292 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Oct. 5, 1895. 



Jones notes the high, projecting snag of the tallest tree 

 near the edge of the colony. There is a white crane on 

 that limb. It s^ems to him there always is one there. In 

 short, it is a habit of the bird to alight on the highest 

 branch offering itself. 



Out of the thousands of nests in the vast colony, how- 

 can the parent egret pick its own nest, since all look so 

 much alike? Thomas Jones often wonders about that, 

 and sometimes laughs a little to himself. The parent 

 egret haB been out after food, and returns to the colony. 

 Without a second's hesitation, be picks out his own nest, 

 and pauses for an instant directly above it, high up in the 

 air. Then'he lets his long legs drop straight down, and 

 throwing his wings up, just falls down through the air, 

 feet first, in the most coinicnl and awkward-looking way 

 in the world, though he never misses his nest by an inch, 

 but lands just where he wanted to. As he thus backs 

 downstairs out of the air, his long plumes, attached in a 

 little clump at his shoulders and spreading out over his 

 back as far down as the longest tail feathers, flare up in 

 the air, n- versed and standing upover his head ashedrops, 

 as a white garment would in the resistance of the air. 



On these plumes Thomas Jones fixes his eye. He shoots 

 an egret and satisfies himself that the plumes are "ripe," 

 i. e., in their prime condition. Then he builds his camp 

 on the best ground he can find near by, and the next day 

 is ready to go to work. 



Surely Thomas Jones is not going to kill these birds 

 right in the nesting season, when the helpless young are 

 in the nest and must die also if their parents die! That 

 cannot be possible! you say. Yet that is precisely what 

 he is going to do. It is not his fault, he will tell you, 

 that the plumes are not good in the fall, winter or early 

 spring, and are not prime until the height of the breeding 

 season. Here are the plumes, found at much labor, 

 reached at much danger, says Thomas Jones, blind and 

 deaf — further than that, and there is the price offered 

 me for them, so much an ounce, perhaps $40 an ounce, or 

 perhaps as low as $140 a pound. Is this right to kill 

 these birds at this time? I am not clear that we should 

 ask this question any more of Thomas Jones than of the 

 wholesale milliners' supply bouse, or of the letail milliner, 

 or of every lady on the street. Only the fact remains, 

 pitiless, horrible, unspeakable, that the gathering of the 

 plumes is a harvest of death, a harvest untimely, disas- 

 trous, because it is reaped at the sowing time of life. 

 Every egret killed for its plumes is killed when it is help- 

 less through its blind natural love for its offspring, and 

 when its death means the death of all its helpless young. 

 Does the wholesale man know this? Does he care? Does 

 ' anybody know or care? Is it not the one thing to be re- 

 membered, that my lady must have her plumes — this 

 modern civilized type of womanhood must — to distin- 

 guish her from the shop girl — unless the shop girl marries 

 rich and becomes able also to wear these plumes of death. 

 "White — they are white, these plumes. It is mockery. 

 They should be the blackest sable, and they should stain 

 black the white fingers that caress them. 



But Thomas Jones cannot stop to argue. The next day 

 he pushes quietly into the edge of the nesting ground. 

 He ties his boat firmly within easy range of the tall snag 

 he saw the day before. He takes out his rifle — the .22 

 short will make no noise, and it will serve his purpose per- 

 fectly. There is an egret on the tall snag. Taking a 

 steady aim, Thomas Jones fires, and the bird whirls down, 

 dead. One or two other birds start on their perches in the 

 same tree, but settle back. One by one they, too, whirl 

 out and lie in a white tangled mass at the foot of the 

 tree. An egret raises herself up above the rim of the nest 

 on which she sits, and the tiny bullet pierces her. She 

 whirls down, lying white and motionless. The little ones 

 gape and cry, but no food comes. The father was killed 

 on the tree near by. One by one, out of the neBts, off 

 from the limbs of the trees, here, there, anywhere — for 

 the birds are all about, and so stupid with the breeding 

 fever that they will not leave — the slender white birds 

 meet their doom. That tall snag has yielded twenty vic- 

 tims. Thomas Jones has not moved from his boat. He 

 has over 200 birds down. He can tell by hi3 cartridge 

 boxes, for he rarely misses a shot. It is easy shooting. 



After noon Thomas Jones goes out and gathers up his 

 spoils. A cut of the knife and the clump of plumes is off. 

 The carcass of the egret is left lying. Two hundred car- 

 casses of egrets are left lying. That many more to-mor- 

 row. Many more than that the next day, for by that 

 time the wailing of the dying young of the first day's vic- 

 tims will have ceased. From then on, day by day, in- 

 creasing in three-fold ratio, the harvest of death goes on, 

 steadily, pitilessly, on the sowing grounds of life, out in 

 the silent wilderness where the birds have tried to hide 

 their homes. 



