Nov. 29, 1888. j 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



363 



broad, deep gash across his back. There is rnuch differ- 

 | ence of opinion about the size of alligators. One hears 

 i of them from fifteen to twenty feet in length, but I can 

 only say that the longest one I ever saw In Florida 

 | measured some few inches under nine feet. Of course, 

 i in the Everglade region of the South there probably are 

 monsters that exceed that length, but in a somewhat 

 extended experience on the west coast I never have seen 

 one of over the above dimensions. An alligator lying on 

 a bank looks about twi^e as big as he really is, and a 

 novice in the country would doubtless call a six-footer at 

 least twice his actual size. 



One day, in a long and solitary ramble through the 

 woods, I came most unexpectedly upon a shanty, far 

 away from any other settlement, standing alone upon 

 the banks of a little bayou. Being very thirsty and wish- 

 ing to see what manner of people this hermitage con- 

 tained, 1 hailed and was answered by a young girl of 

 perhaps eighteen years. Nature prepares many surprises 

 for us, and the traveler in unfrequented parts is con- 

 stantly stumbling upon the most extraordinary contrasts, 

 but the beauty of this girl almost took my breath away. 

 The difference between her and her sallow shrunken 

 sisters was startling. The coarse calico gown could not 

 hide the symmetry of a figure which, unaided by any of 

 the appliances of modern fashion, was in itself perfection; 

 with her fair, pale face, teeth of the most dazzling purity, 

 long plaits of luxuriant brown hair, and eyes, the won- 

 derful depths of which it would be presumption to 

 attempt to describe, she formed my ideas of a Marguer- 

 ite. Her sweet childlike face was innocence itself, 

 her mien simplicity uncultivated. She gave me a 

 drink of water from a gourd. I suppose that I 

 ought to go into ecstacies over that drink from 

 such hands, but I cannot: it was vile, muddy stuff. I 

 could not help thinking of Maud Muller, however, as I 

 saw her tiny, bare, brown feet; but all simile cease here, 

 for the Judge in the poem had clear water, while I had 

 to put up with a decoction of mud, strongly resembling 

 railway coffee. I am not generally an admirer of what 

 is known as rustic beauty or rustic simplicity; in nine 

 cases out of ten a milkmaid is anything but the charm- 

 ing creature that poets and sentimentalists would have 

 you believe. She generally has a hand like a ham and a 

 foot like a pancake, smelling like a cow, while her figure 

 seldom has anything of the "wild free grace of the deer," 

 and her simplicity you discover to be a delusion f as she 

 cold-bloodedly swindles you in your milk bill. But this 

 I girl was truly superb, one of those rare beauties that one 

 sometimes meets under just such circumstances, and that 

 seem all the more lovely by the surroundings and con- 

 trast. And to this vision — this ideal — would probably 

 soon come the "country lad acourtin' " in the shape of a 

 long, lanky, pigeon-toed son of the forest, who would 

 make her his slave-wife, and she would pass the rest of 

 her life cooking for her great lazy lout of a husband. I 

 am not generally an enthusiast, but really this girl prop- 

 erly arrayed and refined, would have caused a sensation 

 in any ballroom in the land. 



A rather curious feature, which we noticed on the 

 Ockolockone, and indeed in all the fresh-water streams, 

 was the total absence, during the early summer, of mus- 

 quitoes. There were absolutely none; but when once we 

 approached salt water they again appeared in countless 

 hosts. 



Birds were not very abundant; we managed to kill 

 enough ducks to supply our table, and also to shoot a few 

 partridges (very unsportsmanlike I grant, but we were 

 Shooting for food, not fun). 



I saw a great many of the swallow-tailed hawks, and 

 several of the nests were in dead cotton woods that lined 

 the bank of the river. I should have obtained the rare 

 eggs of this beautiful bird, but the trees were absolutely 

 unclimbable. 



One morning we ran down the river to a little canal 

 that connects the waters of Ockolockone with the Sopy- 

 chopy River, and, passing through, entered the latter 

 strearn. This canal is no very grand triumph of engineer- 

 ing skill; it is only one hundred yards in length, and was 

 opened by the lumbermen, through which to float their 

 rafts of timber from the upper Sopy-chopy. Small as it 

 is, however, perhaps De Lesseps would find it a good 

 speculation on which to raise bonds to the amount of— 

 well — several millions. 



The Sopy-chopy is certainly one of the wildest, most 

 gloomy streams that I have ever visited. It is of great 

 depth in proportion to its width and winds and twists 

 about in a most perplexing manner. A few miles above 

 the canal the banks were scarcely thirty yards apart and 

 the trees in places actually met overhead 'in an arch. Of 

 course sails in such a place were useless and we were 

 obliged to pole our way laboriously along. 



