Jan.. 2, 1890.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



467 



Now as to the hunt, Birds big and fat there were in 



Slenty, but so cunning, wise and strong, far-flying ones 

 oubdess never lived before. Probably this superiority 

 is due to a process of natural selection, for a bird capable > 

 of dodging the briers must possess it. Most of the stupid, t 

 ignorant, weak birds must have been caught and hung- 

 up on the briers in the davs of their youth; that is to say, 

 all save those that didn't escape the numerous hawks 

 which infest the locality. Between the briers and hawks 

 a bird's life can hardly be "an 'appy one." No wonder 

 the living are hard to kill, and harder to follow where 

 they fly into woods, underbrush, swamps and fields, far 

 beyond big brier patches or hedges, or wide, deep ditches 

 that could not be forded. 



How we balanced on logs and trees across the raging 

 waters; how we often saved our lives by extraordinary 

 presence of mind in balancing a la Blondin: this and 

 more it were superfluous to tell. Suffice it to say, we 

 bagged near a hundred birds, despite rain and other 

 difficulties. Our biggest bird was a lOlbs. coon, which 

 was found snoozing away the precious time up 65ft. in 

 the branches of a huge chestnut, which, when cut down, 

 was found to measure 4ft. in diameter. No. 10 shot 

 waked him up, but No. 4 quickly put him to sleep again 

 in the self-same crotch, where he hung fast. It is certain 

 his second nap will be the longer, for his skin adorns my 

 sanctum. One thing should be mentioned here, as a 

 salve to the vanity of my two friends aforementioned, 

 namely, that they killed more birds than I. In private 

 conversation this fact is accounted for thus: Either the 

 birds flew too fast for me, or a tree or bush was in the 

 way, or I abstained from shooting ("just to give the 

 others a chance, you know"), or contented myself mainly 

 with cross fires (I was cross after I made them). 



Secondly, I went rabbit hunting two days — "just to 

 give 'em another chance, you know." In this sport two 

 local hunters, Messrs. Askins and Newton, kindly lent 

 their aid for a day, and their eight fine foxhounds made 

 the welkin ring and Br'er Rabbit skip for dear life in a 

 fashion quite new and entertaining. We bagged twelve 

 in three and a half hours, and ran several into holes in the 

 ground or into the hounds' stomachs (for while those 

 particular hounds will respect a fox to his last hair, they 

 consider a rabbit a hare to be eaten eo imtanter). But, as 

 a question in psychology, I am yet studying how the rab- 

 bits knew just where I stood and thus escaped instant 

 death. But they did. Probably the aforementioned 

 brier-kawk-natural-selection theory will account for it. 

 For extreme truth's sake, it may be said that, putting 

 theory aside, I covered myself with mud and mortifica- 

 tion more than glory, on that memorable Sabbath day. 

 Before closing I must refer to some other things seen and 

 heard in that wonderful Brier Land. There was the won- 

 derful cat, which climbed every morning up the back of 

 our host's 13-year-old daughter A., and sitting calmly on 

 her shoulder, rode to school over three miles away, re- 

 turning with the team contented and happy. Was ever 

 another cat like unto this one? Then there were the 

 wonderful tame ducks and chickens that walked boldly 

 into the kitchen and ate greedily out of the hand or dishes, 

 besides even standing between our feet looking on while 

 we greased our shoes and actually seizing the piece of 

 tallow out of our hands. Did ever ducks and chickens 

 help grease shoes like unto these? 



Then, there was the wonderful blind ox, which would 

 travel and be docile by day, but, strange to say, became 

 utterly rebellious at night ! For example, the boy A. 

 was directed to go for a barrel of flour— ^what appetites 

 we had !>. Instead of hitching up horses, he thought to 

 save labor by simply yoking the blind ox and another to 

 the two-wheeled cart. (Oxen are driven there by voice 

 and whip as readily as horses by rein and bit.) The 

 shades of night were falling fast, when it was discovered 

 the boy, team, and flour were all absent. An hour later, 

 ditto. Still another hour, no news. Then the anxious 

 father mounted his horse, and, with lantern in hand, 

 rode hurriedly away. About two miles away he was 

 hailed by plaintive tones coming from a thicket ! The 

 lost was found. There were assembled the discouraged, 

 tired, hungry boy, the oxen which were ditto, the stalled 

 •cart, the flour not eaten. Nobody hurt. 

 Ques. "What's the matter? "' 

 -Ans. (plaintive) " The oxen won't go." 

 Ques. "Why not?" 



Ans. " I don't know. They went pretty well while it 

 was light, but won't travel in the road now." 



Our host, filled with wonder, rapidly surveyed the 

 beasts, and the truth soon dawned on him. By mistake 

 the boy had yoked two " off" oxen together, and one of 

 them deemed it his duty to get in the other's place — no- 

 lens nolens. 



