Not. 19, 1885.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



325 



roast for supper, which "Tarpon" and I demolished between 

 us. There is no need tliat 1 go tiring myself tramping 

 through hamaks about the headwaters of the Anclote or the 

 Cootie, though I have invitations to live with and hunt with 

 my cracker acquaintances that would fill out the winter. 

 When the weather gets a little cooler I shall make some 

 hunting visits; also carry out the programme of "hunting 

 cahoots with Geo. Gause!" When we succeed in shooting a 

 cahoot will mount the skin and forward it to the office of 

 FoRTSST AKD Btheah for the inspection of the supernally 

 witty naturalists who have taken such lively and Intel Ugent 

 interest in the cahoot question. Nessmitk. 



Several correspondents ask "What has become of the 

 cruise of the sharpie?" It was partly written out two 

 months ago. But there were some points connected with 

 summer cruising among the shoals and keys of the Gulf 

 coast that it struck me had never been just rightly eluci- 

 dated by any previous writer, and I thought liest to hold my 

 lufiE until 1 had fairly weathered the heat and the black mos- 

 quito of (he keys, by all odds the worst of his kind. The 

 weather has grown fine and cool. But a trip to the keys 

 last Sunday proved that tlie black mosquito still lived. He 

 is like the poor. N ^K. 



AMONG THE GULF KEYS. 



WE have just returned from a successful whaUng voy- 

 age, 'rhree days ago "Nessuiuk" and myself started 

 out with^the Honest John for a trial trip. We were afloat 

 earlv and worked our way to the mouth of the river, where 

 we "stopped for a chat with friends. Meanwhile along 

 comes the crack boat of the river. Now is our chance for a 

 race; as we are confident of winning we give the crack a 

 good start and then after him. The crack starts out close- 

 hauled for the keys, and Honest John with flat sheets 

 prepared to follow. By the way, Honest John is not a 

 cutter. We soon pick up the little fellow and lap on to his 

 weather quarter. He tries to outpoint, but it can't be done, 

 and nicely blanketing him we pass on. 



We reach the keys at 11 A, M., "Nessmuk" starts a fire for 

 dinner, I start for beach birds. As I walk along the beach 

 a porpoise, also after his dinner, runs himself hard and fast 

 on the sand. The whaling instinct, so long dormant, is 

 roused and with my pocket knife for a lance I go for the 

 prize, and I soon have the porpoise. Dragging him "into 

 deep water I tow him back to the landing. 



Did you ever try porpoise steak V It is good, all the same. 

 Dinner cooked and eaten, we take an early start to explore 

 the key. Palmetto, pine, niangTove and bayonet; beach 

 birds, coons and fiddlers; miles of white beach, acres of blue 

 water, millions of little white caps, a bright sun, a crisp 

 salt breeze and all outdoors to enjoy it in. What a sight. 

 Two old graybeards running around in the surf barefoot, 

 lying on the sand, picking up shells, chasing soldier crabs. 

 Who wouldn't when he could? At night each rolls himself 

 in his blanket and lies down under the stars. 

 Twelve o'clock comes and with it a norther. Whew! how 

 - it does blow. "Nessmuk'' doubles up like a grub, while I 

 start for shelter. Only a few steps away is a thicket of man 

 groves. In a trice the remains of our fire are carried into the 

 dense part of it. Then the camp ax comes into play. Bushes 

 are cut, a wind break made, a tarpaulin stretched for the 

 threatened rain, and in a short half hour we are comfortable 

 again. 



In the morning the wind had dropped somewhat, btit was 

 stUl quite heavy. The tryworks were now organized and 

 our whale is stripped of his jacket. The fact is we want 

 some oil for om- guns, etc. ; besides we want the fun of play- 

 ing at whaling.' "Nessmuk" goes to sleep while I mince 

 blubber, tend fire, manufacture impromptu boilers, strainers, 

 etc.; and imagine I am doing a huge business— with one 

 porpoise and a three-pint ketttle. By working patiently 

 and carefully, we manage to get a quart of fine oil, and 

 we vote whaling a good business. 



