Febki 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



rings in your ear* over ami over again like the mi n 



turning of hells. 11:1 1 what lovely I, hi ■■. ' ■ thai 



of dari esI ■ teen, svl irac il ■ - \ 



along i in I avhite steed o tla> urfs r 



Ha !"you w-ako with a start and rub your ,-; - 

 i the lovely laay there is nothing but the darh colli i; 



river. 



Hon 1 '. , I".' si D mils high up the heavens, 



and still no deer. You begin to think that this hunt will 

 I Hark! faintly borne 

 the morning teeeZS, the dying notes of an - 



i tan can 

 Hi here in the wilderness for. you heara-sharp 

 il in auother instant aherd of deer, 

 heads"] id baci i a □ theii necks, antler* glancm 

 waviti oing sun, burst upon your end' 



sight, and make Straight for you. Ton try to count them, 

 and mentally resolve that the big huek who leads the 

 herd SO gallantly shall tall io your unerring aim, Brother 

 il !u recall the. first doer that thou in thy 

 sv time didst try to shoot? Alas! all reniembe tin 

 l, i, i. in -: I nrffingthat runs down your spine and the super- 

 natural coolness" with which yuu cock both barrel.-., and 



ostd Liberate aim. There is a responsive roar 



from the good WesUey-liiehards, loaded with fifteen buck 

 shot in each barrel) and at twenty yards you Speculate 

 how many of the a fores lid shol have riddled that gallant 

 old buck." By St. Bride of Bothwell! there he goes across 

 the river, breasting the tide as though he were am. 

 ous. and You fire the remaining barrel in sheer dispera- 

 tion at afittle fawn who kicks up his heels derisiVeh I 

 the shot go whistling through the branches of the tree 

 ovei' your head I You commence loading, and your fin- 

 gers i asly that you cannot cut off fchepow- 

 der in the flask '. Lite fact is.' you have had a severe at- 

 tack of " buck ager " and have missed with both barrels. 

 The dogs oomeup and •■; i ou i iproi hfully, and at the 

 sound of the horn they dash back and you load your gun 

 and sit down to severe meditation upon the deceitf uines, 

 of all things sublunary, 



The sun mounts higher and higher up the heavens; 

 you fall into a dreamy mood, halt waking, half steeping, 

 when all at once so close I hat they seem at your very 



, the full cry of the pack of the deep-mouthed dogs. 

 You are calm now; superualuralry calm, and now as 

 another herd dashes through the canes, and you glance 

 very full down the land as you select an old buck, the 

 pride of the front. Again the good Westley-TJichards 

 responds to your pull, and you have the .satisfaction of 

 g the old buck turn a complete somersault ; and you 

 turn as coolly as iu quail shooting to knock over with the 

 second barrel a young "spike™ buck, gayly prancing to- 

 wards the river. 



Never again will you have the •'buck ager" any more 

 than you would have the " quail ager.'' You are gradu- 

 ated now, and in-'i ; , perhaps become Emiritus I'n i 

 Tour companions rejoin you, p * fter an unmerciful 

 chaffing for having missed the first two, you wend your 

 way home as flu 'v ning shadows lengthen, tired, hun- 

 gry, pi i : ,: ends your first day's shoot- 

 ng at deer in the " Tuckepaw" country of Louisiana. As 

 one u is much like another, let me make this 

 one stand for ad. 



Perhaps in no.counl ry in the world could there be found 

 so much genuine hospitality and so much Arcadian sim- 

 plicity as could be found in Southern Louisiana, 180- 

 lated from the world, these could b, i ; toi 



the simple manners ahd tastes of which the poets have 

 written so much a ud of which they knew so little. Old- 

 fashioned honesty, old-fashioned courtesy, and white- 

 handed faith werelihked together among these French, 

 these children of parents who knew France in lier best 

 and worst days : when to he a French gentleman •■■ tO 

 have a passport to all society ; when to be a French peas- 

 ant h .. 1 I ovm-trodden and humble— all 

 this ; arm these bad left their impress upon these people, 

 butin&mod Si [degree, The gentleman had insensibly 

 lost his arrogant, overbearing manners; the peasant bis 

 humble, cringing ways ; intermarriage and free inter- 

 course had changed both classes for the better, softening 

 the one and elevating the other. 



