Feb. 21, 18S4.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



66 



ADIRONDACK FOREST WASTE. 



EllUnr | 



You are keeping the Adirondack Park question before 

 ilie people, i amverj glad to see the interest in it mani- 

 fested by so many of the newspapers. But the side taken 

 by the city papers is not the only strong side to the question. 

 1 am, as an individual, as much interested as aayoneoan 

 In:- in the preservation of the forest. My whole property ih- 

 in the proposed park, and aside from this, T have 

 Even the subject of forest protection much thought, and 

 have looked on with much anxiety at the destruction going 

 on each year about, me. Then' seems io lie a general feeling 

 that as soon as one is in the woods he is to have full liberty 

 in all directions, If he wants a hit of wood ever so small 

 he takes it from any tree within reach, no matter if it does 



a large tree, valuable for lumber or shade. 

 \ BPhe lumbermen, at least in this section, have never been 

 pCrticnlai about the timber taken from their lauds, Their 

 only aim has been to get all that would make lumber at that 

 curling, for in most cases tires follow the choppers within 

 one or two years, and after the fire, in most eases, the land 

 lack to the State for non-payment of taxes. 



The most destructive interest at work in this section is the 

 cutting of spruce for clapboards. Very few trees arc either 

 Kfee enough, or free from knots, to make clapboards. They 

 nil up at the small end of the log fifteen inches at 

 least, and Where one log is taken twelve feet long, fit for 

 clapboards, there will he from two to three other log : s which 

 would make good lumber, but as they arc not wanted, 

 they are left to rot on the ground with all the other 

 cuttings in making roads and dealing away from 

 ihe stump by the chopper, the whole forming * a nice 

 dace to start a fire. Within ten miles of here there are 

 Hndreds of acres which have been cut over and have gone 

 to the Slate ui this way. The cutting of the hemlock for its 

 'lark is also very destructive to the forest in this season. It 

 Joes not pay to draw the logs to mill for lumber. In the 

 elling of each tree for its hark aud in the cutting of roads 

 here are at least twenty other trees broken or cut down. 

 Vlost of the pine cut in this township in the last fifteen years 

 was been cut to make shaved shingles, aud as not one pine in 

 ive that are cut down will make shingles, there are hundreds 

 )f large pines on the ground rotting away, 



A few weeks since I was in Mai one and Potsdam. Each 

 Hflage is the center of quite a lumber interest. I met many 

 Ifrsons who, knowing I lived in the woods, wished to talk 

 thou! the proposed park, and I was greatly surprised to find 

 io few persons who knew anything about the woods; but 

 hey seemed astonished that any one should think them of 

 importance enough to need legislation for their preservation. 



bug others, 1 met several members of both branches of 



Legislature. They, too, wished to talk about the woods, 

 were glad to hear the other side of the story. The real 



""it of Frankliu county is the preservation' of every bit 



sst, but I fear the controlling influence will be the 



interest, which means the cutting of everything pos- 



be made use of. either as lumber, firewood, or bark. 



much of the land will go to the State, as it is worth 



ingior agriculture 



November, the young males retain theirs much longer, and 

 the females dp not drop their antlers until the spring. The 

 possession Of these weapons at a period when they may be 

 so useful itr aiding their possessors to obtain a fair share of 

 the food, which can only be secured with some o.ertion, 

 enables the .younger and weaker members of the herd to 

 stand on a more nearly equal footing with the stronger than 

 they would have if they were without horns. This struggle 

 for food continues during the whole winter, for in the region 

 inhabited by the caribou the snow often covers the ground 

 until May or June, and during all or the greater portion of 

 this time food must, be obtained by digging. During the 

 winter the females are carrying their young, and therefore 

 require more nourishment than do the males, young or old, 

 and this may account for the fact that the horn's arc retained 

 until the time when the young are about to be brought forth. 