On one of the keys we find a well made by the sponge 

 fishermen. On another are the ruins of a house, and an old 

 clearing said to have been made by some men who did not 

 care to fight in the Confederate army, aud so came here and 

 fought mosquitoes. There are legends concerning bm-ied 

 treasure here. We did not find any. Some of the old 

 Spanish purchase money is said to have been hidden here. 

 If so it was hidden effectually. 



But the chief chai m of the keys are the grand stretches 

 of white beach on the gulf side. They are white and even, 

 from twelve to twenty yards in width, and backed by a 

 fringe of cabbage palms. Back of these is usually a shell 

 ridge, then a grassy savanna, ending in a dense growth of 

 mangroves on the shore side. Bird life is well represented 

 here — curlew, snipe, heron, plover, peMcans, cormorant, now 

 and then an ibis, the roseate spoonbill or pink curlew, as it 

 is called here. Of mammals the coon is the sole representa- 

 tive, so far as I have seen. On some of the keys further 

 south there are deer and sometimes bear. Fish can be 

 caught easily and in almost any quantity. There are redflsh 

 or channel bass, grouper, drum, sheepshead, snapper, sea 

 trout, cavalle, etc. 



Taking them all round, the keys are a pleasant place for 

 a day or a week's outing. We found them so at all events. 

 When we finally swung the Honest John's bowsprit toward 

 the river mouth, it was with a feeling that our time had 

 been well spent. The norther had blown itself out, and we 

 found boats out in force for an afternoon's sail, and although, 

 as I remarked before. Honest John is not a cutter, we had 

 no trouble to keep up with the procession. We sped along, 

 over the bar, into the river, past the little town, past the 

 mills, and as we rounded up to the wharf at home, the stars 

 were twinkling cheerily and our eyes were winking wearily. 



Tarpos. 



Tarpon Sprino.s, Fla., JsTov. 3. 



POINTS WORTH CONSIDERING. 



1. Because of the compact style of its typography the Fobest and 

 Stream actually contains, weekly, more reading matter pertaining to 

 its chosen field than is found in any simUai- publication in the world. 



2. In general excellence the reading columns of the Forest and 

 Stream are of a higher grade than those of any similar publication in 

 the world. 



3. Taking into account the amount and the character of weekly 

 reading given, the Forest and Stream is away ahead of any similar 

 publication in the world. 



4. If a sportsman wishes a sportsman's papei-, he will be better 

 suited by the Forest and Stream than by any .similar publication in 

 he world. 



Address aU commimications to the Forest and Stream Piihlijih' 

 ing Co. 



THE WHITE GOAT. 



Editor Fai^st and Stream.: 



"Did 1 say the horse was sixteen feet high?" "Yes, you 

 did." "Then, by heavens, I will stick to it." Such appears 

 to be the manner in which Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman acts in 

 reference to his recent articles on the white goat. 



After my first letter appeared in the Forest and Stream 

 reviewing his which appeared in the Geninry of last year, 

 others appeared from gentlemen, whose knowledge on these 

 matters deserved the highest consideration, corroborating in 

 the most substantial manner my statements and views oa'the 

 subject, and Mr. G. bowed in all humility to their dictum, at 

 the same time stating that he did not consider mine worth 

 noticing — not in so many words, but practically to the same 

 effect. Later Messrs. Fannin and Grifiin undertook to give 

 similar testimony, the result of their experiences. Mr. G. 

 has sought to demolish us with one fell swoop in one letter 

 to your paper, after the plan of the Roman emperor who 

 wished that all his subjects had but one head so that they 

 might all be decapitated with one blow. 



What has been written by me was done with the best pos- 

 sible Intention of correcting, so far as I knew, errors of a 

 grave description relating to matters of natural history; and 

 if in so doing the sensitive nerves of Mr, G. were wounded, 

 who was to blame? On this issue I am willing to discuss the 

 subject and on no other. When Mr. G. shirks the point and 

 becomes obscured in a Puget Sound smoke of his own rais- 

 ing, he must take the consequences. 