Fond of innocent amusement, a dance would set all 

 the young people wild with excitement and pleasure, It 

 was a pleasurable sighl to see all the youths and all the 



roaide decorous row eapb set occupying 



for the nonce its own side oi the roam^ and then a tee 

 t he old jr. v-keaded uegro who played the fiddle, ami the 

 younger and less ambitious who played " de banjo;'' 

 supported by a gayly ribboned tambourine and a "hones," 

 was a sight indeed ! Only on gala nights, when there 

 wa3 to be "High Jinks," ind i I ■ baild muBtet so 



Hsrong : on e-ihe •- b a I he I idle and the banjo ci isti- 

 '' musical resource. Very pleasant and Very 

 funny these dam Be, as! well know.for I was often a 

 participant in them, t remember one "High Jinks'' 

 night that I had been enjoying myself as only youth 

 can enjoy, for I had been the flattered recipient of more 

 innocent lasses than J bad ever hoped in my wildest 

 dreams. One little girl, about sixteen, whom t had 

 named on sight Soie Si Teche, was particularly promi- 

 nent in paying and making others paj the forfeits which 

 Were the penalty for any mistake made in some foolish 

 gleeful and heartsonie game in which we were all 

 ;ed, As a forfeit, 1 had to kiss the Rose de Teche. 

 As I raised my face from hers my eyes encountered e 

 pair of keen black eyes, sparkling with hatred and 

 an"er Now, 1 bad often made the youths at these 

 dances very jealous .and I was as careless with this one 

 aslhadl I at the rest. But bis tool 



myselt. hannl.-d me. and 1 lelt In o 



sweeii it« I had s ■ d with and into whose ears i 



Lad poured many times soft nothings and setter non- 

 sense. Latei' in the evening I was introduced to this 

 gentleman, whom I had never before let " Monsieur 

 seems a very general favorite with the ladies and seem.-, 

 to abandon himself to the asm fche-dan.ee; but, 



what do 1 say ; monsieur is of a gallantry the mo A pro- 

 found and of a politeness the most enchanting!" In 

 perfect French, with peculiar accent on tha word " gal- 

 i hi hiss on the "es$o" "inipol- 

 itea&e," I knew that there was to be a figlrti and I athea 

 nghl that I could knock tins lit] a td 

 tall voting scion of Let belle France into" 

 for 1 had been taught boxing. The was that 



ho might have a knife, or pistol, But when 1 looked full 



into his eye I saw no assassin there; only an offended 

 ■ i a goal Ionian, 

 "Surely Monrieurdoes not"bt>jec1 to my enjoymem I 



.And. himself will say that politeness towards ladies is a 

 very necessary accomplishment ; and if the bean S6X ic- 

 ard him With eyes of favor it isnot his fault." la fault- 

 less French, and with the accent on those words that I 

 knew would sting, w ilhout a word he left the room and 

 l him. There was an open space in front of the 

 house. With hat and coat off. standing in the moonlight, 

 he presented a perfect picture of a man. Hedid not give 

 me long time to admire the picture, but with head low- 

 ered he made a rush at me to butt me. such being tho 

 mode of attack among the French Creoles. 



. itemed entirely to such a mode of attack, ho 

 ran his head into my stomach with such violence that 

 my whole internal arrangements were very much discom- 

 posed, and I measured mv full length on the ground. 

 With a want of chivalry that I hope was due to defective 

 i So . he immediately sprang on me and very uncer- 



emoniously commenced pulling my ban- and gouging me. 

