July 6, 1895.] 



FOREST AND STREAM, 



9 



perhaps S^ft. long, about lin. in diameter, the head small 

 and very blunt, body striped (light and dark), horn light 

 colored, with the point merging into a brown color and 

 black for Jin. at the extreme point. 



"I would like to know through Forest and Stream 

 what kind of a snake it was. I can vouch for the cor- 

 rectness of this, and was told thatsuch a snake had never 

 been seen in that part of the country hefore. 



"Quail are very plenty there, the season is favorable to 

 nesting and there will be a large crop of young this year. 

 The song birds of all varieties common to this section are 

 unusually plenty this year. I hope to have your opinion 

 on the above snake." 



I am of the opinion that the evidence in favor of the 

 horn snake is too overwhelming to be denied. (The edi- 

 tor of the Natural History department of Forest and 

 Stream admits the existence of the "horn snake," but 

 does not think it can split a wagon tongue by striking it 

 with its "stinger.") If the above evidence, added to that 

 which I got from Dr. Taylor, Mr. Miles and others, of 

 Brownsville, Tenn., be not sufficient, the following letter 

 from Mr. W. H. Wilson, of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. 

 at Barree station, may serve as a further drop in the 

 bucket. Mr. Wilson writes: 



"In 1873, while with an engineer corps in Susquehanna 

 county, seven miles north of Carbondale, Pa. , we killed a 

 gray and dark spotted snake about 3ft. in length , and 

 were all surprised to find its tail terminated in a spur fin. 

 in length, not very sharp, but hard and smooth. Sony I 

 had not then the interest in the matter that Forest and 

 Stream has since created. 



"Some years ago I shot the head off a large black 

 snake that was coiled on a large oak limb twenty or more 

 feet from the ground. I hung it up by the neck, and 

 passing it an hour later found it quite dead and its muscles 

 relaxed. At intervals along its belly either two or three 

 sets of small curved spurs were hanging from beneath its 

 scales. These folded neatly under the lap of the scales, 

 oints toward each other, and being so concealed are sel- 

 om seen. I imagine any snake that can climb would 

 show them if killed and suspended as above." 



Here again we fall upon mystery. Yet that snakes 

 have legs appears to be the next proposition susceptible of 

 proof, It may be remembered that I mentioned the 

 specimen of "blue racer" snake showing two "feet," sent 

 me by Dr. Taylor, of Brownsville, Tenn. This specimen 

 I sent in to the Natural History department of Forest 

 and Stream, where it has proved a serious puzzle, though 

 it is thought the projections are not really feet, but possibly 

 certain organs not connected with locomotion. But how 

 about the feet on Mr. Wilson's black snake? Has anyone 

 else any help on this? I want a full specimen of the 

 "horn snake," also of any snake that has legs or feet. If 

 I can get hold of actual specimens of this sort, I shall be 

 prepared to do business with these scientific folk who 

 don't believe a horn snake can kill a tree with its stinger. 

 Of course it can. If not, what has it got the stinger for? 



Fantail Horns. 



Moreover, I am so close on the trail of the "fantail 

 deer" that I can see its horns. Mr. Phillips ("El Coman- 

 cho") writes me: 



"Write to Mrs. E. Jose Ansley at Westville, Ind. Men- 

 tion my name and tell her to send you that pair of fan- 

 tail deer horns that I was going to bring to Chicago. She 

 will let you have them for examination and to photograph 

 if you wish. Take care of them and return them when 

 you get through, as she prizes them as part of a collec- 

 tion. They came from Belle Fouche river, Wyoming." 



Of course they are fantail horns, and of course there 

 are fantail deer. I want a whole fantail deer, too. When 

 I get this and all my snakes in line I shall make plenty 

 oi trouble with science. I believe in William Tell, me! 



Destructive Fishlngr. 



Mr. Norman Fletcher, writing from Kalamazoo, Mich., 

 sends a clipping from the Minneapolis Journal, which 

 reads: "A large delegation of Aberdeenites has just re- 

 turned from Big Stone Lake, where they have spent several 

 days fishing. They tell some pretty big stories.but since the 

 gentlemen are representative business men and have 

 brought home their catch, there is no occasion to doubt 

 the veracity of their statements. The party consisted of 

 Messrs. F. W, Brooks, H. H. Sabin, S. M. Salisbury and 

 W. F. Hall. In four hours one day they caught 124 pike 

 and bass, and on the following day, reinforced by two 

 more gentlemen, on the same ground, they caught 511 

 fish, weighing 1,000 pounds, and caught them all with a 

 spoon hook, trolling. The catch has been photographed 

 by an Ortonville artist, and will be used in a pamphlet to 

 advertise this lake as the fishing pond of the West." 