 This explanation of the existence of horns in the female of 

 Ilaiujifcr f/nvnl and lots tarandtys and its southern race seems 

 on the whole not unreasonable. 



I should like to ask your many Canadian readers whether 

 any of them can suggest an explanation which is more sat- 

 isfactory than the one I have mentioned, or can add any- 

 thing to this. 1 should be much gratified to learn through 

 your columns or otherwise what views arc held on this sub- 

 ject by those who live nearest to the home of the caribou. 



Geo. Bird Grinngll. 



New York, Feb. 18, 1884. 



OPHID1ANA, OR SNAKE GOSSIP. 



BY CATHERINE C. IIOI'LEY, AUTHOR OF "CURIOSITIES OF 

 SNAKE LIFE." 



LOOKING over a file of Forest ai\d Stream for the last 

 six mouths, a few notes on the subject of the Ophidia 



The cue great complaint of the residents in the proposed 



lark has been that the .State holds its land but paysno taxes. 



. — pays — 

 The) ai e right when they complain of this. As in my own 

 ;ase, lam the only resident in this road district, which is 

 ffen in and nearly all the land has gone to the 



Mite, if the State pays no highway taxes 1 must do all 

 he work on this seven miles of road. 



j Of the proposed bills Senator Lansing's is thedeast objee- 

 to the inhabitants of this section, and if it should 

 iass, it would have to be changed in many ways to be of any 

 •alue. A very strict enforcement of the law against all of- 

 eoders must be made in every case or the law would be 

 vorse than no law. A great majority of those who frequent 

 he woods look upon State lands as open to plunder for all 

 nrpose,; without a chance for punishment. They call it, 

 'God's land — free to all." A. E. Fuller. 



Meacham Lake, Adirondack. 



DRNS OF THE FEMALE CARIBOU. 



i est <'nd Stream: 



with pleasure that you are bringing out a new 

 lihoii of Judge Oaton's admirable work ou the antelope and. 

 eer of America, The volume is one which should be in the 

 nnds of every still-hunter who desires to really know about 

 ie game which he pursues. This announcemeut and the 

 '''^■•■"d of you/ aotice of the book leads me to think that 

 fitting time to ask a question of your readers in 

 ilation to one species of our deer. 



1 do not know that the fact that the female caribou is 

 ways or nearly always provided with horns has ever been 

 itisfici'onl-. l::.c: :.od - his ir; thaomy spcc;es of our deer 

 Which that sex bears horns, though there are on record a 

 •ry kr~ eases in which tuc female' Virginia deer has been 

 >uud to have one or a pair of simple spike horns. It is not 

 » be supposed that in the caribou these horns have been 

 (tained in the female without some reason. What is it? 

 An intimate knowledge of the life history of the caribou 

 oul<{ no doubt furnish a clue to the anomaly, but unfortu- 

 Wely very 1 i ( tie is known of the habits of the species. Dur- 

 g'a recent visit to the home of the woodland caribou I 

 -Ceived some information wbi?h perhaps gives a hint as to 

 ie Use of the antlers to the female mmgifev. 1 1 is well known 

 St the caribou, during the greater part of the winter, sub- 

 it almost wholly upon the reindeer moss which they obtain 

 "scraping away the snow with their fore feet. When the 

 ,ow covers the ground to any considerable depth, the pits 

 iVieh they dig to reach the food below, are excavated with 

 iDsiderable labor, aud each deer has to work hard foritsliv- 

 m At this season— in lire case of the woodland caribou, at 



males and females collect together in herds which 

 ■^number from ten to one hundred individuals. At this 

 ■pe stronger deer drive the weaker ones away from those 

 feces where the food is best, or most easily accessible, and 

 la small deer has scraped away the snow from a good 

 leaing place some larger and stronger animal is very likely 

 J attack and chase it fioni the spot, and take advantage of 



I" work done by the other. It will readily be seen that this 

 Khtion of things might operate very disastrously for the 

 -i female deer, if they were* no better iirovided 

 til weapons of defense than the larger and stronger ones. 