In less than a month it is over. The long white lines no 

 longer cross the country going to and from the feeding 

 grounds. The white forms no longer appear on the naked 

 trees. Doubly naked the forest stands in silent desola- 

 tion. Sodden and discolored the once white forms below 

 the trees are sinking into the slime. From beneath the 

 trees and from the nests up in the trees a great stench 

 goes up. Not a bird, young or old, is left alive. The old 

 ones stayed till death came, bound by the great instinct of 

 nature to remain with their young. 



ZZJ ones, a little yellower, but not sick, f or he is a healthy 

 man, packs up his feathers carefully and hies him to the 

 railway for a swift and secret journey out of the country. 

 He wonders where he can find another roost next year. 

 Behind him is desolation. 



E. Hough.. 



Does a Deer Challenge? 



Carmi, 111. — Some years since, in company with five 

 besides myself, I was still-hunting deer in Arkansas. On 

 the morning we were to break camp I shouldered my 

 Winchester to take a farewell tramp over the grounds we 

 had hunted for two weeks. I had walked about one and 

 a half miles and was standing near the end of a prairie. 

 Behind me wa3 a briery slough. I had been standing 

 several minutes when I heard three successive sounds or 

 noises that were much louder and coarser than the whis- 

 tle or snort of any d-er I had previously heard. At first 

 I thought it some other ai imal, but presently he was in 

 sight, and when within about SoOyds. of me he ran into a 

 flock of turkeys. He would single one out and chase it 

 away, then another, until he had chased off nine or ten, 

 likely all of the flock, when he returned to the line or 

 track he was following and came on, part of the time 

 trotting and part of the time walking, but all the time 

 traveling as if he were tracking something. When within 



80yds. of me he came on my track and Btopped, turning 

 half around , giving me a fine shot. He was only a three- 

 point buck, and rather small for a three-pointer, but be 

 seemed to be on the warpath, judging by the way he 

 chased the turkeys, and he seemed to care very little for 

 me. Now, I have frequently heard deer whistle when 

 frightened, and have heard them snort from same cause, 

 but this deer made altogether a louder and different 

 noise from either. Bachelor. 



ORIOLES, GRAPES AND SHOT. 



West Pack, N. Y,, Sept. 28.— Editor Forest and Stream: 

 When your Eoglewood correspondent, Didymus, becomes 

 a grower of Delaware grapes on the banks of the Hudson 

 he will be better qualified to criticise my course in shoot- 

 ing orioles in my vineyard. At present he does not know 

 what he is talking about. The oriole does not "consume 

 enormous quantities" of grapes, but, if left alone, will de- 

 stroy enormous quantities. The robins will make a clean 

 sweep of the oxheart cherries, leaving only the naked pits 

 adhering to the stems. Not so the oriole in the vineyard. 

 It simply punctures the grape, stabs it to the heart with 

 that stiletto-like beak and leaves it to perish on the clus- 

 ter. Having got a taste of the juice of the graps it seems 

 seized with the demon of destruction and fairly runs riot 

 amid the clusters. I have sometimes wondered if it did 

 not become intoxicated, and so let itself out in a regular 

 grape juice dehauch. One season I was absent from home 

 during the ripening of the grapes, and on my return early 

 in September found that about five tons of Concords, all 

 the grapps I had at the time, had been practically ruined 

 by the orioles. At least their market value had been so 

 impaired that we were compelled to sell them for wine 

 grapes. One side and often both sides of nearly every 

 cluster had been punctured. I found only three or four 

 orioles in the vineyard, but they were working it most in- 

 dustriously. They seemed to have taken each row and 

 each arm in order, and had missed but very fe*v clusters 

 in their depredations. When a grape is punctured its 

 juice slowly oozes out, the bees and wasps come and the 

 whole cluster is presently besmeared. In rainy weather 

 the wounded grapes rot and the cluster is still more be- 

 smirched. 



The robin often attacks the grapes also, but he will con- 

 fine himself to one or two bunches, eat his fill and be off. 

 We never trouble him or the catbird. 



I would willingly give the orioles half a ton out of my 

 annual eight tons of Delawares if they would make a 

 clean sweep of them as far as they went, but to let them 

 take their half ton by sampling every cluster on the vines, 

 this I will not submit to as long as shot and powder can 

 be had. They seldom puncture more than a dozen ber- 

 rieB on a cluster, but this destroys the beauty of the 

 cluster, and makes double and treble work for the trim- 

 mers when the fruit comes to be packed. 



