or three beats, with short pauses 

 between, and then a longer pause; then more beats, 

 increasing in frequency till they become a continuous 

 roll, in which they end, though sometime followed by 

 oue or two distinct beats like the beginning. But 

 some slight noise or motion of yours has caught his 

 quick senses. He suspects, if he does not see, an un- 

 welcome intruder, and folding his drumsticks (off the plat- 

 ter, they are not his legs) he hops lightly from the log and 

 walks off, not straight from you, but in a wide curve, as if 

 he wished to get a flank or rear view of his unbidden au- 

 ditor. Presently he fades into the gray of the brush and 

 tree-trunks and is gone; and you may rise and go home 

 now. Is it not better so than if you carried him away a 

 carcass in rumpled feathers, bereft of life and with it of half 

 bis beauty? 



if you wade into the woods, and it is easier wading with- 

 out a gun than with it, about the time the sugar makers 

 are beginning their work, you may see that some one has 

 been before them, tapping nearer the sky than their augers 

 bore, and where perhaps the sap has a finer and more 

 ethereal flavor. You can see little trickles of it, darkening 

 some of the smaller, smooth branches, and if your eyes are 

 sharp enough, the incisions it flows from. These are the 

 chisel marks of the red squirrel, the only real sap-sucker I 

 know of, excepting the boy. 



If you can make yourself comfortable on some patch of 

 ground that the spring ebb of the snow has left bare and 

 keep still long enough, you may see him stretch himself 

 along a branch and slowly suck or lap the sap as it oozes 

 from the wound. Evidently he enjoys it greatly, and it must 

 be grateful to his palate, for all winter, save in a thaw 

 or two, he has had nothing to quench his thirst but snow, 

 and eating one's drink is a hard and poor way of taking it. 

 "Was he the first to discover the sweetness of the maple, and 

 did the Indians take the hint of sugar-making from hiru? 

 U so w T e are. under obligations to him, but it is hard to for- 

 give some of his sins. No one would begrudge him 

 his bit and sup if he would confine himself to nuts and 

 sap, or now and then a stolen apple or pear. But he is a 

 bloodthirsty little savage, killing unfledged birds in the 

 nest whenever he can. The old birds know his murderous 

 tricks and hate him accordingly. The robins and black- 

 birds and some others make a good fight against the 

 marauder, but mostly it is a losing one for them. If he 

 keeps his eyes shut during their spurts of attack he is in no 

 great danger, and at last gets their broods, for fledgelings 

 must be fed, and old birds cannot always be guardiug them. 



When one remembers how easily the squirrel can get at 

 almost all the nests of the smaller birds, it is a wonder how 

 so many escape his raids. 



Of all the birds' nests built in trees, the hammock of the 

 oriole seems the, safest from him, but I doubt if he much 

 troubles the woodpeckers, ne would he in sorry plight if 



caught in the cul de sac of their holes, for the tools that 

 make the chips fly out of solid wood, would make short 

 work with his flesh and blood. 



When you surpise the squirrel in this murder of the inno- 

 cents you will wish your gun was at hand. R. E. R. 



T 



ADIRONDACK SURVEY NO'IES. 



NO, XVI. — FROGS. 



HE present time is either very early or else extremely 

 late in the season to be writing of frogs in the Adirou- 

 dacks, but, in order to start right we will consider that it is 

 of the frogs of June, 1882, that this truthful record is made. 

 These notes were taken at that time, but owing to several 

 causes not necessary to be explained they have reposed in 

 the quiet of that little-used drawer where an editor's bank 

 account is kept. 



It was a fine June evening when Sheppard and I w T ere 

 paddling down Big Moose. The moon was just above the 

 horizon and nearly full, for the sun had been down over an 

 hour, and her brightness was mirrored on the hike and shot 

 in silvery ripples from the bow of the canoe. No breath ot 

 air ruffled the tree-tops of either shore to break the stillness 

 when a large fleecy cloud drifted across the moon and 

 through its thin veil the light was softened with that tender- 

 ness that makes the scene a fairy-laud, when a rich, deep- 

 throated frog broke the silence with a solo so weird that I 

 bade Sheppard cease paddling to listen. Another and 

 another joined in the swelling chorus until one basso-pro- 

 fundo touched a "chest C" and completed the grand sym- 

 phony. The guide, after listening, started to paddle again, 

 but an uplifted hand made him pause once more to listen 

 and find what it was that had attracted my attention. 

 •'What is it?" asked he. " I can't hear anything hut. the 

 frogs." "Yes," said I, "it is the frogs; did you ever hear 

 anything grander?" "Humph," granted he, and paddled 

 on. 



Why the magnificent orchestra that nightly sits on the 

 lily-pads and discourses music grand as anything that nature 

 offers, has been so neglected by poets and lovers of nature, 

 I do not know. 1 have even heard them reviled. To me 

 there is something .so mysterious in their music, so like 

 that which fairies and elfins might love that it seems, to 

 belong to another sphere. 