The stillness was intense— no sound of bird or beast 

 disturbed the solemn silence of the solitudes. I do not 

 think that we saw a single living creature all day, but 

 slowly ascended in perfect silence. It was really awe- 

 inspiring, we felt like explorers in an unknown land, and 

 vague memories of Ponce de Leon were awakened as we 

 cleaved the dark waters beneath the lowering arch of 

 trees. Cypress with hydra roots rose from the black sur- 

 face, like Dante's imaginations of a damned race, their 

 contorted forms writhed like lost souls in agony. Long 

 vines hung drooping from trees, like serpents to stay ap- 

 proach to the recesses of the swamp. Slight, mysterious 

 noises back in the dense woods made the silence all the 

 more intense. All was somber, all was dark, the very 

 sunlight was excluded for most of the day by the solid 

 mass of foliage that made the river lie in one almost con- 

 tinuous shadow. 



Nine miles above the canal, we had been told, lived an 

 old Scotchman. This point was made for slowly, and 

 darkness found us still making our tedious way upward. 

 About 9 o'clock I got out an old hunting horn and blew 

 a mighty blast, that roused the echoes of the swamp; but 

 the old Scot either did not hear it or, with some pre-exist- 

 ent warning from his former self, remembered the Vik- 

 ing horns of his native rock-bound coast, and kept silence, 

 giving no answer to our signals. It was 11 o'clock when 

 his little farm was finally reached, and we were quite 

 worn out from the day's poling. The farm was certainly 

 one of the most progressive spots that I saw during the 



cruise. Mi-. had forty acres in cultivation, and the 



general air of thrift and industry was most surprising, 

 and showed that the sturdy Scotch character yet retained 

 its peculiarities, notwithstanding some twenty years' 

 burial in that energy-sapping clime. A. M. Reynolds, 

 [to pe continued.] 



THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE A. O. U. 



THE sixth annual congress of the American Ornitholo- 

 gists' Union, which has just been held at Washing- 

 ton, was without doubt the most successful meeting the 

 Union ever had, viewed with regard to attendance, har- 

 monious transaction of business and number of papers 

 and addresses presented, as well as popular interest ex- 

 cited and the impetus given to purely scientific investi- 

 gation. 



Through the kindness of Prof. Langley the lecture room 

 of the National Museum was placed at the disposal of the 

 Union, and here at 11 A. M. on Nov. 13 the meeting was 

 opened with Dr. J. A. Allen, the president, in the chair. 



After the secretary. Dr. C. Hart Merriam, had called the 

 roll, reports from the various committees on Migration, 

 Geographical Distribution, Food of Birds, English Spar- 

 row, Avian Anatomy, etc , were presented. The long-ex- 

 pected report on Bird Migration was referred to at length 

 by the secretary, and the meeting was informed that in 

 the very near future copies of the work would probably 

 be placed in the hands of each member. - 



Dr. Merriam made a verbal report on the investigation 

 of the Geographical Ranges of Birds, showing his method 

 of keeping tbe records by a system of double entry 

 that seemed to answer every purpose. He also exhibited 

 maps of the breeding ranges of certain species and ex- 

 plained his modus operandi in arriving at the conclusions 

 that these represented. Having first collected and 

 arranged all the available records for the species, each 

 was entered on this map in an exactly located spot of 

 red, and when sufficient of these red spots had been 

 entered to justify the generalization, a faint tint of red 

 was laid over the part of the region chiefly involved, but 

 so done that the original red entries would in no wise be 

 obliterated. Several of these maps were exhibited, and 

 the report concluded with a brief forecast of many inter- 

 esting conclusions arrived at or pointed to by the investi- 

 gation. 



A part of the report on the Food of Birds, viz., that 

 relating to hawks and owls, is already in the hands of the 

 public, and demonstrates the fallacy of many popular 

 views regarding their utility, and establishing the con- 

 clusions arrived at in a comparatively early systematic 

 investigation of fheir food habits, published by Dr. B. 

 Harry Warren of West Chester, Pennsylvania. 