It is to be very much regretted that a person who has 

 crossed the Atlantic thirteen times and visited the Puget 

 Sound country five times should not be able to give informa- 

 tion of an interesting and valuable character, instead of that 

 which is faulty and worthless. The book which would con- 

 tain all that Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman doe.s not know about 

 the white goat would be an exceedingly large volume. 



■T. C. HUOHES. 



>^BW Westminster, B. C, Nov. .3. 



Editw Forest and Stream: 



From that portion of British Columbia which is the border 

 land between civilization and the domain of the savage — 

 where the yet untamed Siwash stalks forth, blanket-clad, in 

 quest of his daily ration of roots and grasshoppers, Mr. W. 

 A. Baillie-Grohman pokes his head out of his fm- sack and 

 once more shouts "Antelope Goat!" I can imagine him — on 

 the banks of the tranquil Kootenay, beneath the lee of some 

 granite boulder, ensconced in his fur bag, and, like the Es- 

 quimaux, "dreaming the happy hours away" until rudely 

 awakened by the uncultivated gTowl from the fog-shrouded 

 "shores of Burrard Inlet. With what a burst of descriptive 

 eloquence he commences his letter in your issue of ()cl. 15! 

 But before he reaches the sixth line of the first paragraph he 

 begins to blunder. It will be news to the people of Burrard 

 Inlet that the Cascade Mountains form, the background oi 

 their harbor. But Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman's knowledge 

 of the geography of British Columbia and his acquaintance 

 with the habits and distribution of the white goat seem about 

 equal to each other. Only one thing is proved by this last 

 letter of his, and that one thing is, that Mr. W. A. Baillie- 

 Grohman was a very angry man when he wrote it. 



And no doubt it was a piece of great presumption on my 

 part to question the conclusions arrived at by Mr. Baillie- 

 Grohman. The poor, bald fact of my twenty odd years" ex- 

 perience of the habits of the white goat, in widely separated 

 districts — during which time I have probably killed more of 

 them than Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman ever saw— cannot, of 

 course, weigh for a moment against his boast that he has 

 crossed the ocean thirteen times to try to kill something. As 

 Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman would say, the true "raimi 

 of his "hereditary scorn" is divulged in this. And, 

 indeed, when one comes to consider it calmly, it is quite too 

 utterly absurd, you know, that one who lives in such an out- 

 of -the-world corner as this, one who actually has to work for 

 a livelihood, should poke his head out of his "Siwash-built" 

 cabin, to question the opinions of Mr. W. A. Bailhe-Groh- 

 man. The trouble with Jlr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman's 

 account of the white goat is just this: Shooting a few 

 goats in a locality where they are rare and difiieult of 

 access, he builds on his limited experience a theory as to 

 the habits of the animal, which a wider acquaintance there- 

 with would have corrected. Had he returned and related 

 his exploits, and been content with that, no one would have 

 objected to a little of that long-bow practice common with 

 young hunters, but when he sets up for an authority, lays 

 down the law as to the only proper or possible method of 

 hunting the animal, and chalks out the limit of its southern 

 range, he goes a little too far. Doubtless he would have 

 defined its distribution northward also, had not that wonder- 

 ful Puget Sound .smoke choked him off. 



When his statements are questioned by an officer of the 

 U. S. Army, he graciously bows submission; but when an 

 obscure hunter ventures to hint that there may yet be a few 

 things which he does not know about goats, his fur sack 

 gets too warm for him, and he pokes out his head and shows 

 his teeth. 



Mr.W. A. Baillie-Grohman persists in saying that only three 

 museums in the world possess specimens of the white goat, 

 although this statement has been sliown to be erroneous by 

 so higli an authority as the Natural History editor of the 

 Forest and Stream. 



