304 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



fMAT 13, 1886. 



commence housekeeping. Our mattress was easily cut from 

 the trees, and supper was appreciated more than at home. 

 Late in the evening we enjoyed another hoat ride on the now 

 rather ruffled waters of the "lake of the falling leaves!" 



The rosy tints of Friday morning's dawn found us break- 

 fasting, for at 7 o'clock the hotel team was to convey our 

 bundles to the station. That attended to, we resume seats 

 once more in the skiff and ferry over to the Point, a distance 

 of about three miles. Were it not for the liaison of that 

 wretched cur, we might now go out with that elegant 

 steamer puffing past us, to the other end of Gogebic, fifteen 

 miles north. Leisurely gliding along the cool wateis, one 

 cannot but admire Gogebic's rare loveliness. Rocky shores, 

 wood clad hills, secluded nooks, forests of gigantic ever- 

 greens, radiant sunshine, and glitteriDg waves invite to 

 dreamy languor, out of which a sudden pull at the liae 

 rouses us. (Riuht here would be a chance to speak of an 

 almighty big haul, but I'm just like the father of my 

 country : I cannot tell a lie. That black bass weighed per- 

 haps a pound and that's all.) After an instructive ramble 

 about the woods at the Point, time was up, and the landing 

 oared for. We bade a reluctant good-bye to Gogebic. 



At the depot waited our poodle, willing to be forgiven 

 and wagging a joyous welcome. All united, the snorting 

 steam horse hurried us down to the far-famed Eagle Waters. 



After securing a convenient, serviceable flat-bottomed at a 

 very reasonable price, how did we value it, that there was 

 no necessity for carrying our traps, that we could simply 

 lay them down in the boat while lazily cruising up the quiet 

 Eigle River. The first lake was Yellow Birch. Excellent! 

 The second, Duck. Exquisite! The third, Otter. Exceed- 

 ingly romantic! The fourth, ^While Eagle. Ex— well, its 

 attractions induced us to stay. "Our attention was directed 

 to a bold eminence stretching along the eastern bank, and, 

 as the receding light of day urged a prompt decision, our 

 boat was directed there also. A few squirrels were shot, 

 dressed and hied, and bet ore the nocturnal shades had en- 

 veloped us, all preparations for the night's rest had been ac- 

 complish* d. Dark clouds advised uslo improvise with oil- 

 cloths a tent, wbich was fastened to the earth by ropes and 

 pegs. Then we said good-niirht. 



At 5 of the succeeding morning part of the environing 

 dewy landscape was reconnoitered. After a ten minutes' 

 stroll another sbeet of water— Scattering Rice— was espied. 

 On the ridge an empty pine tar can, partridge feathers, 

 chips, tent-poles, a tag with the name Rev. Tb. G., etc., 

 bore evidence that others ' before us had considered this 

 charming region "good medicine" for overwrought body and 

 mental weariness. But at present we seemed to have nature 

 "devoid ot modern impibvements" all to ourselves, and 

 were not sorry for it, for this, to my view, belongs to the 

 very acme of camping. 



M antime it had become* cooler and cooler. Gusts of 

 wiud lushed through the branches, first singly, then in quick 

 succession, the sun was veiled more and more by the blup- 

 gray clouds that rolled by. Nearer and nearer growled the 

 thunder, and slowly fell the first drops, coming faster and 

 faster until they had. degenerated into a complete deluge. 

 At first we betook ourselves to the underbrush, and en- 

 deavored to look at the funny side of the thing, but failing 

 to find it and things appearing rather suspicious, an oilcloth 

 was spread between four trees. Here we squatted for two 

 full-sized hours till the la^t dry thread had been well mois 

 tened and the pipes had gone out. Seeing no chance here 

 to become wiser, and especially wetter men, we resolved, 

 after a counsel of war, to hasten over to the north side 

 where, the evening before, we Lad perceived a pile of boards. 

 Five minutes' hard pulling brougbt us there. A location 

 was chosen, boards were dragged, nails were searched out, 

 we measured, hammered, pounded — within an hour we were 

 sheltered. Well, the exultation. Even old Sol squinted 

 from behind the clouds again. A hearty dinner dispelled 

 the remainder of uneasiness. 



