Hept. 1, 189S.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



179 



tiion of a minute and then laughed, for we were doubt- 

 Ifisg thinking of the same thing. The possibilities for fun 

 I'or the boys in camp at the expense of "Old Hickory" 

 and hi8 foot and a. half trout were great, and I had a no- 

 tion to toss the gasping beauty — for he was a beauty 

 even though only 13in. "strong" — back into the pool. 



Bat I thoiight better of it, and biting off the line near 

 his mouth, leaving the hook still in his bowels, he was 

 soon on aBtringer and "coming to" in the cold water near 

 where the minnow-backet was sunk. 



Then a mild difference of opinion arose as to whether 

 th it one was the big trout of the pool or not, Kelpie try- 

 ing to convince me that it was, while I held out and still 

 believe that the big fellow that I had been fishing so per- 

 isistently for was at that very moment "layin' low" under 

 the bank and tickling himself against a root over the 

 t hought of having outgeneraled me again by holding 

 hack, while his less wary mate swallowed the loaded 

 shiner and found himself ingloriously yanked out. for 

 there had not been a semblance of "ai'tistic angling'" from 

 11, fly-fisher 8 standpoint during the whole performance, 

 but 1 got the trout— not the big one, however, as I still 

 maintain, Kelpie and the boys to the contrary notwith- 

 standing. 



Kelpie took his way down the stream to fish toward the 

 1 ike, while I hooked on another shiner to try the pool 

 just once moi-e with a forlorn hope that the big trout 

 might ba fool enough to bite, to the utter confusion of 

 Kelpie and his notion that I had taken the last one in 

 the pool. Besides my "Scotch was up"' — obstinacy, if it 

 (its tlxe case better — and my pride as a trout fisher was a 

 trifle ruffled and I hated to give up the fight. 



But the wary warrior of McConnell's Creek was too 

 smart for me, and after trying patiently for half an hour 

 nr more without as much as an indication, I put the 13 

 inches of disappointment in the minnow bucket, and 

 burdened with a good-sized load of "depression of sper- 

 1 it," went back to the boat laboring under the conviction 

 vhat it was another case of "bvmkoed agin, b'gosh." 



Somehow I lost interest in that pool— the reception I 

 got at camp may have had something to do with it— and 

 never went back to it again. 



The difference of opinion as to whether I got the big 

 one or not still exists, and I reckon I'll not hear the last 

 of that 18in. trout till the Kingfishers break camp for the 

 last time, which I trust is many years yet in the future. 



1 found Kelpie at the boat ahead of me, and as I caught 

 sight of him a few yards upshore he was just shying a 

 club at a thieving mink that he had caught in the very act 

 of trying to steal our bass hanging at the side of the 

 boat. He was a "sassy cuss" and went "snoopin' along" 

 near the water seemingly in no hurry to get out of range 

 of K'^lpie's missiles, but at last he dodged one that struck 

 the grouud uncomfortably close to him and disappeared 

 in the laisb, and Kelpie came back to say as he drew 

 near: "Tnat mink's got more cheek than two book agents 

 and a tree peddler. I found him tampering with our fish 

 on the stringer and he wouldn't leave till I was on the 

 point of tapping him on the head with the tip of my rod. 

 Then I tried what virtue there was in clubs and chunks 

 of wood, instead of the 'tufts of grass' of our boyhood 

 spelling books, with the result that you have just seen. 



"The nerve of some minks is past comprehension: the 

 audacious rascal" — this last in a tone that doubtless would 

 have ]3aralyzed the hungry mink had he been within ear 

 shot^ — and then with characteristic deliberation he fished 

 out his tobacco pouch and pipe from some recess in his 

 clothes, filled the pipe with careful accuracy, returned 

 the pouch to its proper receptacle, scratched a match, 

 took several long, deliberate whift's to fire the tobacco, 

 and after blowing out the flame of the match and tossing 

 it with a satisfactory flourish into the water, sat deliber- 

 ately down on a log to comfort himself with a smoke, I'e- 

 marking between two whiffs, "That rascally mink;" 

 while I got the boat in readiness to start back to camp. 



He had taken no trout from the stream worth mention, 

 but he never growls over poor luck, neither does he 

 become unduly hilarious over a big catch; he sails always 

 on an even keel, so to speak, and never envies a comrade 

 the taking of the biggest fish. Rare old Kelpie — the 

 world were better were there more in it like you. 



We stopped at the point and caught a few minnows in 

 the grass and fished awhile, expecting, of course, to get 

 a strike from a maskinonje, but, of course, we didn't, 

 but we did get another bass to put on the stringer and 

 then went on our way up the lake to Alexander's Point, 

 where we stopped to "feel fur a bass or two" and have 

 another look at the glass minnow trap that had been 

 hanging on a pole for several days at the edge of the 

 sand bar where we always found the grass and rushes 

 alive with minnows and an occasional school of young 

 perch. We thought to find mayhap that another pot- 

 bellied perch had strayed in, if nothing else, but there 

 Avas nothing in it but pieces of broken cracker and water 

 and we once more voted it a transparent fraud; however, 

 it was a great contrivance for keeping our "expectancy" 

 up to the proper pitch, and we let it hang. 