In regard to this Mr. Fletcher justly sayb some severe 

 things, with which any real angler must cheerfully agree. 

 There is no sport in such butchery. In regard to it Mr. 

 Fletcher says : 



"When I see such reports I think that the sooner all 

 game fish are exterminated in the United States the 

 better. I am fond of fishing, and have had experience 

 from southern Florida to northern Michigan. Wherever 

 I go, however, I find people who seem desirous of killing 

 everything that swims, and think it a big thing to show 

 a large string of fish, even if caught in a net or by a 

 guide. And these people think they are sportsmen. The 

 idea of six grown men, who are reported to be 'repre- 

 sentative business men, going out on a lake and killing 

 fish to the extent of 511 in one day— truly the fish hogs 

 are at large in Minnesota! Are these persons of average 

 intelligence and do they consider their performance 

 sport? 



"The laws here in Michigan are very badly enforced. I 

 was out on Gull Lake (about thirteen miles from here) 

 last week and caught a few small-mouth bass. I caught 

 one of 3^1bs. with a spear wound on his back. I made 

 some inquiries and found that the natives speared the 

 bass when on their spawning beds in the spring. It was 

 reported to me that as many as twenty boats had been 

 seen out on this lake this spring spearing bass at night. 

 Gull Lake is the natural home of the small-mouth bass, 

 having a good deal of sandy and pebbly bottom. The 

 lake is about seven miles long and quite wide. With 

 proper protection this would be a fine lake for bass in a 

 few years. If the spearing continues for a few years 

 more there will probably be few, if any, bass found in 

 this lake." 



Not a Brook Trout. 

 Mr. A. N. Cheney in his interesting notes i ecently had 



the following: "There was an exhibit at the Exposition 

 which interested me, as it was a mounted trout said to 

 have been a native brook trout, and its weight was given 

 at 13 Jibs. I had no opportunity to examine the mounted 

 fish, but I would be glad to know where the fish was 

 caught, who caught it, etc., if any of the readers of 

 Forest and Stream can furnish the information." 



This trout was shown in the exhibit of another paper, 

 and was labeled "brook trout." This was not a brook 

 trout. It is the same fish which was displayed at the 

 Forest and Stream exhibit at the World's Fair. It was 

 there pronounced by Dr. Henshall to be a Dolly Varden. 

 Mr. G. W. LaRue, who owns the specimen, insists it is a 

 genuine brook trout. As the fish was caught in western 

 Montana the chances are rather against that. The fish 

 was mounted for a brook trout. In life it was not such, 

 but de mortuis nil nigi bonum. It is not the fate of all 

 Dolly Vardens to be thus translated into a higher sphere 

 in re-incarnation. 



The Diving of Pelicans. 



Mr. John Bludworth, of Rockport, Tex., writes me to 

 correct a statement about the diving of the white pelican, 

 which I had indirectly alleged. He says: 



"I think you are mistaken about the white pelican div- 

 ing (May 18), as is Mr. Bell, writing from Florida (April 

 27). They do not feed that way, as the gray ones do. I 

 have often watched them in the early morning or late in 

 the evening forming a line across the mouth of some 

 small bayou or inlet and gradually closing up (as fisher- 

 men would with a short seine) they snap up the fish as 

 they try to escape. They may dive from a height in 

 Florida, but they do not here, and they are here by thou- 

 sands in winter. 



"Tarpon are very plentiful here this season; the cold 

 weather did not seem to effect them any. A good many 

 have been caught at the Pass, and I have seen lots of 

 them here in the channel, but have not fished for them 

 any." 



"Forest and Stream" Emigration Bureau. 

 Forest and Stream should establish a Texas emigration 

 bureau. After I came back from my trip South last winter 

 I sent five different parties to the gulf coast of Texas for 

 sporting purposes. This spring I heard of a lawyer of 

 Atchison, Kan., who has moved from his old home and 

 located in San Antonio on the strength of the Forest 

 and Stream story. At Cleveland, last week, Mr. W. B. 

 Higby, of that city, told me that he intended moving from 

 Cleveland and making San Antonio his permanent home 

 and place of business. He said that the "Sunny South" 

 story of San Antonio was the only argument impelling him 

 thereto. I hate to depopulate the North, but really must 

 keep on going South and writing about it if I have luck. 

 Of one thing be sure, people in the North don't know how 

 to live. 



Texas Cat. 



Very beautiful are the little spotted ' 'leopard cat" (ocelot) 

 skins which one sometimes sees in Texas, and no American 

 fur is more ornamental, though good specimens are rarely 

 seen, as the Southern hunters are so careless in taking off 

 the skins. Last winter we killed one of these little 

 creatures, but it was only 3ft. long— full grown, as we 

 then supposed. Much to my surprise and delight this 

 week 1 received from an unknown friend (Mr. T. H. 