The cloud passed beyond the moon, and the changing 

 light hnshed the voices of the night, the tree-tops came out 

 sharply on the light background of fleece and we seemed 

 floating in air. We paddled on in silence, our thoughts 

 were not in unison and neither felt like speaking. We 

 reached camp, and after Sheppard pulled up the boat and 

 went into the house I sat upon the raft at the lauding and 

 heard a sonata grander than ever penned by Beethoven. 

 First came an introduction, in a falsetto, by a single voice. 

 One after another joined until a quartet rolled in a slow 

 and solemn andante, slightly quickening into adagio or 

 largo and swelling rich and deep, magnificent as a thunder- 

 storm. Suddenly the smaller members strike in a lively 

 time and the basso profuudo chimes in, making a chord at 

 once rich and deep without marring the time of the lively 

 minuet. A brilliant meteor fell in the southwest glowing 

 with such a white light that, with a trifle of imagination to 

 help it, one could hear it hiss as it plunged down, appar- 

 ently to cool its molten surface in the Fulton chain of lakes. 

 Just then Sheppard came out, and as I was gazing on the 

 light clouds which swept past the trees and gleamed with a 

 silver light on their edges as they vanished behind the moun- 

 tain, he broke my reverie by saying. ""What! you out here 

 yet listening to the frogs? Supper's ready; and if I don't 

 have some of the hind legs off them bullfrogs to-morrow 

 then it will be because I don't know how to get them." 



Let us hope that there is not alone a hereafter, but that 

 all men will enjoy it. How many live amid scenes of beauty 

 and never know it! How much poetry there is all around 

 us, how much of beauty, that our senses, dulled by daily 

 contact with it, never seel 



Broad daylight again in at the window, up and dressed, 

 a wash in the lake, and a breakfast of the trout taken yes- 

 terday. What a different man I find myself, when Jack 

 says: "I am getting kind of tired of trout, and have been 

 thinking about the big frogs over there where we heard 

 them last night. What do you say?" Alas for humanity! 

 Gone were the solos, quartets and sonatas. Out of mind 

 was the grandest of nature's choruses when this appeal to 

 man's baser nature came in this shape. Last night's enjoy- 

 ment, which wrapped my soul in elysium, vanished before 

 an appeal for a change of diet! I fell. I no more reviled 

 Jack's unpoetic nature, and the ink in my pen flushes as I 

 write my answer, "All right; let's get a mess." A mess! 

 As 1 write it up from my notes, under the influence of the 

 memory of the swelling harmony that rolled in a rich dia- 

 pason across the lake, I think it almost a sacrilege. The 

 proposition now seems like an invitation to feast on the 

 tongues of nightingales, or to pick the bones of an angel's 

 wing. But, being human, I fell from the higher estate of 

 my fluer senses, and was willing to pander to my baser ap- 

 petite. 



We went. To my shame be it recorded, that on an eight- 

 foot rod 1 had as many feet of line, that terminated in three 

 hooks, soldered back to back. Jack paddled me up to a 

 semi-human batrachian, who, thinking no harm, allowed us 

 to approach within a few feet, and I basely dangled the hook 



uuder his chin, and snatched him "bald-headed," as the 

 vulgar might express it. over to Jack. Now, this is the ex- 

 tent of my iniquity, and as I have made a clean breast of 

 it I do not propose to spare my CD-partner in guilt. Jack 

 took the songsters and cut them in two at the wiiist, threw 

 the forward portion overboard and dropped the fegs il Eke 

 boat. I requested that the frog be killed by a nip on the 

 head first. Jack protested that it was useless, and said thai 

 "they might grow a pair of new legs for us next, summer,' 1 

 I again objected and threatened to tell of his barbaric cruelty 

 in Forest asd Stream, but he preferred to continue in his 

 way, and now I have told it all. If I am to be condemned 

 for killing and eating in the morning the musicians who 

 gave me such exquisite pleasure at, night, I want.it toiippear 

 that Jack Sheppard not only led me into it, but was more 

 cruel than 1. This may be pleading the baby act, and Shep- 

 pard may so consider it, but I have no other plea 1" make, 

 and throw myself on the mercy of the court. I will not 

 pretend that if I had bought the frogs in market it would 

 have been as bad. It would not. 1 enjoyed their music 

 over night and killed them in the morning— a thing that the 

 innoftent buyer of frogs din.-, not do; and as I knew the 

 enormity of the olfense, I simply cry Pn-rnri, F. M. 



IJte gportsitfmi ^ami§f. 



AROUND THE COAST OF FLORIDA, 



BY DR. .[. A. liENslIAl.L. 



Seventh Paper. 