 If from him, to spring to my feet, and 

 .. , ■ ,:l\ ' hm. ■...:.. bat the work uf a 'moment. Again 

 lie lowered his head and came at me, but this time 1 was 

 prepared. To administer a right and left, facer, to see 

 to grass With a dull, heavy thud, to step aside, and 

 not jump on him, occupied but another moment. 



Again and again, and yet again, and the last time tho 

 blow is SO heavy that my brave foeman lies still and mo 

 tionless. a heap of black, contrasted with tho bright 

 moonlight. At that very time the door opened and my 

 little Ruse de Teche came on the scene, To fall across 

 tiie. body of her inanimate lover, to utter scream after 

 scream and del! after aMl was the rather irrational 

 conduct of this little French girl. Soon all the revellers 

 made their appearance, and a little cold water hi ' tog 

 been applied to the prostrate hero ho was able to sit up 

 and answer some of the innumerable cpuestious that were 

 show.- red upon him by his sweetheart. 



'In. ughi this gentleman'' (pointing to me), " and he 

 knocked me." Aisott "enough." 



Lour years after, during one of the fiercest battles of 

 the war. I was riding across a portion of the ground over 

 which the Sght had been most obstinate. A. Voice w< i ' 

 and plaintive called mv name. Dismounting, Iapproached 

 a captain of artillery who had been propped against a 

 tree, and so left until the ambulance could come for him. 

 What was my surprise to find in him my quondam foe, 

 whom I had fought on that moonlight night about the 

 Rose de Teclie. With a warm grasp of the hand and an 

 enormous drink of apple brandy I left him. for pressing 

 duties called me elsewhere, tin inquiry some mouths 

 afterwards I learned that after losing an arm he had re- 

 tired from service, to be enfolded in the beauteous arms 

 of the Rosede Teche, whom he married soon after getting 

 home. 



St. Clair. 



NOTES FROM NORTHERN TEXAS. 



Gainsville. Tex., Jan., 1880, 



MY last was from Denison. A railroad leads from 

 Is; i. place to this (-10 miles), called the Denison and 

 •a, -tii ■-. 1 1 slops short at Gainsville. but points bravely 

 toward thePaciliC When it will reach that sea is oneof 

 the uncertain things, This road was built by the 

 enerj ■ nl Capital of one man. Mr. R. S. Stevens, of St. 

 Louis" Finding at; last t hat the job was too big for him. 

 he sold bis road to the Missouri, Kansas and Texas Rail- 

 road at a good round price. That company will extend 

 ■Oi as rapidly as possible s1 ill further West. Itv.ilL 

 pass through a grand country, rapidly filling up with a 

 grand people — acountry of immense fertility — a . iimtr 

 in which any man can soon become independent, if he 

 is worth a row of pins. 



From Denison here the country is mostly a rolling, 

 "black waxy" prairie, about six hundred feet above the 

 sea, and a belt of timber called the Cross Tips, Out some 

 fifteen miles in width, intervenes. The timber is mostly 

 post oak, and the soil a dark, sandy sort, evidently con- 

 taining a good deal of iron. The finest stono in this soil 

 is a thin sandstone, tilled with iron. A few feet beneath 

 this come the limestones of the prairies. This timber 



inexhaustible fertilizer of tho very kind .hoy m 



but man's labor must apply it. The limestone, 

 found everywhere only a few feet under the s 

 soft, containing a good deal of magnesia. Thi 

 posure to the air soon falls into a powder. 1 1 



leed 



but a very rich marl, and everyone b 

 as much of it as he wants at very little expense, 1 state 

 that, this marl stone may be found under the sandy lands 

 everywhere. 1 slate so "because I have observed wells at 

 several various parts of the timber belt, and they all show 

 Li, m:i 1 1, The black prairies are hue for wheat, as well 

 as cotton, com and other grains. The population is be- 



I too dense for stock. Still, every farmer can 



easilv "carry a good bunch of cattle, whose muk, butter 

 and beef should add handsomely to his income. Plenty 



.; g tod I itfl] I lad in this region from $5 upward. 



