102 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



[Aug. 30, 1888. 



AfMrem an commum cations to the Forest and Stream Pttft. Co. 



THE SINGING MOUSE.-I. 



BY E. HOUGH. 



THIS is my room. I live here. These are my things. 

 My friends come here sometimes, such as I have 

 left. They are welcome, I know, to anything T have. 



That's my coat. Worn a little. That's my gun. Yes, 

 the I jarrels'are a trifle brown. That's my rifle. The stock 

 was broken in the Rockies. Yes, I know the tip of the 

 old rod is broken. And there's a guide or so gone. And 

 the silk is fraying in the lashings. And the silver cord 

 on the hand-piece in loose. The silver cord will loosen 

 and break some day. Ay, in the very best of men — rods, 

 I mean. 



There's the table. There aren't any keys. Here's the 

 fire. You are welcome, I know, to any thing there is 

 here. . . . 



But the Singing Mouse won't come out; not while you 

 are here. Funny about that! But after you have gone, 

 after the fire has burned down and the rooui is all still — 

 usually near midnight, as I sit and muse alone over the 

 dead fire— -why, then the Singing Mouse comes out and 

 asks for its bit of bread; and then it folds its tiny paws 

 and sits up, and turning its bright red eye upon me, half 

 in power and half in beseeching, as of some fading mem- 

 ory of the past — why, it sings, I tell you; it sings! And I 



listen. .... And the fire blazes up The walls 



are rich in art now My rod is new and trig 



now There is work, but there is no worry now, 



. . . . I am rich, rich! I have the Singing Mouse. And 

 so strange, so wondrous, so real are the things it sings; 

 so .Lorelei-like is the song, so sweeter than that of any 

 siren's; so broad and fine are the countries; so strong and 

 true are the friendships: so brave and kind are the men I 

 meet — so beautiful the whole world of the Singing Mouse, 

 that when it is over, and in a chill 1 start up, I hardly 

 can bear the shrinking in of the walls, and the grayness 

 of the once red fire, and my gold turned to earthenware, 

 and my pictures turned to splotches. In my hand every- 

 thing I touch feels awkward; a pen — now let me laugh, 

 let me chuckle a little at that! A pen— to talk of that! 

 If one could use it while he was in the land of the Sing- 

 ing Mouse — then it might do. I think the pens there are 

 not of wood and iron, stiff things of torture to reader and 

 writer. I have a notion — though I have not examined 

 the pens there — that they are made from plumes of an 

 angel's crest; and that they could talk, and say things 

 which would make you and me ashamed and afraid. 

 ******* 



The Singing Mouse came out. Saintly and sweetly and 

 with wondrous clearness it began an old, old song I first 

 heard long ago. And as it sang, back with red electric 

 thrill came the fine blood of youth, and beat in pulse with 

 the song: 



"When all the world is young, lad. 



And all the trees are green. 

 And every goose a swan, lad, 



And every lass a queen. 

 'Then, hey! for hoot and saddle, lad. 



And round the world away! 

 Young blood must have its course, lad. 



And every dog his day!" 



And young blood began its course anew. Booted and 

 spurred, into the saddle again! Face toward the West! 

 And off for round the world away! 



"There are green fields in Thrace," sighs the gladiator 

 as he dies. And here were green fields in the land before 

 us. Only these were the inimitable and illimitable fields 

 of Nature. Sheets and waves and billows and tumbles of 

 green; oceans unswam, continents unpacked, of thousand- 

 fold green. Then, on beyond, the gray , the gray-brown, the 

 purple-gray of the higher plains; nearer than that, a 

 broad slash of great golden yellow, a band of the sturdy 

 prairie sunflowers; and nearer than that, swinuning on 

 the surface of the mysterious wave which constantly 

 passes but is never past on the prairies, bright red roses, 

 and strong larkspur, and quaint sweet Williams— away 

 from the woods, here; and at the bottom of this ever- 

 shifting sea, jewels in God's best blue enamel. You 

 can't buy it in the windows. Where shall they send for 

 it? Why, to the land of the unswam sea. 



******* 



A little higher and stronger piped the compelling mel- 

 ody; why here are the mountains! God bless them! Nay, 

 brother, God has blessed them: blessed them with un- 

 bounded calm, with boundless strength, with unspeak- 

 able peace. You can take your troubles to the moun- 

 tains. If you are Pueblo," Aztec, you can select some 

 big mountain and pray to it, as its top shows the red sen- 

 tience of the oncoming day. You can take your troubles 

 to the sea; but the sea has troubles of its own, and frets. 