The skin of the white goat is practically of no commercial 

 value here. An Indian— or a white man for that matter- 

 might hawk a dozen of them around for a week, and not 

 succeed in disposing of them for one dollar apiece, Mr. W. 

 A. Baillie-Grohman's assertion that they find a ready market 

 in Victoria, to the contrary notwithstanding. In fact I am 

 at a loss to know to what use they could be put. A few are 

 purchased for mats, but no matter how well they are tanned 

 the hair comes out and they become a nuisance and are 

 kicked out of doors. So small is the demand for them that 

 an Indian very rarely shoots a goat with a view of dispos- 

 ing of the skm to the whites; on the contrary, as soon as the 

 skin is removed from the animal it is cut full of slits from 

 three to ten inches long. All but two of thu-ty or forty 

 skins which I saw last spring in the Moodyocks ranche 

 were mutilated in this way— why, I have not been able to 

 ascertain. ' 



A Hudson's Bay musket, on this coast at least, is not a 

 rifle; and Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman's announcement that 

 he has seen Sharps and Winchesters badly beaten by these 



old flint-locks must be a crashing blow to the promoterl 

 of the Forest and Stream trajectory test; they must "fees 

 tired" when they realize that tliey have been spending time 

 and money on arms that must now take a back seat in the 

 presence of the iron tubes and "flash pans" of a bygone age. 

 Yerily, the world is moving— backward, and Mr. W. A. 

 Baillie-Grohman is the Atlas who packs it on his shoulders! 



What I stated in that paragraph of my former letter in 

 which I discussed the relation of the white goat to the ante- 

 lope—a paragraph from which Mr. W. A. teaillie-Grohman 

 quotes only a few carefully selected words— was that there 

 was nothing of the latter animal in the appearance or actions 

 of the white goat as I have seen i1. I did not discuss the 

 "affinities" of the "skull and other bones"— such matters I 

 leave to naturalists. 



Mr. W. A. BailHe Grohman's hint about our disinterested 

 invitation to Eastern sportsmen is not, in one sense, far from 

 the mark. We do expect that the Province, at least, will 

 derive benefit from their visits; and, personally, we do not 

 anticipate — for those of them whom we have met were gen- 

 tlemen—that any one of them will, in a state of absent- 

 mindedness, bid farewell to our camp-fire, leaving us poorer 

 than he found us. If Mr. W. A. Baillie-Grohman wishes me 

 to notice jiim further he must in discussing the habits, etc., 

 of the white goat, confine himself to his own experiences, 

 and he must also keep his temper or abstain from using lan- 

 guage more befitting a "poker sharp" than a sportsman. 

 Whether or not my domicile is of the primitive style of 

 architecture which he mentions, is a matter of no interest to 

 the readers of Forest and Stream. Log cabin or stately 

 mansion play but a very small part indeed in moulding the 

 characters of those who dwell within them, and it no more 

 follows that he of the former may not be a gentleman than 

 that a gilded fraud could not graduate from the latter. 

 Hastings, B. 0., Oct. 30, 1685. R. Griffin. 



HABITS OF THE GILA MONSTER. 



THE followiug letter, received by Dr. H. C. Yarrow, 

 Curator of Reptilla in the National Museum, is interest- 

 ing. So little is known about HelodMrma susjiectmn that any 

 facts about it are eagerly read; 



Dear Sm— In conversation with Dr. Stephen Bowen a few 

 evenings since the subject of the Gila monster (Eeloderma 

 mspectim) was brought up, and the Doctor stated that you 

 claimed that the reptile was not poisonous. I have a fine 

 specimen of the Helodenna susperfmn, which I have been in- 

 vestigating for the last four months with a view of learning 

 its habits the more coiTectly, but have not attempted to 

 demonstrate its venomous qualities, and have thought that 

 you might probably be interested in the results that I have 

 reached. I have been told that the animal is very poisonous; 

 in fact if half what has been told me is true there cannot be 

 any doubt but the Gila monster is very poisonous. 