The English sparrow came in for his usual measure of 

 opprobrium. Prof. Barrows referred at length to the 

 somewhat unusual granivorous propensities of the nest- 

 lings, also to the immensity of the damage done by the 

 species at large, both in the new and old worlds. With 

 regard to the insectivorous proclivities of the species, he 

 stated that the stomach of a single cuckoo (C. ameri- 

 canus) contained more noxious insects than the aggregate 

 of some hundreds of sparrows' stomachs examined. In 

 summing up the evidence, he pointed to the certainly 

 damnatory nature of a verdict founded on all the facts 

 that could be brought to bear, and emphasized the neces- 

 sity for the destruction of the species — the sparrows on 

 the other side of the window glass meanwhile noisily and 

 busily engaged in constructing their nests about the 

 building and devoting the whole of their not inconsider- 

 able energies to the solution of the great multiplication 

 problem, quite oblivious of the Damoclesian sword that 

 hung suspended above their heads as a race, and was 

 even then threatening to break from its slight fastening 

 at the word of the speaker and forever exterminate the 

 Passer domesticus in America. 



Dr. Coues spoke in this connection, referring to the 

 original foolish importation of the species, its spread, and 

 its firm hold in this country, taking up the parts of the 

 case one by one, and one by one referring to them as ful- 

 fillments of his early prophecies. He also spoke in a kind- 

 ly manner of the work of the Sparrow Committee, urged 

 them to continue at their pleasant occupation, and, if they 

 deemed it their unpleasant duty, even to go the length 

 of pronouncing the dread sentence of death. In the 

 meantime he might state it as his present conviction that 

 the sparrow had come, and had come to stay. 



The report on Avian Anatomy was presented by Dr. 

 Coues, and consisted mainly of investigations by Dr. Shu- 

 feldt, many of the conclusions from which were both 

 original and startling. 



The report on the condition of the Society showed a 

 most encouraging condition of affairs. The Auk, the organ 

 of the Union, is now self-supporting, and the subscrip- 

 tion list so greatly increased that the committee in charge 

 propose to greatly augment its size. The Union has not 

 only disencumbered itself of the heavy liabilities that 

 were on the books some little time ago, but lias now even 

 a surplus in the treasury. 



The incorporation of the Union under the laws of the 

 District of Columbia was resolved on and completed 

 without delay. The following associates were elected to 

 active membership: Messrs. Chapman, D wight, Foster 

 and Trumbull. A large number of outsiders were added 

 to the associate list. 



Papers were presented by Col. N. S. Goss, of Topeka, 

 Kan., on Additions to the Avifauna of Kansas; Witmer 

 Stone, on Graphic Representation of the Migration of 

 Birds— an interesting and somewhat novel method of 

 illustrating diagrammatically the increase of species and 

 of individuals through the season and the correlation of 

 this variation with meteorological changes by sinuous 

 lines on a scale. 



Dr. Louis B. Bishop gave a most interesting paper on 

 the Birds of the Magdalen Islands; many of his observa- 

 tions were altogether new and of great scientific value . The 

 breeding of the species of petrel there found he described 

 at length. He also exhibited one of the nests, taken bv 

 himself from one of the burrows, to show that the com- 

 monly accepted idea of their making no nest is erroneous. 

 Col. Goss, however, reminded the speaker that the islands 

 where the petrels bred were also infested by mice and 

 stated his conviction that the nest presented was the 

 work of a mouse, and the circumstance of the petrel egg= 

 having been found in it was a mere coincidence of a 

 kind likely to be common under the existing state of 

 affairs. 



Mr. Wm. Dutcher, well known as the ornithological 

 guardian angel of Long Island, presented a paper by his 

 son. It cansisted of observations on the birds of Little 

 Gull Island at the northeast corner of Long Island, One 



of the most curious occurrences recorded was the im- 

 prisonment for some weeks of a pair of crows by the 

 terns. The crows had landed on the island early in the 

 spring, doubtless with the best of motives, but whenever 

 they attempted to rise in the air with a view to leaving 

 they were so mobbed and persecuted by the terns that 

 they were glad to get back to earth again. When "col- 

 lected" by the observer they were in very bad condition, 

 their plumage being defaced with guano deposits and 

 worn and tattered almost beyond recognition. Their 

 demoralization was so complete that the ornithologist 

 could almost capture them by hand. 



Mr. Ernest E. Thompson of Toronto, Canada, spoke 

 for a short time on the "Methodic Study of the Habits 

 of Birds," giving some interesting conclusions from a 

 season spent in study with reference to a single species, 

 and concluding his address with a quotation from 

 Agassiz's well known essay on classification. The quota- 

 tion appeared to rankle in the breast of Prof. Gill, who 

 took advantage of the call for comments to enlarge on 

 the utter worthlessness of that naturalist's views in 

 general and on his particular unsoundness on many points 

 in nowise related to the quotation in question. The 

 professor was evidently at home in the field of his dis- 

 course, his manner was animated and his language fluent 

 as he warmed with his subject, so that he held the 

 audience interested for some minutes. The discussion 

 was curtly closed by the chairman (Dr. Coues) rising and 

 intimating that the whole issue was foreign to the subject. 