 There is commerce on the sea, and the people who live 

 near it are fretful, greedy, grasping. The mountains 

 have no troubles; they have no commerce. The dwellers 

 of the mountains are calm and unf retted. 



And on the broad shoulders of the mountains once 

 more was cast the burden of the young man's troubles, 

 and once more he walked deep into the peace of the big 

 hills. And the mountains smiled not, neither wept, but 

 gravely and kindly folded over, about, behind, the gray 

 mantle of the canon walls, and locked fast doors of ada- 

 mant against all following, and swept a pitying hand of 

 shadow, and breathed that wondrous unsyllabled voice 

 of comfort which any mountain goer knows. Ail the 

 goodness of such strength! Up by the clean snow; over 

 the big rocks; by the lace-work stream where the trout 

 are — why, it's all come again! That was the clink made 

 by a passing deer. That was the touch of a green balsam 

 — smell it, now! And there comes the snow, folding 

 down the top. and there is the crash of the thunder; 

 and this is the rush of the rain, and this is the warm yel- 

 low sun over it all — O, Singing Mouse, Singing Mouse! 

 this is just dangerous. 



********* 



Back again now, by some impulse of the dog which 

 hasn't had any day. it is winter now, I remember, and 

 I am walking by the shore of the great Inland Seas. 

 There is snow on the ground, the trees look black in con- 



trast as you gaze up from the beach against the high 

 bank. It is cold. It is dark. There is a shiver in the 

 air. There are icicles in the sky. Something flying- 

 through the trees, but silent as if it came out of a grave. 

 I have been walking, I know. I have walked a million 

 miles, and I'm tired. My legs are stiff, and my legging 

 has frozen fast to my overshoe; I remember that. And 

 so I sit down — right here, you know — and look out over 

 the lake— just over there, you see. The ice reaches out 

 from the shore into the lake a long way; and it is covered 

 with snow, and looks white. I can follow that white 

 glimmer in a long, long curve to the right — twenty miles 

 or more, maybe. Yes,~it is cold. But what's that out 

 there? Say. what's that? It is setting all the long white 

 curve of ice afire, that's what it's doing! It's throwing 

 down hammered silver in a broad path out there on the 

 water, that's what it's doing! Ripples? Those aren't 

 ripples! That's silver! There'll be angels walking out 

 there on that pathway before long! That isn't the moon 

 coming up over the lake! It's the swinging open, by 

 some careless angel's mischance, of the door of the White 

 City of Rest. 



Singing Mouse, Singing Mouse, thou art cruel! 



How old, how stiff a man climbed up the steep bank! 

 There were white fields. In the distance a dog barked. 

 Away across the fields a bright and cheery light shone 

 out from a window, and as the moon rose higher, it 

 showed the house which held the light. It wasn't a very 

 big house, but, someway, I wanted that house, I remem- 

 ber, was that my home? Did I own it? No; I didn't own 

 it. Home — what's that? I tell you, my legging was 

 frozen fast to my overshoe, and my legs were stiff. You 

 fool, you're getting — But what's that now? It's the rest 

 of the old song. Listen to it, will you? 



"When all the world is old, lad, 



And all the trees are brown, 

 And all the sports are stale, lad, 



And all the wheels run down, 

 Creep home and take your place there, 



The sick and maimed among, 

 God grant you find one face there. 

 You loved when you were young." 

 ******** 

 The fight in the little house went out. 1 think it was 

 a happy home. So may yours be always. But I think 

 the Singing Mouse will come and live with me. And — 

 O, Singing Mouse, is it time — is it time to awaken? 



THE "FANTAIL" DEER. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I am deeply interested by an article by "Gazelle" about 

 the fantailed deer found' in Montana/published in the 

 Fokest and Stream of the 16th inst. He describes it 

 from memory as having a tail eight inches wide and fif- 

 teen or more inches long. It is small in size, with short 

 legs and with crumpled horns turning inward. Now this 

 description excites our interest but fails to satisfy it. If 

 careful measurements had been taken and noted at the 

 time it would have been more satisfactory, no doubt, to 

 the author as well as to the rest of us. 



The Virginia deer has a longer tail than any of the 

 other of our species, though they differ very widely in 

 this regard. No other known species ever has a tail 15in. 

 long. The strong probability is that this fantailed deer is 

 a variety 7 of the Virginia deer, which has by far the 

 widest distribution of any deer in North America, if not 

 in the world. 