'The information that I have obtained respecting this 

 point, together with some correspondence with persons who 

 live in Arizona, I will forward to you in a short time. The 

 animal I have was sent me four months ago from Arizona- 

 near Phoenix. For more than a month I was unable to find 

 anything in the shape of food that it would eat, when one 

 DOrii.m <^-n«u,fi«d to try a fresh chicken's egg. Breaking the 

 shell, so"TnaV"ffi^^^_°'^liy"^■1^'^■■ '^'^--~ ran r>ut7 and- niacins; the 

 egg near its nose, I had the sam?£2. Pll^^.*Jji'"li!c'"™ rme. 

 ot seeing it lap up the contents of the e'eg-shell somewhat as 

 a kitten does milk. Since this time I have triven it an egg 

 per day, and it is doing finely on this diet. " ^ 

 The animal has some very interesting habits; its mode of 

 drinking water is peculiar. Putting its head under the 

 water up to its eyes it then laps out its tongue for a few 

 moments taking in water until its mouth seems full to 

 distention. Then it raises it head and body almost straight 

 up, and, by a movement similar to that of a snake swallow- 

 ing a toad, it contracts the anal portion of the abdomen first, 

 then the entire muscles of the abdomen contract and seem to 

 crawl forward until the water passes into its stomach. After' 

 going through this interesting process three or four times it 

 starts oft", stopping frequently as though listening for the 

 approach of some enemy. I have discovered that it is very 

 stisceptible to sound, especially the voice. I may pound on 

 the box in which it is confined without disturbing it, but if 

 I speak sharply it will rise up, hsten for a moment, and 

 then hurry away to some other portion of th e box. 



As to what is called its breath I am not satisfied whether 

 the belief that the natives have of it being venomous is true 

 or not. If I place a clean window pane in front of its mouth 

 and then touch its tail to make it blow and continue the 

 experiment a few moments T observe that it deposits a sort 

 of light colored mildew dust on the glass. I first discovered 

 this peculiar featm-e by placing it in a shallow box with a 

 clean glass over the top for the purpose of exhibiting it at 

 our county fair; but so heavy was this mould-like dust 

 deposited on the glass that shortly I was unable to see it 

 through the glass, and I had to resort to a deep box without 

 a glass. This dust is not a mist. 



The animal is very hvely, and I know that it recognizes 

 me, as I can do almost anything with it alone, but when any 

 one comes up it immediately begins to show signs of fear and 

 tries to get back into its box. 



I am unable to discover any faugs and believe it has none. 

 When approached by any object resembling a skunk or 

 squirrel in shape and size, by fastening it on the end of a 

 stick and pushing it up to the monster,'" it attempts to defend 

 itself by biting at the object, but does so bv a lateral motion 

 of the head and body, but never— although placed right in 

 front— does it attempt to jump or strike forward, but will 

 immediately turn sidewise and then strike the object as a 

 wild boar does when attacked. It always blows in connec- 

 tion with its strike. 



I would forward the reptile to you if you desire to make 

 further investigations, but I presume you have done so to 

 your perfect satisfaction. 



The correspondence with the parties written to in Arizona 

 will be forwarded as soon as I get it in shape, together with 

 the affidavits. Yours very truly. Dr. S. P. Guiberson. 

 Sasta Paula, Ventura County, Oal. , Aug. 25, 1886. 



OoLLECTiNG BiRD SPECIMENS.— Nov. 7.— Editor Forest 

 and Sl?rearn: Some of your readers may remember that a 

 few months ago I made a rather earnest protest, to put it 

 mildly, ag-ainst the wholesale collecting of birds' for scien- 

 tific purposes, especially as concerned aT report by Mr. Wm, 

 Brewster of the collecting of specimens of Swainson's war- 

 bler. _ I thought then that I was quite justified in denounc- 

 ing it as wanton butchery; but in a recent private letter 

 Mr. Brewster makes an explanation which convinces me 

 that I was quite wrong. And now, as an act of justice to 

 him and his co-laborer Mx. Wayne, I wi.sh to acknowledge 