The birds are very shy while working the vineyard and 

 have the manners of sneak thieves. When disturbed 

 they do not get up and fly away like the harvest robin, 

 but dart under the vines, flying close to the ground 

 and leaving the vineyard by the back door as it were. 

 They are mostly young birds too, or females. Rarely is 

 the brilliant-colored male seen among the vines. 



They begin their depredations when the grapes first 

 begin to turn, about the middle of August, and continue 

 them till the first week in September. During this 

 period the birds are slowly moving southward, and they 

 often come in large numbers; this year, larger than ever 

 before, my boy thinks that some days as many as a hun- 

 dred were hovering about the vineyard. When he drove 

 them out of the Ddlawares, they would dive down into 

 the Wordens. I have never known them to attack the 

 white grapes. 



It is not, therefore, to save a few grapes that I shoot the 

 orioles, or cause them to be shot. It is to save the very 

 small margin of profit on grape growing. When it be- 

 comes a struggle for life between man and bird, the bird 

 must go to the wall. 



I am happy to report that the bluebirds are not all dead 

 yet. During this month I have seen and heard them on 

 many occasions. The first one appeared about Aug. 20. 

 It sat on the top of a tall elm and called and called a long 

 time, as if trying to find a comrade. Since then my ear 

 has frequently caught the sweet, plaintive note from the 

 air above. 



But I fear the note of the oriole will always be an ugly 

 sound to me, so unpleasant are my associations in recent 

 years with that bird. John Burroughs. 



m\e J?## and (§un. 



A CAMP ON ROARING RIVER. 



VIII. 



"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! 

 Prophet still, if bird or devil!" 



The shades of night were settling fast; the waning har- 

 vest moon looked calmly down from the eastern sky; 

 crickets chanted their mournful ditties; katydids sang 

 their plaintive songs of love, while the bat and the night 

 hawk flitted overhead. Now and then the sharp bark of 

 the distant coyote and the sepulchral hoot of £he nearer 

 owl came in on the chorus, and, all in all, the weird sur- 

 roundings and ghostly environments were sufficiently 

 romantic to satisfy the most fastidious mountaineer. 



Every one of the boys thoroughly enjoyed all this and 

 these, for each and every one of them was blessed with 

 that instinct of the true sportsman that finds pleasure and 

 happiness in communing with nature in the profouniest 

 depths of her own wild solitudes. The gray, gloomy moun- 

 tains; the dark chasms and silent cafions; the spectral, 

 limbless trunks of dead and decaying pines; the ghastly 

 fissures; the bald peaks, defeated rivals in the battle for 

 supremacy that once raged among these hills, in which 

 old Hood won the robe of eternal white— all made the 

 scene and the occasion so charming, so ravishingly en- 

 chanting, that the boys felt that it was well worth all 

 their hardships and toils. 



Here nature looks old and gray, dressed in tatters, and 

 the wrinkles of her poor old face seem to deepen even as 

 you look. Her decaying ribs are fleshless and bare; her 

 eyes, once sparkling with living fire, are now but hollow, 

 charred sockets. She sits, deaf to the melodies and blind 

 to the beauties of the living world below, and we our- 

 selves are made to feel that we are sitting at her tomb, 



"On such occasions, among such surroundings, if there 

 is any righteousness in a man's soul, any respect for 

 nature in his heart, any of the finer sensibilities or emo- 

 tions about him, they will find recognition, if not expres- 

 sion." 



"Isn't this a wild, weird sort of a scene?" asked the Doc- 

 tor, soliloquizingly. 



"Yes," said Swift, "such conditions as these always ad- 

 monish me not to forget how small a factor of creation I 

 am." 



"I believe," remarked Mead, "that the sad pleasure of 

 such communings with nature, in her varied moods and 

 conditions, leads us to a better understanding of our re- 

 lation to the great problem of existence." 



"Oh, you fellows make me tired," put in Smyth, "let's 

 talk about how we are going to circumvent some of these 

 elk to-morrow." Smyth is a very practical man. 



Then there came a sound that stopped all their musings 

 — a sound that fairly froze the blood in their veins, and, 

 as O O. Smith would say, made the hair on every one of 

 their heads sit straight up. 



It was a familiar sound, but that only made it sound 

 the more weird and ghostly, like the familiar voice of 

 one long since dead and buried. 



Again it floated out on the Boft night air like the wail 

 of some lost spirit: "No more fun!" and the echoes re- 

 plied: "No more fun!" 