The Virginia deer in the far Northwest, where they 

 have been called the long-taiied deer, or the white-tailed 

 deer further south in the Rocky Mountains, have peculiar 

 characteristics, as indicated by those appelations; and 

 some naturalists have classed them as a distinct species 

 and given them the name of Oervus lucurus, but they 

 are simply the Virginia deer with tails no longer and no 

 whiter than specimens often met with in this latitude, 

 although the average there may have longer and whiter 

 tails than here. 



In this respect the tails of this deer are more varient 

 than any other of their members. In one respect their 

 tails are remarkably uniform , that is in their shape or form 

 — they are always flat and of a lanceolate form — broad 

 at the base and tapering at the end. They are all white 

 beneath and colored on top. This top color is very vari- 

 ent, from a black to a light tawny or gray shade, but 

 always colored to some extent. When observed from 

 behind, usually, if not always, the white beneath extends 

 beyond the dark on top so that it appears to have a white 

 border. Measurements of the tail with its colorings of 

 one of these fan-tailed deer would be very interesting. 



But more than all would the skin of the outside of a 

 hindleg from the hock to the dew claws be useful. In this 

 would be the metatarsal gland, which would with almost 

 a certainty declare the species. That gland is located a 

 little above the middle of the cannon bone. The gland is 

 covered by long reversed hairs. When these hairs are 

 open the gland is revealed. It is say an inch long on a 

 deer of an ordinary size; it is entirely naked or without 

 hairs. It is covered with a black scale, which is the con- 

 densed exudation from the gland, which may be peeled 

 off, revealing the flesh-colored surface beneath. This 

 gland is first surrounded with a narrow border of white 

 hairs, say a sixth of an inch broad at the skin, and the 

 balance of the tuft of reversed hairs is of the color of the 

 leg beyond. The Vh-ginia deer in Montana, as a rule, 

 have more white on them than in lower latitudes, and 

 I once had a specimen from there in my collection, all 

 of whose legs were entirely white from the hock and 

 knee down. In that specimen the white border about 

 this gland would not be seen. If the leg is of the ordin- 

 ary color, so as to show the narrow white band around 

 the metatarsal gland, it certainly declares it to be a 

 Oervus virginianus, for I have never seen nor heard of 

 any other deer in North America that has this white 

 border around this gland and no specimen of this deer 

 without it. 



If "Gazelle" is so fortunate as to get and send you a 

 head of this variety of deer, examine, first of all, whether 

 the tines are projected from the beam posteriorly. If 

 ( they are, it would be strong evidence that it is a variety 

 I of the Virginia deer, for in all of our other deer the tines 



are projected anteriorly, or at least not distinctly posteri- 

 orly. Abnormal tines are sometimes found on all of our 

 species. I speak of normal formations. There are many 

 others, indeed, of species of our deer which I cannot now 

 stop to point out, for which I must refer you to "The 

 Antelope and Deer of America,"' published by your com- 

 pany. John Dean Caton. 

 Chicago, Aug. 21. 



THE SCIURID7E. 



II . — FRAIBIE DOGS. 



NEXT in order in the family Sciuridu' we come to the 

 genus Oynoniys, containing our now two well- 

 known species of prairie marmots, or "barking squir- 

 rels" recognized everywhere as prairie dogs, which latter 

 name has Undoubtedly saved the life of many hundreds 

 of them, for I am convinced that did settlers and others 

 fully realize that they were a squirrel and not a "dog," 

 many and many a one would have been roasted on a spit 

 over the pioneer's and hunter's camp-fire, for I assure 

 you they are capital eating. Many a cowboy have 1 

 heard express himself to the effect that he would have to 

 be pretty hard up before they could induce him to eat 

 dog's meat; while on the other hand I have seen Sioux 

 Indians deliberately shoot a prairie marmot when an an- 

 telope stood within easy range. The men of that tribe are 

 aB a rule very partial to their meat. Probably no species 

 of our typically western mammals are more universally 

 and better known than these; their habits, their "towns" 

 and all about them seem to have had a peculiar fascina- 

 tion for the popular mind, and account after account 

 has been published and circulated about them. For 

 nearly eight years I have had the opportunity of study- 

 ing them, all the way from Dakota to Mexico, and even 

 to-day I cannot pass through one of their "towns" with- 

 out having my interest in its inhabitants thoroughly 

 awakened. 