There was the dog that looked a Methusaleh, but was 

 very young, and the other dog that loooked so young, 

 but was the real Methusaleh. There was the mink, or 

 his skin, which was caught with a chicken in jaws, and 

 actually held on while Mr. M. pulled hard to get it away, 

 and was killed for his pertinacity. 



There were two flocks of sheep that would not feed to- 

 gether, but remained apart like two political factions. 

 The explanation is that the sheep of one flock had long 

 tails, while the other had none to speak of. 



Last, but far from least, there was C.,the old but 

 young looking colored help of our host, whose sayings, 

 etc., amu-ed us much. For example, when asked how 

 old he was, he replied, "I'se dun forgot." "Are you 65?" 

 "I'se a little older dan dat; I'se about 55." Again, "Do 

 you pray, C, before you go to bed?" "Oh, yes, boss, I 

 prays." "Do you say the Lord's prayer?" "Oh, yes." 

 "Well, what is the first line?" "Deed, boss, I forgot 

 that." Oue day he was told to count the sheep. When 

 asked, "How 'many did you count?" he answered, 

 "Seventy-five." "Why, O, there are but thirty in all." 

 "Well, boss, I counted some !" When asked If he had 

 counted the rails in a pile, he said, "Yes, but I dun 

 slipped and fell down so much, I'se dun forgot how many 

 there was." 



When hurt, he said, "I'se painified." He has a fourth 

 wife, who is good looking and buxom. When asked "if 

 you were to marry again, and had had several women to 

 choose from, which would you take?" He replied, "I'd 

 dun take the handsomest one." 



One day a calf ate his vest and C. said, "Mr. Wolfe, 

 that call's the meanest calf in the place. He's got the 

 meanest condition inside of 'irn I ebber knew !" 



Last Christmas morning, C. came over from his Bnug 

 log cabin, and bowing in his politest manner, said, 

 "Mildred says Bhe sent this bag over, and is wanting 



Kiss Kingle to put something intoo't for Kissmas." Mil- 

 dred was his last addition, being then three months old 1 



Despite the briers and rain, we left reluctantly, and as 

 we pressed the hand of our kindly host at parting on the 

 shore, we half promised ourselves to come again. And 

 now, though still nursing our wounds, we are not happy, 

 for in our dreams by clay and visions by night, we see 

 and live over again our experiences in field and thicket, 

 in bush and bramble, in kitchen and parlor. There is a 

 confused picture of quail, woodcock, rabbits, coons and 

 hawks set in a frame of briers and brambles of gigantic 

 growth, and through them all we see outlined the family 

 group around the fireside, and stronger yet the dark 

 eyes whose flashes light up the dull routine,of life that 

 must occupy us till next time. A. W. H. 



Washington, D. C. 



THE WARRIGAL DINGO. 



I READ Mr. Edward Wakefield's interesting article on 

 dogs in your Christmas number, and thoroughly 

 agree with him in his conclusion that the Australian 

 dingo, or to give him his full name and title, the Warri- 

 gal dingo, is not the off-spring of European dogs set 

 ashore by Capt. Cook or any other navigator. Mr. Wake- 

 field's argument , based on the wide distribution of the 

 animal, and his several distinctive characteristics are con- 

 clusive as to this point. But this has never been a point 

 in dispute among nat uralists. Wallace and others regard 

 the dingo as an alien in the marsupial region, but they 

 refer his origin to the islands of the Indian region, from 

 which they suppose he came, or was brought over at 

 some remote period; the only rational basis for this con- 

 clusion being the inference that a true mammal cannot 

 be native to an otherwise purely marsupial region. I am 

 not disposed to attribute any weight to this argument, 

 and I find the conclusions based on it open to weighty 

 objections. 



The dingo, if an importation of foreign stock, must 

 either have come unaided across land which once bridged 

 the straits between northern Australia and the Indian 

 region, or he must have been brought by the natives at 

 their settlement of the country. It goes, of course, with- 

 out saying that to whatever extent the argument may 

 be applicable to the dingo, man cannot be aboriginal to 

 a countiy whose fauna, fossil and existent, includes no 

 connecting finks between him and marsupial mammalia. 