Then oui sylvan residence was furnished in princely style. 

 A floor was laid, the roof was improved, nails were diiveu 

 whereon to hang pans, tin cups, pails, clothes pouches, guns; 

 colossal armfuls of browse were hewn and drawn to camp. 

 In short, no'bing was left to wish for. We could afford it. 



The rest ot ihe cloudless afternoon was spent in courting 

 a huge fire. One piece of raiment after the other was impar- 

 tially stripped off and dried. Were I afflicted with an irrev- 

 erent, humorous vein, how should 1 now chucklingly nar- 

 rate about Mr. B.'s singed pants or scorched rubber coat; but 

 charity forbids and 1*11 forbear. 



Toward evening several wall-eyed pike were hooked in 

 the waveless, pine-encircled Scattering Rice, We had not 

 often disentangled our line from the over-affectionate pond 

 lilies though, before we heard the dwarfish steamboat Eagle 

 whistle behind us and visitors alighted in the neighborhood. 

 Shortly after a skiff, containing two anglers, floated into the 

 8. R. Interchanging the news of the day with them, fishing 

 was recommenced. Birch-bark canoes on different parts of 

 the lake showed that these waters were also frequented by 

 the noble redskin. One of these sons of the forest I accosted. 

 He went up the Deer Skin Creek that night to kill a deer. 

 On White Eagle, not far from our abode, the steamer 

 anchored, and its occupants, four ladies and two gentlemen, 

 awakened the slumbering echoes of forest, hill and dale, 

 with chatting, singing, shouting, screaming and yelling. 



The next morning, ere Pheebus's golden chariot wheeled 

 into sight, I feverishly pursued the causes of a tickling sen- 

 sation, of which I had zealously but vainly struggled to rid 

 myself since the stars had begun to fade. They relished me 

 extremely, the frisky darlings. They and their scientific 

 name escaped me, but an Indian once describea them as 

 "heap bite an' no see 'em," hence their local appellation, 

 "no-see-'ems." They are hateful, detestable, voracious— but 

 why portray them ! 



1 went hunting. Discovered a lonely, sinuous, undulat- 

 ing road, from which I could occasionally, where the dense 

 leafy screen permitted, gaze down the steep banks upon the 

 river. Leaning on my trusty breechloader, the faithful dog 

 at my side, the mists that hovered over the pebbly shores 

 sluggishly departing, as the rising sun cast brightness and 

 warmth over the world; the gentle morning wind breathing 

 through the verdant curtains of the white birch; yonder, 

 part of Otter Lake's glassy surface shimmering across; afar 

 off, the hoarse notes of the wary loon; around me solitude 

 and serenity. This was the picture on that morning. It 

 will foiever form one of the pleasant reminescences of the 

 Eagle Waters. I tried to sketch, but it could not be done; 

 the no-see- -ems were too fiendish. I jumped to my feet and 

 wandered on. 



When I arrived at home, Mr. B. returned from Deer Skin 

 Creek with one fish. We put it under the planks, break- 

 fasted hastily, and set out trolling. Doubling a certain 

 point we came upon an Indian camp of six tepees. The 



bucks sat and smoked, one of the squaws cleaned venison, 

 some pappooses amused themselves with a dog, and on a 

 scaffold was strained a deer skin. Here I actually caught an 

 Indian washing himself. Further on we surprised some 

 woodducks that dallied on a log perfecting their toilet. At 

 our salute they dropped a courtesy till below the water, and 

 are probably still smiling at our impetuosity. Returning 

 after noon with some pike, we were entertained by one of the 

 campers from yesterday. When preparing dinner we looked 

 for the bass. It had disappeared. My colleague suspected 

 the spaniel, but, having educated that dog myself, I was 

 certain that he wouldn't touch a fish unless it were "well 

 done." His innocence shortly afterward emerged from the 

 pile of lumber in shape of a black mink. I rubbed the pilfer- 

 ing little bandit's skin with salt and delight, and he now 

 adorns my school room in a glass case with tobacco in him, 

 till the moths get him. That's Hector's curse. 