It is now no longer the prevailing notion that these en- 

 gaging little animals do not drink water, but on the con- 

 trary, however they may get it, they are very fond of it, 

 and in reality must have it frequently. A prairie mar 

 mot which I have as a pet drinks water freely three or 

 four times a day, and if deprived of it, shows the effect 

 at once and drinks double the amount the very next 

 time he gets a chance. This little fellow I bought from 

 a Navajo Indian, when it hardly had its eyes open; at 

 present he is full grown and hibernating in a burrow 

 which he dug in the cellar last October. I emphasize 

 the word hibernating because many still believe that 

 these animals do not do so. Even here at Fort Wingate 

 and I presume in other parts of New Mexico, these ani- 

 mals become torpid just as soon as the first cold snap 

 strikes them, and repair to their burrows for hibernation 

 again, until the return of warm weather lures them out. 

 There is a large "prairie dog town" not a mile from 

 where I sit at present, and one may pass through it 

 every day during the cold weather and when snow 

 covers the ground, and not a track of this little animal 

 can be found anywhere in the vicinity. By the middle 

 of next month (February), however, they will' begin to 

 show themselves. 



There is another old story now nearly entirely exploded 

 about them; I refer to the happy family of the "prairie 

 dog," the prairie owl and the rattlesnake, all living in 

 harmony in the same burrow. Of course they do nothing 

 of the land, but the marmots have to put up with these 

 owls and snakes as best they can, precisely as we, in our 

 large towns and communities, have to put up with our 

 owls and snakes in human form — meeting and passing- 

 men every day of our fives whom perhaps we know well 

 to be sneak-thieves and cut-throats. It is said upon good 

 authority that prairie marmots will even desert the bur- 

 row in which a big "rattler" enters, and even, if small 

 cobblestones be handy in the neighborhood of the entrance, 

 deliberately seal it up with them, so that the snake can- 

 not get out, and must starve to death. 



Elsewhere I believe I have published something in 

 reference to the diet of these animals; as to their ravenous 

 appetite for raw meat; but I would like to add here in 

 the present connection, that the fact of the matter is, 

 that these animals, when kept as pets, are truly omnivor- 

 ous, and will eat anything that is offered to them. The 

 one I have, referred to in a former paragraph, will not 

 only eat raw meat with avidity, but raw oysters, fried 

 oysters, jelly, raisins, drink soup, milk, and indeed stops 

 short at nothing. One day while conversing with an 

 officer of the army, and my pet was sitting up on his 

 haunches near us in the front yard, the officer started to 

 light a cigarette, but the thing would not draw, and with 

 a toss he threw it to the "prairie dog," which to our sur- 

 prise picked it up and ate the whole of it, tobacco, paper 

 and all ! We watched for a violent attack of nausea, 

 may be the death of the greedy little scamp — but no, 

 neither of these events followed its rash act, and two 

 hours afterward my pet was going about as lively as 

 ever. He became, before he took to ground for the win- 

 ter, one of the fattest things I ever beheld, there being a 

 longitudinal, median crease of no mean depth the whole 

 length of his back; he was a perfect mass of fat. There 

 is a great difference in different individuals of this species 

 when raised thus from the very young. Some grow up 

 gentle and amusing pets, which never offer to bite one, 

 even on great provocation; while others are never tame, 

 and as they grow older become wild and vicious, con- 

 stantly try to get away, and bite you whenever they can. 



I have never had this species breed in confinement, 

 though they will do so without any trouble, and the 

 female will give birth to as many as seven young at a 

 time; the usual number, however, is four or five. 



It will be noted that in the TJ. S. National Museum 

 "List" the "short-tailed prairie dog" (C. gunnisonii) is 

 not taken up as a species, and up to the present moment 

 I have never had pointed out to me the supposed differ- 

 ences that separated this variety from C. columbianus. 

 I have before me the "Pacific" Railroad Report" (1859), 

 which gives a figure of this "short-tailed" species* and 

 the description, but so far as I can see the animal thus 

 described in no way differs from, as I say, the C. colum- 

 bianus. Of this latter species I have shot many a one 

 where the tail was "less than one-sixth the length* of the 

 body." It would interest me to know the present history 

 of this rejected species. 



Structurally the prairie marmots present us with much 

 that is interesting; anatomically, of course, they are 

 organized upon the sciurine plan, and have shallow cheek- 

 pouches, which connects them more intimately with the 