That the dingo came unaided is a theory that may be 

 dismissed with but little argument. Dogs and other 

 Canidce, if they no longer exist wild in the islands of the 

 Indian Ocean, are /eras naturw proper to the Indian re- 

 gion, which includes those islands with southeastern 

 Asia, India and Africa; but close as is the present prox- 

 mity of some of the islands to Australia, the argument 

 that they have never been connected in any age by land 

 passage is rendered conclusive by the fact that although 

 numerous species of birds are common to both regions, 

 there has never been any infiltration of the mammalia of 

 one region into that of the other. The mammalia of the 

 islands of the Indian Ocean are more widely separated 

 from their representatives in Australia than are the 

 mammalia of South America, and any connecting land 

 which could have given passage to the dog would have 

 afforded a means for the infiltration of the mammalia of 

 each region into the other. The fact that there has been 

 no such infiltration is conclusive argument against the 

 theory that the dingo was thus introduced. 



Nor is the argument for his introduction by the natives 

 more satisfactory. In this case he would have come as a 

 domestic dog, the property of a people who must have 

 known and appreciated his usefulness, or they would not 

 have brought him, and to suppose that a savage people 

 who had once used, dogs to aid them in the chase and 

 quest of game, would wantonly dispossess themselves of 

 them over a whole continent; or that even a single tribe, 

 driven by hunger, would sacrifice its dogs, and make no 

 subsequent effort to replace them from neighboring 

 tribes or wild stock, is to deny to savage man his most 

 distinctive characteristics. The natives, if they had 

 brought the dingo to the countiy, might subsequently 

 have rendered the race extinct by eating them, but it is 

 too much to suppose that with their omnivorous habits 

 they would have driven a once domesticated animal away 

 from their camps to provide for himself in competition 

 with them, if they had found no better use for him. 

 Such a conclusion is inconsistent with the common in- 

 stinct of self-interest. The Warrigal dingo is fern naturce, 

 and has been so as long as he has been known to the 

 natives: and that they never discovered his capacity for 

 domestication is evidenced by the fact that since the 

 colonists introduced the domestic dog the natives have 

 shown a very proper appreciation of his value, and have 

 stocked their camps with them all over the country, pro- 

 ducing a mongrel breed, which, subsisting solely on 

 flesh, has reverted to a common type approaching that of 

 the street dog of the East. 



In the face of these insuperable objections to any 

 theory of foreign derivation, I see no escape from the 

 conclusion that the dingo is indigenous to the soil, and 

 direct offspring of one of the primeval marsupial dogs of 

 the region. 



Mr. Wakefield committed a lapsus plumoz when he 

 wrote that "the dingo is common to both Australia and 

 Tasmania." There are no dingos in Tasmania; their 

 place in that country is occupied by the marsupial dog, 

 an animal similar in character and habits to the dingo, 

 but of a more generalized type, bearing aB strong a re- 

 semblance to the hyena and jackal as to the dog. 



The marsupial dog was once common to Australia, but 

 is extinct. He was not exterminated by the natives. 

 They may possibly have exterminated many of the now 

 extinct fauna of the country, but the motives which 

 would have prompted to the extermination of the mar- 

 supial dog, would have been equally potent in respect to 

 his placental congener. Nor is it a very plausible theory 

 that the marsupial dog was driven to extinction over a 

 wide continent by competition with an imported animal 

 of kindred type and habits. The marsupial dog was the 

 mould in which the Warrigal dingo was cast, and got 

 broken in the process. It is a simple instance of evolu- 

 tion of a placental from a marsupial type, not merely in 

 an isolated individual, but along the whole line. The 

 dog was the first Australian mammal to bridge the gulf, 



which all placental animals in other regions have bridged, 

 and which all existing marsupial types will bridge in due 

 course, unless they be exterminated in the struggle for 

 existence. Such at least appears to me to be the only 

 tenable conclusion, and if any professed evolutionist con- 

 tend that such a conclusion is prima facie inadmissible, 

 without at the same time satisfactorily accounting for 

 the dingo's possible derivation from a foreign stock, I 

 can only attribute his non possumus to a want of living 

 faith in the process of evolution as an actual working- 

 process of nature. 



The dingo is a true dog, and if it be tentatively held 

 that he istet the first stage of development from marsu- 

 pial stock it would be interesting to fix precisely the 

 period of his gestation, so as to determine whether the 

 domestic dog is a first or second step in advance of his 

 marsupial ancestors. 



Mr. Wakefield's assertion that the cross between the 

 dingo and the domestic dog is a hybrid, is new to me, and 

 if well authenticated would indicate a difference in the 

 period of derivation from marsupial stock. 



The dingo, if taken young, is easily tamed, and is as 

 affectionate and gentle as any domestic dog, but he can- 

 not be taught to "ware chicken." I had one once in 

 South Australia which showed strong attachment to me, 

 but ho appeared stupid. Perhaps it was because wherever 

 he went every domestic dog thought it his duty to attack 

 him. It was impossible to walk the streets with him; his 

 one object in life appeared to be to get between my legs 

 and keep there, and my efforts to get rid of him, combated 

 by his efforts to recover his place, were disturbing, to 

 say the least. 