Toward eventide we were out on another piscatorial ex- 

 cursion and lugged homeward three handsome pickerel. 

 One of them I estimated at eight pounds to please Mr. B., 

 who caught it. (Between the reader and myself, it was a 

 six-pounder). After a delectable repast of tea, corn-cake 

 and pickerel, reclining on the bed of leaves, yarns are ex- 

 changed. This, after a while, ceases. You stare reflectively 

 on the fantastic pictures, traced in grotesque designs on the 

 pile of wood that the greedy element consumes, the eye fol- 

 lows idly the weird shadows dancing on the sombre back- 

 ground while 



"Viewless hands the seolian organ play," 

 the scintillating Orion leads to reveries of gas-lighted streets, 

 peace and good will toward all rule the heart; the musing 

 thoughts wander from the melodious lullaby of the waves, 

 splashing against the boat and the stones at the landing, to 

 the music and din of city life; before your mental vision 

 there arises home. 



At daybreak the chit of the red squirrels and the lances of 

 the uo-see-'ems aroused me. The spaniel flushed partridges 

 twice, while 1 sauntered along the forest-hidden path, but— 

 they can fly fast, can't they?— but when a third time he 

 treed three more, up to which he looked with great expecta- 

 tions, while they inquisitively peeped down, probably wonder- 

 ing at the nervous excitement of his tail, 1 satisfied his wish 

 and their curiosity with neatness and dispatch. Toward 

 evening we started for Cranberry Lake. We had read so 

 .many glowing accounts of hunting the deer, where these 

 beauties coyly step down to the pellucid shallows to bathe 

 their lithe forms and to nibble of the water lillies, that we 

 made up our minds to secure a look at them. Let nobody 

 be shocked at the idea of a deer hunt out of season. There 

 is no cause for alarm. What is virtue without temptation? 

 We were not tempted. Those deer piobably never read those 

 accounts or else must have missed us. When the pennyroyal 

 and otber preventives were used up we started for White 

 Eagle and reached our hearth at 11 P. M. 



While at supper Hector occasioned a noise in the bushes 

 and presently sw< pt down the declivity chasing a muskratof 

 enormous sizi. As we could not fire during the scramble, 

 for fear of hitting the dog, he had an ugly job of it. Before 

 he was through with her he had quite a lacerated lip him- 

 self. We finished our meal, which had turned cold, and 

 soon there reigned at the dying embers the silence of a well- 

 merited repose. 



Tuesday, at sunrise, we noticed quite a number of fresh 

 deer tracks, beginning not thirty rods from camp and con- 

 tinuing for miles along the road. With a rabbit and a raven- 

 ous appetite we wended our way toward our hut. While 

 resting at the wooded slope, with a grand view of White 

 Eagle and Otter, there passed up the thoroughfare a birch 

 bark, the individuals in which did not perceive us. Two 

 Indian women paddled, while their lords sedulously prac- 

 ticed doleefar niente, and, judging from their laughter, re- 

 lated some good ones. 



Conformably to previous arrangement we were to leave 

 to day. Our hotel was broken up, and the boards were re- 

 turned. My blanket, care-worn and aged, was suspended to 

 a tree. It has presumably been adopted by the Injuns, and 

 this winter, perhaps, serves another term in the wigwam of 

 the Chippewa. Hie transit gloria mundi, says the Lalmisi. 



The capricious White Eagle, the magnificent Otter, the 

 curling expanse of Duck, the attractive Yellow Birch, they 

 were all once more p;owed by our keel, and Eagle River 

 station was reached hale and hearty, just in time for the M 

 L. S. that, on wings of steam, brought us back. 793-11. 



JI#%#/ Watery. 



THE SPARROW HAWK. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I shall have to kill two birds with one stone; all the 

 "scientific fellers" are about to get after me, I perceive. I 

 have discussed the sparrow hawk as I observed him in Mary- 

 land, Virginia and Louisiana, and I have found his habits to 

 be the same in all those places. 1 have never seen any dif- 

 ference in the numbers observed at different seasons in either 

 of those States to warrant the conclusion that there is a gen- 

 eral migration of the species in the Atlantic coast States 

 southward in winter. 