 Glover, of San Marcos, Texas) a perfect and ex- 

 tremely large specimen of this 'leopard cat" 

 skin. It measures 4ft. lin., and has not a blemish. I did 

 not know this animal ever grew so large, but here is the 

 skin to prove it. It is a beautiful and much prized orna- 

 ment in the Forest and Stream Western office. Great 

 cats and mighty fine men grow in Texas. I don't know 

 how Mr. Glover happened to hit thus on my natural pas- 

 sion for furs, which have always been a delight to me ever 

 since I can remember. 



Travelers. 



Prof. Edmund Orthans, of Toledo, O., the celebrated 

 painter of field scenes and animal portraits, is in Chicago 

 this week with some paintings which are on exhibit at the 

 leading art store of the city. 



Mr. H. B. Jewell, Mayor of Wabasha, Minn., a sports- 

 man of the good sort and an old-time reader of Forest 

 and Stream, was East as far as Cleveland last week. He 

 says the fishing is fine in Lake Pepin. It sounds odd to 

 hear a Minnesota man talk of having to go 500 miles fur- 

 ther West for his duck-shooting, but there is your story of 

 the game of America. E. Hough. 



909 Security Building, Chicago. 



Protz-Trotz-Froschbauer. 



Twelve years ago a wealthy peasant farmer was caught 

 poaching on the forest preserves of Baron Rothschild, 

 near Froschausen, which is not far from Frankfort-on- 

 the-Main, in Hesse-Darmstadt, Germany. The head 

 forester, whose name is Scblange, came upon him one day 

 just as he was knifing a deer he had shot. The peasant 

 sprang upon the keeper and plunged his knife into him 

 That peasant committed suicide last night, in a miserable 

 room under the slant of the roof of No. 180 Second Street. 

 His name was Adam Buser; he was sixty-eight years old 

 and has a large family of married sons and daughters in 

 Germany. 



The case was reported as "just a bum suicide," meaning 

 it was the end of a wretched person and contained no 

 "story." But a countryman of der alte Adam, as the 

 dead man was called in the neighborhood, gave the 

 particulars of his friend's life already mentioned, besides 

 others, showing the man to have been a type of the Ger- 

 man peasant. 



Adam Buser divided with his brothers the inheritance of 

 a fat farm and its accumulated products of generations 

 of cultivation. Adam was the older son and got the 

 larger part, so that he was heir by general consent to the 

 title Froschbauer, composed by the other peasants out of 

 the first syllable of the name of the place, Froschauer, 

 and the word for peasant, Bauer. He was not popular, 

 however; he was ignorant, shrewd, purse-proud, and 

 quarrelsome. Even when he married he did not settle 

 down. He loved sport and preferred to poach, though he 

 could have got permission to hunt in the neighboring 

 forests or to pay for his pleasure. The knowledge that 

 Schlange, the Baron's head-forester, was hunting him, 

 while he hunted the rich city man's game, increased 

 Adam's delight in the chase. He boasted over the beei-- 

 board that he would shoot Schlange if the forester 



caught him, and would then buy the family off. The 

 villagers applauded the promise of a fight, but they 

 despised the braggart and his money and gave him 

 another title, Protzauer, or purse-proud peasant. 



When the meeting did occur in the woods and Schlange 

 was stabbed, not shot, Buser did offer to settle. He made 

 two offers with assurance in the power of money, his 

 friend here said, and he was pretty nearly right. 

 Schlange, who recovered from his wound, listened to the 

 overtures, but he asked so much that another weakness of 

 the Froschbauer came into play. Adam offered 2,000 

 marks, Schlange wanted 5,000 marks; then the peasant 

 raised his bid to 3,000 marks, and the forester came down 

 to 4,000. There they stuck. The Protzbauer won another 

 title by his obstinate meanness; his neighbors called him 

 the Trotzbauer, the stubborn peasant. 



The Protz-Trolz- Froschbauer had to run away. He 

 made arrangements with his family to send him means 

 and hurried away to America. Here he lived on the east 

 side, leading an idle life and developing his original bad 

 temper, and sustaining the reputation he brought from 

 Froschauer. He made a few acquaintances among peas- 

 ants from his part of the country, but they could not 

 become his friends because of his disposition to quarrel. 

 So he drank beer in silence and gloom, till age and weak- 

 ness laid him open to disease. He was ill with many 

 complaints, but he had brought with him his old prejudice 

 against the Spittal, and refused to go to the hospital. 