 »t while the older males lose their horns about the last of 



seem to invite a little discussion. "Ouachita," of Monroe, 

 La.,(Oct. 11), in allusion to my paper (Sept. 20) on the "spread- 

 ing adder" or "puffing viper" (Heterodou), writes: "If my 

 memory is not faulty I have found fangs in their mouths.'" 

 To this, in the issue'Oct. 18, "S." replies that he has "killed 

 scores, but never found any fangs:" Now, like the men of 

 Cowper's poem on the chameleon's color, both correspond- 

 ents, "Ouachita" and "S." may be correct. "S.," perhaps, 

 sought Heterodon's so-called fangs in the usual place, viz., 

 the front of the uppen jaw. "Ouachita," perhaps, found 

 them in the unusual place* at the back of the jaw; or, when 

 he sought them they might have been erect and conspicuous, 

 and when "S." examined the snake's mouth the fangs might 

 have been depressed and inconspicuous. For, among the 

 many seeming anomalies of serpent organization these harm- 

 less Heterodons have not only a pair of long, fang-like teeth, 

 but they are mobile, i. c, can be erected or depressed and 

 put to use at the will of their owner, like true viperine fangs. 

 Only they are solid teeth after all, not perforated and 

 grooved, or connected with a venom gland. The family is 

 for this reason called Hetero-don, which word, divided into 

 two parts, easily suggests its meaning. As hetero-dox is 

 something contrary to a usual saying or belief, and hetero- 

 geneous is a deviation from ordinary rules, so Hetero-don is 

 an unusual or abnormal condition of teeth, supposing the 

 normal rule to be a set of a regular and equal size, as in most 

 harmless snakes; one of the latter group being called 

 by some herpetologists Tso-dons, or even-toothed. Then, 

 again, there is a family of Lycodom, which might be 

 mistaken for venomous serpents, as they have a long, wolf- 

 like tooth or harmless fang in front of the jaw, And there 

 arc the OUgodons or jaw-toothed snakes; ' the A notions or 

 toothless family; aud the Xenodons or strange-toothed family, 

 of which JMc ration is a member. The Xenodons, natives of 

 Brazil, bear just as bad a character there as do the poor little 

 harmless Heterodons of the north; they also have a movable 

 back tooth, looking like a fang, but that does no injury. I 

 believe I may claim to be the first who has described, if not 

 the first who has observed this mobility in Xe notion's fans' - 

 like teeth. I also saw and described Heterodon's fang which 

 I saw moving while the snake was feeding, the latter fact 

 being confirmed by Prof. E. T ^ Cope, who himself had seen 

 the same, though not committing his observations to print. 

 Long back teeth in several families of snakes have been 

 well known to herpetologists; but none of them, so far as 

 my researches have gone, have mentioned the mobility of 

 those in the Xenodons; not even Dumeril, our first and best 

 authority. Having heard of these ' 'strange teeth" in the 

 Brazilian Xenodons, and that the snakes were looked upon as 

 venomous, I became very desirous to see a living example' 

 and ere long 1 was able to examine the jaws of one, and then 

 witnessed the working of this strange back tooth, and felt 

 it, too, on pressing the jaw with my finger, as described in 

 chapter XXII. of my work on snakes. These long teeth 

 are, no doubt, useful iu retaining the prey, which, for the 

 most part, consists of toads and frogs swallowed alive and 

 actively struggling. This singular dentition is only another 

 example of those remarkable features in which snakes of 

 such distinctly opposite families appear to he allied. Thus 

 the innocent Heterodons have a broad head and a viperish 

 aspect, even a movable fang, and in spreading themselves 

 when molested they remind us of the cobra. 