i faj die is an odd stick of a place ; population about 

 H.tlbO, but crowded with people day and night ; a great 

 place for saloons, restaurants and jimcracks. It being 

 the terminus of a. railroad reaching out into the West, 



thousands of people come here from the remote frontier 

 o ii. ms, loss il iii blouses, broad hats, hooted and 

 spurred. I'll , dc UOl look as if they had just jumped 

 out of a bandbox. They would not appear to good ad- 

 i a ball-room on Fifth avenue j J et till y -oe D01 

 d oik for all that. They are social, hospitable, 

 polite, often very intelligent. Thej a . s a pleasant 



-■ when they go tofightmg. 



nybody having a fuss with lliem 

 ,.,! ial i allivi I '-- se can be accommodated 



in short order. 1 have lived with this class oi i pli 



months and months, and never, had anything hut 



.■;. i ' ■ i s with them. I am now speaking of the frou- 

 (irrsmen who own propel ty and have families. 1 do not 

 refer to those graceless vagabonds, the cow-boys. Their 

 company is not. desirable, though not half SO dangerous 

 as it is usually accredited to be. I see a good many of 

 these cow-boys here, They make things merry some- 



times in tho drinkiug-saloons and brothels when they 

 get drunk, As for the citizenship about Gainsville, they 

 are a. very good-appearing people, quite as much so as 

 i , else. This whole country is filling up with a 

 very vigorous pei >p] ,n Indiana, Illinois, Ken- 



,..!.. :,l Missouri. 



Met Mr. Geo. 11. Ragsdale, who lives here, and whose 

 name is known to many of the readers of PoBEST AND 

 Stream. He went with me On a jaunt over the country 

 to spy out the fauna, llora, soils, etc. Tlie country is gen- 

 erally tertiarv. but cretaceous rocks with ammonites 

 often crop out on the bills. The East Trinity, near 

 Gainsville, flows over a vast lied of ammonites and cor- 

 als. Quailape very abundant, and they are differem Erom 

 those in South Te rger. They are, 1 think, 



the Ortyx Virginian us ; whilein South Texas we have the. 

 temainis. it is strange that these birds do not pass into 

 the region of each other and intermix, hut they do not. 

 Nobody ever saw an Orti/.e rdrijiniaitnsva. South Texas, 

 nor an OftlpL x iwu in North Texas. 



Mr. Kagsdale is devoted to ornithology, and is prepar- 

 ing a work on our Texas birds, He is wasting a good deal 

 of \ aluable ammunition by writing notes on ornithology 

 [or a little paper which probably has not three hundred 

 readers. 1 tried to persuade him to send his notes to FOK- 

 EST &SD STREAM, and he promised to send some. He has 

 quite a collection of stuffed Texas lards. 1 learned more 

 from him on the subject ol bircl i u o [ever knew before, 

 We bad a furious " wet Norther" on us while out, but 

 this did not chill our ardor in the pursuit of science — quern 

 tu Melpomene — but I forbear. 



In my last I said something Of the projection of carbon- 

 iferous fossils into cretaceous rocks in Texas. Near 

 this place I found many pretty fossils of what I take 

 to be small cyeads. I have no books with me, and am not 

 sure whether this fossil plant in other regions rose above 

 the crustaceans, or even so liigh ; yet 1 hud it here im- 

 bedded in tertiary rocks. 