1\ T E left Esters Pass with a northwest wind and put out 

 TT into the Gulf about a mile. Squire and .Turk were 

 trolling and caught several kiugtish and bonitos. both of the 

 mackerel family: The kiugfisli. or cero, is ;i handsome fish, 

 resembling the Spanish mackerel somewdat, outgrows ranch 

 larger and is more slender, running from two lofonr feet in 

 length, and from live lo twelve pounds in weight. Its back 

 is of a bluish color, with its sides sprinkled with spots, it, 

 is an excellent table fish, with firm white flesh, resembling 

 the Spanish imickcral very closely in flavor. The bonito is 

 also a handsome fish. With gteen. buck and blue sides, its 

 colors being quite brilliant, and several diagonal black 

 stripes adorn its upper parts. It is deeper and much shorter 

 for its weight than the kiugfisli. and is dark-mealed, like' the 

 crevnlle, and about equal to the latter fish in flavor. Wo 

 caught, them from ten to fifteen pounds in weight, in 

 trolling for these fishes a stout braided line is best, thongh 

 the coasters generally use laid Cotton codfish lines. A well- 

 tempered codfish hook, with a longsh.ank and a fool of si out 

 copper or brass wire is necessary to withstand their sharp 

 and numerous teeth. The usual bait is a strip of white 

 bacon rind, six or eight inches long, cut iu the semblance of 

 a fish, with a slit cut in the upper end and one in the mid- 

 dle, through which it, is impaled or strong on the hook, the 

 upper end/being firmly secured by small wire. A block tin 

 squid or a very heavy spinner is, however, a better lure. 

 The kiugfisli is famous as a vaullcr. I have seen them leap 

 fully ten feet above the water Skipper declared one fol- 

 lowed a mullet, oue day, over the main gaff; but the state- 

 ment:. of a man who declares that it rained his coffe-pot full 

 through the spout in ten minutes during a September hurri- 

 cane, luusl be taken w ■ it la considerable salt— a bushel to the 

 sentence would be about right— and then it should only be 

 served to the marines. We saw many of the beautiful little 

 flying fishes, but, failed to secure a specimen. When within 

 eight miles of Punta Rassa, and off Sanibel Island , we en- 

 countered a school of devil-fishes {Ceratoptara Mrottrit), 

 twenty or more. These monsters were from six to fifteen 

 feet from tip to tip of their wing-like pectorals. We -ail.-,! 

 Close enough to have harpooned some of I hem, but we lacked 

 the harpoon or lily iron; and as Skipper looked at them BO 

 said he was glad we forgot to procure one in Key Wist as 

 intended. 



We found the famous Punta Rassa to consist of but three 

 or four buildings and a wharf. It is a low, flat point at, the 

 mouth of Caloosahatchee River, or rather of CalOOsa Bay, 

 which, during the periodical overflow of the river, is many 

 feet under water; consequently, the bouses are mounted on 

 posls. A large building is occupied as a telegraph office, 

 the shore end" of the Havana cable being at this point The 

 office of the United States Signal Bureau and the post-office 

 is also in Ibis building. Col. Sunmu rlin occupies the build- 

 ing at the wharf. Although a small place Punta Rassa is 

 important as a shipping point, as the cattle fronl the ranges 

 of Southern Florida are all driven here and shipped to Key 

 West and Havana. Tie cattle interest of Florida is quite 



extensive aadyieldsa large ti anl oi money annually. 



Key West and Cedar B v steamers touch here twice a week. 



A small steamer, the Spitfire, runs Hp tke river as far as 

 Fort Thompson, and also makes trips to various places on 

 Charlotte Harbor. 



Sanibel Island, at the entiance of ( 'aloosa Hay and opposite 

 Punta Rassa, is renowned for its fine fishing. The angler 

 can here fairlv revel in piscatorial abandon and cover him- 

 self with piscine glory and fish scale.-. If tcbthic variety is 

 the spice of the angler's life, Sanibel and it- sister keys are 

 the Spice Islands. Sharks, rays and devil-fish. larpum and 

 jewlish. redfish, snappers and' groupers, Spanish mackerel 

 and kiugtish. sea-tiout, bonito and crevalle, la..y-fi.-h and 

 sergeant-fish, sheepshead and drum, a host of smaller fry — 

 spots, grunlsand porgies, and the ever-present and ubiqui- 

 tous catfish can here be jerked, and yanked, and snaked, 

 and pulled, and hauled until the unfortunate angler will 

 lament that he was ever born — under the last but nut least 

 of the zodiacal signs. 



The entrance to Caloosahatchee River proper is beset with 

 oyster reefs, but the channel is staked, and by keepiDg a 

 sharp lookout the cruiser will have uo trouble. The river 

 from Punta Russa to Fort Myers, twenty miles above, is u 

 large one, as broad as the St. Johns below Palatka. Vast 

 pine forests lead up to the banks an either hand, rendering 

 this portion of the stream somewhat, monotonous. 



Fort Myers is quite a neat and thrifty village, with a 

 church or two, several stores, a telegraph office, and some 

 comfortable dwellings with tastefully arranged grounds. 

 Some of the. wealthiest cattle men of Southern Florida I ' . 

 here, and their wholesome influence is everywhere apparent. 

 We arrived at Foit Myers on Sunday, and at night, all hands 