The child mentioned by "S." as having been ill after the 

 bite of one of these "spi ending adder's," was probably timid 

 and delicate, and might have suffered similarly from the 

 claws of a cat, or the bite of any harmless animai. Terror 

 alone would aggravate the danger. In the case of a cat, not 

 the claws themselves, but the foreign and noxious particles 

 which cling to the claws may injure the blood. The ill 

 effects, therefore, in "S.'s" little girl were not a proof -of a 

 venomous snake, though even the common saliva of a non- 

 venomous one may be acrid or injurious in the poor blood of 

 a feeble person. 



Though snakes may be broadly divided into the venomous 

 and nou -venomous, the teeth are largely concerned in classi- 

 fication, and as regards dentition, only the true viperine 

 snakes (among which the whole rattlesnake family is in- 



Constrictors proper, are for the most part the largest and 

 most powerful snakes, boas, etc, though several smaller 

 families are truly constrictors, such as the American racers, 

 and the little WwpMb of the eastern, continent. And it is 

 remarkable' that some small snakes, though not true con 

 slrietors, that is, with an especial organization to enable 

 them to constrict, make use of their coils to control unman 

 ageableprey. This I have seen on several occasions while 

 watching snakes feeding. In the small Brazilian tfefewdon 

 d'orb/'gnii, which feeds on frogs, 1 once noticed the snake 

 trying to swallow an inconveniently large frog, when IMer- 

 odem brought its coils to its assistance, to — as it Were*— help 

 hold down its prey while it got a more convenient hold. 

 Xntodon also does this, and so does the English common 

 snake. It never occurs to them to kill the prey by con- 

 striction, their organization and instincts not dictating such 

 a process, but beiug sufficient in case of need to help them 

 out of a difficulty. Indeed the more we watch a snake and 

 study its habits, the more we find in it to excite our wonder 

 —it may even be our admiration— considering how the lack 

 of limbs is compensated by the extraordinary powers it pos- 

 sesses to enable it to exist at all. Many readers of Forest 

 and Stream enjoy such opportunities for observation on 

 their own farms and fields, others on visiting zoological 

 gardens can witness and study snakes, and should they hap- 

 pen to be feeding at such a time, the observer can not fail 

 to be interested and amazed at an organization so wonder- 

 fully adapted to their needs. 



Before taking leave of the Meterpdons, I may mention a 

 case of the death-feigning, for which these curious little 

 snakes are celebrated, and lately came to my knowledge. 

 A lady in Florida was sitting reading on the piazza of In- 

 dwelling, when her son brought home and laid down near 

 her a "spreading adder." The ladies of the family objecting 

 to such company, he gave the snake a kick and sent it 

 several yards on to a gravel path. The lady, as she sat read- 

 ing, glanced occasionally at the snake, which for a long 

 while lay on its back so motionless that she thought it was 

 dead. But by and by the reptile almost imperceptibly— so 

 cautious and gradual were its movements— got itself round 

 to its natural position, and then by very slow and almost 

 invisible degrees, crawled away till 'it reached a fence, when, 

 like a shot, it was through and away out of sight. The lady 

 thinks nearly two hours passed while the Heterodon was 

 thus stealthily creeping off. The actions had certainly the 

 suspicion of trickery; but, then if is possible that the snake 

 was stunned and was thus slowly recovering from the 

 injury. These Heterodons are worth studying, 



ABlack Pin in a Hawk's Maw.— Dr. A. K, Fisher, 

 of Sing Sing, ISf. Y., one of the superintendents of bird mi- 

 gration, made a strange discovery last week. A fine speci- 

 men of the red-shouldered hawk (Bntco unceih/s)wan brought 

 him by a friend. When he proceeded to skin the bird he 

 was much surprised to find it in such good condition, and 

 from this led to examine quite minutely the contents of its 

 maw. Here he found portions of a ffog, a salamander, a 

 shrew, some feathers of a bird, and a bird's head entire. 