One fine clay he ventured into a neighbor's chicken 

 yard and rushed home with a dose of strychnine that 

 had been laid for him, ran to me in agony, got my caress, 

 then rushed under a chair, and was deaden two minutes. 



The dingo does not bark, his note is a howl, and as far 

 as my recollection serves me, it is impossible to distin- 

 guish between it and the howl of the domestic dog. 

 Dogs in the Australian bush pick up the habit readily, 

 anci howl in concert with the dingos; and whatever may 

 be the facts as to the bark being an acqiiired habit, the 

 howl is certainly a call proper to the dog. No dog at- 

 tempts to imitate the call of the jackal. C. F. Amery. 



WEIGHT OF GROUSE. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I note in the issues for Dec. 12 and Dec. 10 what two 

 correspondents say in regard to the weight of ruffed 

 grouse. I have probably weighed more grouse than any 

 other man living, it having been my practice for years to 

 weigh all the birds coming to my hand, and as I handled 

 them largely for several years I must have weighed a 

 good many thousands of them all told; and the result of 

 my weighing is this. The average weight varies from 

 year to year, according to circumstance — food, weather, 

 etc. It also varies indifferent localities; for instance, 

 birds shot in a territory covered with beech trees, in a 

 year when beechnuts are plenty, are always heavy, while 

 birds in an oak and chestnut territory always run smaller. 

 Then again, a large crop of blackberries means an addi- 

 tion of at least 3oz. average over a year when there are 

 no berries. 



The smallest average I ever took was of 20oz. This 

 was very unusual and happened eight or nine years ago. 

 The birds were very poor and were evidently ill-fed. 

 With the exception of this one season the average has 

 been pretty regular at 23oz., which corresponds with Dr. 

 Morris's opinion, until this year, when it was 24oz. 



Now a word as to the big birds. Out of the tens of thous- 

 ands that I have weighed the heaviest bird weighed 

 29oz. , while the same year I killed two or three that 

 weighed 28oz. ; and altogether I have weighed probably 

 five or six, not more than that number, weighing 28oz., 

 probably twenty -five weighing 27oz,, 100 or probably 

 more weighing 26oz.,and so on down. Now I have 

 heard of these phenomenally large birds weighing 2pbs. , 

 2-Jlbs and 2|lbs., "as large as a hen," "as large as a 

 turkey," and even as large "as an old Tom turkey." I 

 bunch these stories all toge'her and simply "want to 

 weigh the bird myself." At this moment there comes to 

 me the recollection of a story told me of a bird killed in 

 Litchfield, Conn. It ended something like this: "And 

 what do you think that bird weighed? Well, sir, that 

 partridge weighed just 21bs. and £." Now the man was 

 drunk when he told the story, he was probably in the 

 same condition when he weighed the bird : and all that 

 I believed was, that it was a lie pure and simple. I do 

 not wish Mr. Ohl to think that I discredit his story of 

 the 2 1-1 61bs. grouse, nor Dr. Morris's account of half a 

 dozen 21bs. grouse, but I look at it this way: There is 

 a chance that the scales might vary on that, possibly a 

 mistake was made by the weigher. Noltiks. 



Crabs from the Skies. — The winter rains have brought 

 a variety of experiences to San Francisco, some good, 

 others bad, and now we hear reports of one which is 

 unclassified for lack of information from the Academy 

 of Sciences, whither, some representatives of the celestial 

 visitor have found then- way. We refer to the shower 

 of crabs on Morgan street the other day. San Francisco 

 is hard to satisfy. She already had an ample supply of 

 crabs, big enough to provide a meal for a whole family. 

 Doubtless Dana had this in mind when he named one of 

 the species Cancer magister, which may be translated for 

 our purpose the boss crab. Now, the master crab, the 

 red crab, the rock crab, the kelp crab, and the curious 

 red rock crab, which can outweigh and outclass at all 

 points a male Felis domesticus, since it has hair, teeth 

 and tubercles on its claws, no longer meet the cravings 

 of the forty-niner. He must have rain crabs and forth- 

 with clown they come by the streetful, to soothe this 

 spoiled child of fortune. We congratulate San Francisco 

 on her new method of increasing the crab supply, and if 

 the species prove to be undescribed we hasten to propose 

 for it the name Cancer descensus. 



A Wild Pigeon Flight. — Harrisburg, Pa., Dec. 28. — 

 Editor Forest and Stream: An unusual sight was wit- 

 nessed here on Christmas morning; a flock of wild pig- 

 eons, estimated at three hundred, was seen flying north- 

 ward along the Susquehanna River. We have had no 

 wild pigeons here before in over ten years. This flock 

 came up the river from the south. — Keohk. 