1 suspect that I have spent as many days abroad in the 

 field in pursuit of fish and game as any man of forty-seven 

 years of age in these parts. Moreover, I did for years a very 

 large medical practice in Piedmont, Virginia, which kept me 

 in the saddle some part of every day in the year, many times 

 all day, often carrying dog and gun for a shoot going and 

 coming. In reply to Mr. Henshaw's doubt, therefore, as to 

 the sparrow hawk wintering here long before the advent of 

 the sparrow nuisance, 1 have to assure him of my personal 

 knowledge of the fact, and while I pay due. and respectful 

 attention to what that learned gentleman says and thinks, 1 

 know that he is wrong in supposing that the sparrow hawk 

 has not always been a winter resident hereabouts. He asks 

 what evidence I have of it, I reply, my own eyes. 



I still adhere to my own opinion that the sparrow hawk 

 feeds in the States named above largely, and well nigh ex- 

 clusively on field mice. I have, in my personal experience, 

 never seen in my lifetime ten small birds seized by sparrow 

 hawks. 1 have found the remains of small birds in no speci- 

 men ever examined by me, and I have examined not a few. 

 I remain of opinion, notwithstanding what Mr. Henshaw 

 thinks, that the sparrow hawk is now and has been since I 

 was a small boy, a common, and not a rare, winter resident 

 here. 1 am of opinion that the great majority of sparrow 

 hawks do not leave here for the South in winter, as Mr. Hen- 

 shaw thinks. The sparrow hawk in the grasshopper cursed 

 regions of the West may feed chiefly or almost exclusively 



on grasshoppers in grasshopper season and when the snow 

 falls may go to the South, but such beyond question is not 

 the case here. 



I beg Mr. Henshaw to understand me correctly as to the 

 utility of the destruction of grasshoppers. The point I make 

 is that of the thousands of millions of them in a given locality, 

 the few that sparrow hawks destroy neither amounts nor can 

 amount to a perceptible check upon them. To speak of the 

 number of grasshoppers destroyed by a sparrow hawk as 

 "simply incalculable," is to put it in a manner "I do not 

 understand," not being a "scientific feller" accustomed to 

 the precise language of science. If the fishculturists can 

 tell in a minute how many hundred thousand fry are in a 

 pail of water, an ornithologist ought to be able to "calculate" 

 how many grasshoppers a sparrow hawk will hold and how 

 often his contents chauge in twenty-four hours. 



There is no one fact in natural history more apparent to 

 me than that the habits of species vary very widely in dif- 

 ferent and even in neighboring localities, nor has sufficient 

 importance been attached to this fact by professional scien- 

 tists. Due attention to this fact would * save us outside bar- 

 barians the mortification of many an exhibit of ourselves. 



Let me say to Mr. Henry Litcbfieid West that upon his 

 authority 1 accept the 18th day of March, 1883, as "a warm 

 sunny day in January and February" when brown old 

 grasshoppers" were abroad, if "Acridium ahistaceiim in a 

 lively condition," be a "brown old grasshopper," and this I 

 call one grasshopper day between Dec. 1 and Jan. 1, when 

 an "enterprising" sparrow hawk may have had "brown old 

 grasshoppers" for dessert. Next! M. G. Ellzey, M.D. 



Washington, D. C. 



THE DISTRIBUTION OF SPECIES. 



BY DR. B. E. C. STEARNS. 

 [Read before the American Fisheries Society,] 



THE geographical distribution of species is one of the 

 most inviting fields which nature offers to the student. 

 Once entered upon, every path is found to lead to new and 

 attractive ristas, and to'point the way to curious and inter- 

 esting phenomena. At every step we receive delightful im- 

 pressions, and from every side hints and suggestions as to 

 nature's methods. 