Don't think this is much of a fish country. Tho only 

 fish I have seen here for sale are cats, perch, and suckers, 

 though Mr. Eagsdale tolls me the black bass is abundant 

 in East Trinity. Here is something remarkable; how can 

 you account lor il ? Men who have Jong lived on it tell 

 me there is not a gameJish Lu tied Hirer, and that no man 

 ever caught a game lish in it. Yet whenever the river 

 in an overflow cuts a lako iu the bottoms, as it often 

 does, that lake in a short tune becomes swarming with 

 black bass. Hundreds are ready to testify to the truth 

 of this. The water of Red River is usually much discol- 

 ored with sediment, The lakes in the bottoms along its 

 margins are clear. N. A. T, 



Do BLACK Sx.vkes Eat FiSH ?— In discussing this 

 question no little confusion has arisen in the writings of 

 some, of our correspondents, not naturalists, wdio have 

 confounded the true black snake, or racer (Bctsetmion), 

 with dark forms of othergenora, especially Trapidonotus, 

 Wo have received a number of communications in- 

 stancing the capture of lish by the black snake, but in 

 almost every case inquiry hag shown that it was to the 

 black water snake, and not to the (rue black snake, that 

 reference was had. An Ohio correspondent, " G. IL," 

 has recently given us quite a detailed account of tho cap- 

 ture of fish by wdiat was evidently a Fl'OjpidonotUS, 



The English SpakroavPqlyoamous. — I am permitted 

 to publish the following extracts from a letter addressed 

 by Mr. Peter Walker to Prof. S. F. Laird :— 



*" The English sparrows are not a bird that pairs; they 

 approach the domestic fowliu acock having several hens, 

 Knapp's difficulty with a pair producing thil teen young 

 was due to his not observing the number of bens in one 

 nest. Bishop Stanley also saw that there was something 

 lie could not explain. 1 have a tree about feu feet from 

 my window, with three boxes into which 1 can look, in- 

 habited by a cock sparrow with four hens. I put up' one 

 bo- iii !-:■',:;, an. 1 suspected that the possessor was a biga- 

 n j ,i. o s i he other boxes were put up the male took pos- 

 session with another female. Thai this has not been oh- 

 sorved before, I attribute to the likeness between them 



being BO great. I was never perfectly sure of it till I got 

 them tigt her but :i iw I see th :X a flock of sparrows 

 like a llock of cliickms, has a male with several females.'' 

 Elliot Coues. 



♦ 



The Lixkea.x Societv of New York.— In the Ltn- 

 nean Societv the present winter the interest of 



i, is maintained and some good work has been 

 accomplished, kX recent meetings various papers of in- 

 terest and value have been read, including the following ; 

 Some remarks from a local standpoint on the family 

 Silvicoli'lte, or American warblrrs, b;, Mr. K. F. Bit-knell. 

 In the paper it Was shown that to none of the families of 

 lards represented in our immediate neighborhood are we 

 greater number of sp< cies than to this. 

 a | . ■,,,. spi lies, including one variety (Dcudruccu 

 mVtmvwa palmaiavi) heretofore unknown from the 

 -t ;l ,. -,,,, .. as having occurred,, seventeen, of which 



Myiodioctes inictratus, Sitvms motacttta, Oporomik 



foriuosa, and rurtda amenwna. It was staled that hi 

 certain Localities, in the spring, the songs of the first five 



of these might he heard al almost the same instant. The 

 local distribution of certain species was also dwelled 

 upon. Migrating spc ies remaining in the spring into 

 June were 3/. L., ; .■, ■ .'. Philadelphia and I), 



striata. Mi. E. A. Mearns reai tstalhnent of a 



paperontis I rs ha as of Hie Hudson Highlands. A 



general review of tin m a . laraeteristics of the 



class was given, followed by a list of species of the order 

 Anura which Lad been Observed. Kjgbt species were, 

 recorded, with notes on their Characteristics and habits, 



Mr. S. 'f>. Osborne read a list of birds of the order Rap- 

 tores' wiiich spend the bnvOi /..-a •• <>n Long Island, 

 in which it wasnoied that the mottled owl, marsh hav 

 sharp-shinned, coopers, red-shouldered, red-tailed 

 bsh-liawks. breed with some regularity; (he great ' 