Dr. C. Hart Merriam spoke briefly on a remarkable 

 phase of hawk life observed by hitn in Oregon. In one of 

 the secluded valleys of that region , during a grasshopper 

 plague, a band of 200 hawks (Buleo swainsoni) had been 

 observed daily carrying on an organized crusade against 

 the insect hordes. From the crop of one hawk he took 

 between 100 and 200 grasshoppers and estimated the daily 

 destruction by the band at 40,000 grasshoppers. 



At the call for comments Mr. Thompson remarked that 

 he had observed this same disposition to band together in 

 the fall and prey chiefly on grasshoppers in the sparrow- 

 hawk (Faleo sparverius). 



Mr. W. E. D. Scott gave an interesting address on 

 several of the larger herons, whose taxonomic standing 

 is yet a moot point. His ideas seemed all to tend in the 

 direction of fusion as he maintained and showed, so far 

 as the specimens presented went, that many of the so- 

 called specifically diagnostic varieties have no constancy 

 whatever. 



One of the most interesting addresses of the occasion 

 was from. Professor McGee, a geologist, showingfhow the 

 distribution of the eastern and western meadowlarks 

 (Stumella magna et neglecta) was correlated by the dis- 

 tribution of land during the last glacial epoch. 



Dr. Coues stated that this could not be accepted as an 

 explanation of differentiation, as it was unlikely that at 

 that age the genus Stumella was represented at all in 

 North America. 



Prof. Riley gave some instances among insects that 

 were parallel with and dissonant from the theory. 

 Almost all the speakers on the question formulated objec- 

 tions, but the general impression of the meeting was 

 that Prof. McGee's idea was founded on something more 

 than a mere superficial coincidence, and might contain 

 the germs of one of the great underlying principles of 

 distribution. 



A number of other papers were presented by title only, 

 as the whole of the allotted three days had already been 

 consumed. 



Committees were formed to revise additions to the list 

 since the publication of the formal A. O. U. List of Birds: 

 to publish a cheap check and label list of the North 

 American Avifauna; to formulate rules of measurement 

 and consider the advisability of adopting the metric 

 system. [The committee has reported against the adop- 

 tion.] 



After resolutions of thanks to Prof. Langley for the 

 use of the hall and to the reception committee for the 

 hospitality extended to the visiting members during the 

 three days' congress, the meeting adjourned, to hold its 

 next session in New York on the second Tuesday of 

 November, 1889. 



Among the pleasant social features of this congress were 

 the evening receptions given to the Union, on Tuesday 

 evening by Dr. and Mrs. Coues, and on Wednesday even- 

 ing by Dr. C. Hart Merriam and Mr. W. H. Henshaw. 

 Divested of the formality of the regular meeting of the 

 A O. U., but consisting of the same men, such gatherings 

 serve the double purpose of fostering a genial feeling 

 among ornithologists, and of bringing the younger men 

 into contact with their godfathers in the faith, and of 

 giving them the advantage of actual acquaintance with 

 those whose names have so long been their familiar ac- 

 quaintances on paper. 



THE WAYS OF SNAKES. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I have read with pleasure and interest the various 

 articles appearing in Forest and Stream during the past 

 few weeks, but I think the articles on snakes have been 

 fully as interesting as any. Having spent most of my 

 days on a farm, where I could observe snakes to some 

 advantage, I would like to add another mite to the vast 

 fund of evidence in favor of snakes swallowing their 

 young. I know that the so- called ' 'striped snakes" of the 

 Adirondacks will swallow their young, for I have seen 

 them in the act several times, and to satisfy myself that 

 I had not been deceived I killed the old snake and found 

 several young ones from 4 to 6in. in length inside the 

 parent. These young snakes were not hurt by the swal- 

 lowing. They were very active when brought to the 

 surface and it was with difficulty I could count them. 

 The fact that the young snakes were alive and active goes 

 to show that the swallowing process is natural and that 

 the old snake only wishes to hide her young from sight 

 and thereby protect them from any threatening danger. 

 My brothers have witnessed this swallowing process and 

 will testify as to the truth of my assertions, G. L. B. 



Elizabetutown, N._Y j 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



Seeing a number of letters in your paper about snakes 

 swallowing their young, I add that I have been an eye- 

 witness to the fact and saw a large striped snake lie per- 

 fectly still till nine small ones had run down her throat. 

 Then I killed her and found the nine young and lively 

 ones inside, which I also killed. W. A. B. 



Athol, Mass. 