 Among his papers was a greasy order from Dr. Einhorn 

 for his reception at the German Hospital. He had never 

 used it. Moreover, he had complained that remittances 

 from home had not come regularly of late. So in this 

 year, when his time was out, his liability for the crime of 

 stabbing the forester outlawed, he killed himself. He 

 was seen last night. This morning he was found hang- 

 ing by a strap to a clothes-hook in his dirty, dark and 

 miserable room, and the neighbors told one another that 

 the Froschbauer was dead {todt)—New York Evening 

 Post, June $1. 



About Spring Shooting. 



Editor Forest and Stream : 



I was glad to see your exposure of the "Great Duck Egg 

 Fake" in the Forest and Stream. When the infernal 

 practice of spring shooting is put an end to we shall not 

 need such Miinchausenisms to account for the scarcity of 

 wildfowl; and the selfish game hogs, who say that if they 

 do not shoot in the spring they could not shoot at all, may 

 be reminded that there is no law which compels them 

 either to burn gunpowder or commit murder, for such it 

 is, and that there are thousands of thorough sportsmen 

 who feel it no deprivation to be entirely deprived of spring 

 shooting by the absence of birds, and who are willing to 

 take such chances as they can get in the fall, and those 

 very slim ones. The slaughter of ducks and geese is by no 

 means one of the necessaries of life. Von W. 



TROUT IN A CATSKILL LAKE. 



New York, J une 25. — Editor Forest an d Stream: Most 

 of the records of successful expeditions after trout seem 

 to emanate from those only who have had the opportunity 

 of visiting the wilds of Maine, the north shore of Superior, 

 the Rocky Mountains, the streams of Canada, and such 

 places as these, which may be visited by those who have 

 time and money in abundance at their disposal; give us 

 the assurance that there still remain in favored spots 

 numbers of our earliest love, the brook trout. 



Ten years ago I remember catching as many trout as I 

 could wish, and as often as I wished, near the foot of Mt. 

 Marcy , in northern New York State, but for six years since 

 that time I have been living in Western Texas, and con- 

 fining my fishing to the capture of the Oswego bass and 

 channel catfish— not that these fish are to be looked down 

 on, for they give a man plenty of work in landing them 

 with light tackle. Still very often while lying in camp at 

 night on the plains, the thought would come to mind that 

 I Bhould feel very happy in hearing again the rush of a 

 mountain stream and having the opportunity of dealing 

 again with my friend the trout. 



In the spring of '93 and again in '94, after returning to 

 New York city, I spent the few days at my disposal for 

 such purposes in trips to northern New Jersey and Penn- 

 sylvania after my favorite fish, and although I always 

 caught a few fish, I cannot say much for their size, or 

 the excitement of landing them. 



Of course, I enjoy fishing a trout stream, whether or 

 not I catch fish, for the scenery and exercise repay one 

 for his trip, to say nothing of the expectation, as you cast 

 your flies just at the head of a deep, shaded, inviting pool, 

 that some unwary denizen of the brook may yet respond. 



I had begun to think by this spring that perhaps I had 

 best save my days of vacation until I could afford the 

 time to go away for several weeks and try the North 

 Shore or some such locality; and I had about decided to 

 give up my usual June outing, when on the 16th of this 

 month a friend said to me: "Father and I have been in- 

 vited to visit a preserve in the Catskills and catch all the 

 trout we desire; will you go?" On the 3 P. M. train of 

 the West Shore R. R. of the 17th inst. might have been 

 seen Mr. T., a gentleman between sixty -five and seventy 

 years; K., his son, and myself. We passed the night at 

 Kingston, and the 7 A. M. train on the Ulster & Delaware 

 R. R. took us through a beautiful valley and over the 

 mountains forty-eight miles west by 10:30 A.M., where 

 we were met at the station by the manager of the estate 

 we were to visit with a wagonette and fine team of grays. 

 After a ten-mile drive over the hills we reached our des- 

 tination in time for dinner. 



Imagine a small lake of about thirty acres, surrounded 

 on all sides, excepting the southwest, by hills of 500 to 

 600ft. rising directly from the shoresaud densely wooded. 

 On the southwest a slight elevation, partially cleared, on 

 which stood a two-and-a-half story house of 100ft. front, 

 with a 20ft. verandah almost encircling it and a lawn of 

 300ft. stretching down to the lake, and you have our sur- 

 roundings. The lake is about 2,000ft. above the sea level 

 I should think, but in the middle of the day we felt the 

 heat, and so waited until 4 P. M., when K. and I took a 

 canoe from the boat house, and jointing our rods started 

 around the shores, 



For two hours we whipped the waters by turns, one 