What could this mean? Could it be that One Lung 

 was dead and that his sad spirit had returned to earth to 

 haunt his persecutors? Possibly he had been devoured 

 by some varmint and his soul had transmigrated to the 

 locality of their camp and was now present in the form 

 of some beast of the forest or bird of the air. There it is 

 again — a double dose this time: "No more fun! No 

 more fun!" 



"You can't fool me," said Smyth as he got up and 

 reached for a Winchester. "That monkey is somewhere 

 hereabout in the flesh and blood, life size; and if I can 

 find him there'll be one less Chinaman for the Irish to 

 howl about in this land of the free. Besides I ain't stuck 

 on this spirit business; I'd rather meet a cougar any day 

 than one of these miserable spirits. They're wretched 

 themselves and want to make everybody else wretched." 



"No more fun!" again came wafted on the breath of 

 the night. Smyth was good and mad by this time be- 

 sides being just a little bit nervous, and even the other 

 boys began to wish in their hearts that they had let the 

 poor heathen come along when he wanted to. It would 

 have been better than to have him come when he didn't 

 want to, so. But then they Imew it was he, of course 

 they did, hid somewhere about. But where was he? The 

 boys called, coaxed, argued and cussed, but there was no 

 response to their entreaties and expostulations except 

 that same ghostly wail : "No more fun!" Evidently One 

 Lung was in no immediate danger from Smyth's wrath, 

 for there is no better recognized rule for the regulation 

 of human conduct than that propounded by Uncle Remus: 

 "Catch a rabbit afore you skin 'im!" 



However, at last, by the adoption of certain rules of 

 triangulation for the location of the source of sound, he 

 was located in the top of a small fir directly over the 

 camp. Of course it then became only a question of time, 

 patience, inducement and subtle argument to get him 

 down. But Smyth had to keep his fingers out of the 

 business and the other boys had to tender themselves as 

 hostages for his good behavior. 



It seems that the Chinaman had kept them in view all 

 the forenoon, while keeping out of sight himself; and 

 when he had reached their camp he had simply partaken 

 of their bountiful lunch, and then, like Elijah of old, 

 ascended upward. Evidently experience had taught him 

 that a good-sized fir was the safest retreat when Smyth 

 was around. 



IX. 



"The heart is hard in nature, and unfit 



For human fellowship, as being void 



Of sympathy, and therefore dead alike 



To love and friendship both, that is not pleased 



"With sight of animals enjoying life, 

 . Nor feels their happiness augment his own." 



Bright and early next morning the boys were on the 

 war path. Elk they wanted, elk they must have, and 

 elk they proposed to have, if energy, patience and good 

 marksmanship would get him. Smyth and Swift having 

 located quite a large band the previous afternoon, it was 

 agreed that all should go in a body to that locality and 

 work, as near as possible, in harmony. Swift thought 

 that the herd must be about four miles from camp, "in 

 one of the most abominable, God-forsaken pieces of 

 country man had ever looked upon," while Smyth agreed 

 with him in most particulars, except that he thought they 

 "might add another mile or two." Now, distance is 

 something a matter of comparison. All old hunters will 

 readily agree that the old arithmetical rule that eight 

 furlongs make a mile is subject to variations and don't 

 hold exactly good in the rough mountains; or, if it does 

 hold good, some furlongs are vastly more elastic than 

 others. An inch on a man's nose, you know, is quite a 

 distance. So is a furlong in the elk country of the Cas- 

 cade Range. There's many a good hunter that don't want 

 to hunt elk — in that country. 



The sun was perceptibly west of the zenith when Smyth 

 stopped short and pointed silently to something in the trail 

 that made every heart in the crowd quicken. Sure 

 enough, there was the freshest of fresh sign. 



Involuntarily every man sat down quietly and without 

 a word. Then Smyth, putting his finger to his lips, 

 silently motioned Mead to follow, and they stole away 

 like two snakes. Time was wearing and Swift and the 

 Doctor were getting a little bit restless, when Smyth reap- 

 peared as silently and cautiously as he had disappeared. 

 Again he touched his lips and silently beckoned. Evi- 

 dently there was business on hand, for he never arose 

 from his snake-like posture, but quietly, noiselessly turned 

 and crawled back up the trail. Less than 200v ds. from 

 where he had left them they found Mead lying flat on his 

 belly and gazing intently down into a deep canon a little 

 to the left of the trail. 



Then they all gaz^d. There they were sure enough: 

 five bulls, a dozen or more cows, and probably half as 

 many calves, not a hundred yards away, apparently un- 

 suspecting, peaceful, happy and contented. Then the 

 boys drew back a little and held a whispered consultation. 

 They were excited. In fact, they trembled just a little. 

 But that was all right, and was nothing to their discredit 

 either as men or sportsmen. 