Through the establishment of the United States Fish Com- 

 mission and of Eish Commissions in many of the States, as 

 well as by the organiz dion of societies and various private 

 enterprises, the propagation of food fishes has become an im- 

 portant protective resource, and the economic aspect of 

 ichthyology has been made familiar to a great number of per- 

 sons. Incidentally, too, but to a smaller extent, the scien- 

 tific side has attracted increased attention from a class of 

 persons who would not have become interested in the bio- 

 logical aspect if the latter had been presented to them first. 

 Wiih the selection of species for propagation and distribu- 

 tion, there naturally followed the investigation as to the 

 habits, habitat, etc., of each selected species; and one inquiry 

 led lo another, for in order to insure success from the busi- 

 ness standpoint, it is necessary to pursue as closely as possi- 

 ble the various steps, and follow the various methods and 

 order that nature follows. So a knowledge of the character 

 or peculiarities of the environment or native haunts of the 

 selected species has to be obtained. 



Preceding the distribution and planting of the young fish, 

 occurs the inquiry and consideration of the factors or 

 physical character of the region in which it is proposed to 

 make a plant and so on. In ibis way much special and ab- 

 stract knowledge is accumulated and brought to public 

 attention, and more general notice ; the laws of life are better 

 understood, and the relation of species to species, and of all 

 life to its environment, is made more clearly perceptible and 

 more widely known. It will be seen by the foregoing that 

 fish propagating operations and enterprises, both from the 

 scientific and natural history side, a9 well as from the econo- 

 mic point of view, are incidentally useful as promoters of 

 public education, 



1 am sure it will not be an uninteresting digression if we 

 turn for a few moments from the consideration of the distri- 

 bution of species by uatural methods, that is to say by the 

 hand of nature, as well as that intentional and artificial dis- 

 tribution by the hand of man, which is such an important 

 and interesting part of modern fish-producing operations, to 

 take a glance or side view through the collateral vista of un- 

 intentional, accidental, or more properly incidental distribu- 

 tion, and see what or where it leads to. 



The transplantation of animal and vegetable species from 

 theimative haunts to some other part of the earth, more or 

 less distant from their indigenous habitat, as an incident of 

 traffic or commercial intercourse and enterprise, has many 

 peculiar and striking illustrations. We have a notable ex- 

 ample in the geographical distribution of the common rat. 

 With the extension of commercial intercourse and interna- 

 tional trade, the brown rat or as it is often called the Norway 

 rat, as a species, became more and more cosmopolitan. At 

 the beginning of the last century this rat, a native of India, 

 made its appearance in Europe", having stolen a passage on 

 the ships engaged in the India trade. 



It first appeared in England in 1730, and twenty years 

 later it had reached France. In Europe it drove out the 

 black rat which appeared in that continent during the middle 

 ages; the black rat coming from no one knew where, having 

 previously driven out the native mouse which was the only 

 representative of the family known to the ancients. At the 

 present time the brown rat is everywhere, pretty much; on 

 the main lands of the globe and the islands of all seas, wher- 

 ever commerce sends its ships. So too with the cockroaches 

 (Blatta orientalis), a very cosmopolitan and very disagreeable 

 form of insect life. These two familiar species are exceed- 

 ingly active animals, and make their way on board of vessels 

 or hide in packages of merchandise, and are thus carried on 

 board of ships or cars, their inconspicuous size enabling them 

 to steal a passage. 



Again we have other illustrations of unintentional distri- 

 bution by man, where the trees, plants or seeds of one region 

 are sent to another. "Upon the trees and plants thus trans- 

 ported there often occur forms like the scale bark lice, 

 Aspidiotus and Zecanium; also the eggs of various insects. 

 Many seeds contain the grub, maggot or larva of insect 

 forms. If the roots of the trees or plants are protected by 

 a ball of the eaith in which they grew, and the earth if pro- 

 tected, by a cover of bagging, from crumbling away and 

 separating from the roots, a precaution which is usually 

 practiced by careful nurserymen, both earth and bagging 

 afford a hiding place for small animals, such as insects (and 

 larvae of insects), worms, slugs and other small forms. If 

 traffic, through the facilities of its machinery, assists in dis- 

 tributing plants that are useful to man, by the same system 

 it contributes to his discomfort and pecuniary loss. It 1b 