 Bid, what was the Doctor's astonishment to find a black pin, 

 such a pin as ladies use in pinning their dresses. This was 

 something new in a naturalist's experience, though had it 

 been found in the crop of a domestic fowl the thing would 

 not have seemed so strange. But now had the creature 

 devoured a lady and found it hard to digest some of her 

 pins? Here, however, the Doctor's mind was soon set at 

 rest. His friend told him that in baiting the trap to catch 

 the hawk a dead snowbird had been used. "And that to 

 make the bait look natural a black pin had been thrust 

 down through the back of the head and through the neck 

 into the body to make the bait hold its head up.'" This pin 

 the hawk, in his voracity, had swallowed. But perhaps a 

 more singular thing is, that after the hawk had been caught 

 by one claw in the trap, he should still have persisted in eat- 

 ing the bird, and swallowed the head whole.— A. H G. 

 (Scarborough, X. Y.). 



Breeding op Squirrels.—- Hdttor Forest and gfireant: 

 I see in the last two Forest and STREAMS statements of 

 squirrels breeding in autumn as il it were something unusual. 

 When I was a boy I shot gray squirrels with an old Ken- 

 tucky rifle full-stocked (what was left of it), loose in the 

 lock, loose all over, and ran ninety to the pound. But it 

 would put its bullet where you aimed it every time, and 

 many a squirrel have I dropped with a hole through its 

 head. That Was in Ohio, and the point is, that we. expected 

 to find young squirrels in September about as much as in 

 June; and many a young squirrel have I shot in the hazy 

 days of the delightful Indian summer, when the hickories 

 were loaded with nuts, and the sound of the dropping hulls 

 and shells told too plainly where the nimble rodents were 

 enjoying_ their breakfasts. It was an accepted fact, that 

 gray squirrels breed twice a year, and I was surprised when 

 I saw that it was new to some of your correspondents,— S. 



and a, few simple teeth behind the fang. Of this group are 

 the Indian cobras. Xorth America has no true vipers, South 

 America only two, as yet known; all the most dangerous of 

 the western serpents belong to the rattlesnake tribe, Urotcdidee. 

 "Ouachita" suggested that "constrictors and venomous 

 snakes" might distinguish the two great classes; but a very 

 large number of the smaller harmless snakes seize their prey 

 aud swallow it quickly, never once loosening their hold of 

 it, and therefore have no need to kill it by constriction. 



Adirondack Winter Xotes.— Thus far our winter has 

 been favorable to the game. Deer are still roaming as they 

 please. Partridges can get good feed, and as every thing in- 

 dicates an early spring, I think the prospects good for the 

 season of 1884. I have seen no signs of the larger animals 

 called wild ; only one lynx crossed the clearing ' two weeks 

 ago. Xo signs of bear nor cat, and no signs of wolves for 

 the last five seasons. We have great numbers of the winter 

 birds about the buildings; crossbills, snow buntings, finches, 

 blue-jays, and a little bird of the size and plumage of the 

 goldfinch, who also has his note. 1 have not thought best 

 to kill one to decide who he is, as I am too glad to see him 

 about the door. Have heard only one owl during the 

 winter; one of the small ones who came out before our last 

 thaw. —A. R, Fuller (Meacham Lake, Adirondack? Fe un- 

 ary, 1884). 



Butcher's Work.— St. Albans, Vt., Feb. 11.— Sone 

 weeks ago, I found in a thicket what appeared to be the re- 

 mains of a finch. The bird was suspended by the neck in a 

 crotch, aud the back of its head and its brain were wanting. 

 I thought it might possibly be the work of the great northern 

 shrike. At any rate, the bird was hung up iu a very butcher- 

 like manner. I have known several instances of the shrike's 

 breeding iu this vicinity.— J. [Xo doubt the work of a shrike j 



Qtjail in Confinement.— Mr. J. B. Battelle, of Toledo. 

 0., has received from Tennessee a number of quail. He will 

 domesticate them and, we understand, try to breed the birds 

 in confinement. 



