THE REFERENDUM 



457 



the lifeless body of his victim is carried off 

 and nearly always impaled upon some thorn 

 or sharp twig, where it dangles pitifully — 

 sometimes still throbbing with life — and per- 

 haps the butcher never returns to his spoils. 

 So we see that even in birddom we have to 

 face the tragedy as well as the comedy of 

 life, and our most beautiful birds are, many 

 of them, masqueraders. There is an endless 

 variety in store for the student of bird char- 

 acter, and a most superficial study cannot but 

 reveal interesting and instructive truths 

 about "Citizen Bird" and his home life. 

 There are, to be sure, other feathered high- 

 waymen, but few though they be I am will- 

 ing some one else should expose them, as I 

 find it a more pleasant occupation to depict 

 the many admirable characteristics and sup- 

 press from the public the few shortcomings. 



MONGOLIAN PHEASANTS. 



Editor Recreation : 



Can you advise me where Chinese pheas- 

 ants can be secured for the purpose of stock- 

 ing our part of the country? Also, do you 

 think they would withstand the climate here? 

 Our winters are pretty long and pretty cold. 

 M. I. Mellon, Nebraska. 



Mr. V. De Guise, of Mawah, N. J., can, I 

 believe, supply you with Mongolian pheasants, 

 and Homer Davenport, White Plains, New 

 York, may possibly have them, though he 

 deals more in the rarer species. It is very 

 unlikely, however, that the Mongolian pheas- 

 ants would succeed in Nebraska. In fact, we 

 should be most agreeably surprised if the ef- 

 fort were successful there. The pheasant can 

 stand a considerable amount of cold ; but it 

 needs shelter, being a bird of the woodlands 

 and not of the open country. While rhe in- 

 troduction of foreign game birds is occasion- 

 ally successful, it is, as a rule, better to en- 

 deavor to protect the natural game birds of a 

 region. You will find no better birds any- 

 where than the pinnated or sharp-tailed 

 grouse, and they will thrive in a colder coun- 

 try than would suit the pheasant. — Editor. 



A BACHELOR'S FARE ON THE PACIFIC 

 COAST. 



BY S. B. HACKLEY. 



"When I was a bachelor I lived by my- 

 self, 

 And all the bread and cheese I got, 



I laid it on the shelf " 



The material comforts — the eat and the 

 drink — of the bachelor "living by himself," 

 possessing neither housekeeper nor cook (as 

 he of Mother Goose fame), are not ordi- 

 narily supposed to be greater than those of 

 him whose autobiography appears in the nurs- 

 ery book, nor his lot more to be desired 

 than his — but come with me, and I will show 

 you a "bachelor's paradise." 



Come to that land "where rolls the Ore- 

 gon" — where the rhododendrons girt the ca- 

 ladium-bordered lakes, the ever-blooming 

 lose vines climb the trees and the summer 

 fields are like the gardens of Paradise — 

 where, in the thick tangles of the matchless 

 forests where the sun never shines, the 

 tawny panther hides in the branches of the 

 firs, the black bear lumbers about the sal-lal 

 berry bushes, and the deer runs free. 



Come with me to the Oregon coast, cut 

 by its numberless bays, to the beach where 

 the dead whales wash up on the shore, and 

 the living sea-iotters come in, where the warm 

 rains beat on old Indian bones divested of 

 their coverings of sand, where the high tide 

 sweeps back under the pile-built houses of 

 the bachelor-men who repose on beds stuffed 

 with dried ferns and sleep to a lullaby duet 

 whose treble is the wind in the pines, whose 

 bass is the ocean's roar ! 



It is here that bachelors of Maine, of 

 Louisiana, of Michigan, of Arkansas, and of 

 the outermost parts of the earth — of Hi- 

 bernia, of Caledonia, of Britain, of Scandi- 

 navia, of the Land of Confucius and of the 

 Empire of Nippon, are to be found living in 

 a material comfort and content that surpasses 

 the comfort of the Goose Book man, as the 

 physical comfort of the Emperor that of poor 

 Ivan. And yet, the cost of the Coast bache- 

 lor's housekeeping is almost as little as that 

 of him of the nursery jingle. 



His house-furnishing needs are few and 

 easily supplied — his fuel is the well-seasoned 

 drift-wood floated under his house by the 

 accommodating tide ; brought in summer by 

 •the Japan current from Alaska ; in winter, 

 washed up from California's coast — and when 

 he goes out for food his pocket-book does not 

 flatten appreciably. 



His meat is to be had for the reaching out 

 of his hand, in variety pleasantly infinite. If 

 his appetite craves crab, that delicacy of the 

 tables of the rich (the crab that retails at 

 fifty cents each in the cities) he goes out 

 and takes him gratis from the sea. 



The Coast Indian, with a hooked stick, 

 reaches dexterously down in the bay, and 

 lifts the crab from his bed, and then roasts 

 him to his stomach's satisfaction in a fire, 

 kindled of a ten-foot high drift heap, which, 

 too lazy to extinguish, he leaves to burn f°r 

 days. The white man cannot acquire this 

 dexterity, but in summer when the tide is 

 out, he can reach down in the shallow water 

 with a long-handled garden rake and gather 

 the crabs off the bottom like leaves, or he may 

 go out in a boat and lift the crabs to the 

 surface in a net. 



Clams, flat, round, checkered, cahogs, nr 

 razor-backs, are at the bachelor-man's com- 

 mand, and he has only to dig in the sand a 

 few hundred yards from his door to secure 

 them in quantity. 



If he desires oysters he takes the "mud- 