KiNQFISHEE. 



Care of Animals in Captivity. 



"A Handbook on the Management of Animals in Cap- 

 tivity in Lower Bengal," by Ram Bramha Sfnyal, Super- 

 intendent of the Zoological Gra."rden, Calcutta, is favorably 

 reviewed in Nature, Aug. 4, 18S)2. The author is a native 

 of British India who has a taste for natural history and 

 has been for some years in charge of the collections sup- 

 ported by the Government of Bengal, but controlled by a 

 committee of the subscribers. The plan of the handbook 

 was drawn up by a sub- committee. 



The volume contains & complete classified list of the 

 mammals and birds— 341 of the former and 402 of the 

 latter— which have been kept alive in the Garden. The 

 author kept a j ournal of observations on the treatment of 

 the animals in health and in sickness, their longevity, and 

 their habits in confinement. 



"In a case of a fight between a lioness and a tiger, 

 which were by some accident allowed to pass into the 

 same compartment, the tiger was completely victorious 

 and killed the lioness." "The longest* xaeriod during 

 which a tiger has lived in the Calcutta Gardens is four- 

 teen years.'" An account is given of a young rhinoceros 

 which was born in captivity. The American ant-eater 

 and the African ant-bear endure life in confinement very 

 well. 



The handbook will prove of much value to superin- 

 tendeuta of zoiilogical gardens in other parte of the 

 world. 



A CARIBOU WITHOUT FEAR. 



Mt«TREAL, Aug. 6.— A very remarkable adventure 

 bef el my two daughters on Saturday afternoon last while 

 on their way to the Mastigouche Lakes, where they usu- 

 ally spend several weeks every summer. About a quar- 

 ter of a mile beyond the last settlement (Mastigouche), 

 where the woods road to our camp begins, there is an 

 abandoned clearing of some few acres in extent, now 

 overgrown with ferns, raspberry bushes and small shrubs. 



The buckboard with my two daughters and driver 

 (David Prevost, who is so well known to all the visitors 

 at the lakes) had just entered this clearing when David 

 suddenly stopped his horse and pointing with his whip 

 said, "Oh, look at the caribou," And there some 300yds. 

 or less directly in front of them, was a fine caribou 

 quietly feeding and apparently unconscious of their pres- 

 ence. After looking at him for some moments David 

 said he would drive on slowly and see how near he could 

 get. After covering about half the distance the caribou 

 looked up at them, and evidently thinking there was 

 nothing very alarming in their presence, quietly returned 

 to its feeding. 



David then drove slowly along to see how close he 

 could approach without frightening it away, and when 

 within some 40 or 50yds. it walked into the woods, but 

 almost immediately returned and stood gazing at them. 

 As the team still drew nearer, it again turned into the 

 woods, but this time came out again close to the wagon, 

 and walked deliberately toward them. David ])ut out his 

 hand and called and the animal reached out his head to 

 smell of his fingers. It then passed on to the horse, walk- 

 ing alongside of it, then crossed in front under the 

 horse's neck and back along the other side, so close to the 

 buckboard that my daughter could have put her hand on 

 it, then around the back of the wagon and up again on 

 the other side near the horse. 



David thinking that as the animal seemed so tame he 

 would try and catch it, handed the reins to my daughter, 

 quietly got down and approached the caribou, holding 

 out his hand and calling to it, when it put out his nose 

 and smelled of him. He rubbed its nose, scratched its 

 head, which it put down and rubbed against him, and 

 finally got up close alongside of it, and threw his arms 

 over his neck and grasped the long hair underneath. 

 Then the caribou jumped and struck at David with its 

 feet, but fortunately did not strike him, David mean- 

 while grasped it under the throat with his other hand 

 and held on, and in the struggle both fell to the ground, 

 David on top. The girls of course were very much ex- 

 cited and kept calling to David not to hurt the poor 

 creature, but to let it go; and as it lay there panting after 

 Prevost got up they were sure he had broken its leg or 

 hurt it some other way so seriously that it could not get 

 up. However, after punching it with his foot once or 

 twice the caribou got up, shook itself and moved slowly 

 away ; and as David got into the wagon and drove off 

 the last the girls saw it was quietly feeding again as if 

 nothing had happened. 



From the description given of the animal I should 

 judge it to be a female about 18 months old and full 

 grown, 



The place where this happened is near the Mastigouche 

 Club lakes, in the Laurentian range of mountains, about 

 ninety miles northeast of Montreal, and is a locality 

 j)robably well known to a number of your readers. 



H. W. A. 



THE SNAKE'S SKIN-SHEDDING. 



As Dr. Gibbs says, snakes always attract attention, at 

 any rate, mine alwa.ys do, I have owned several, of 

 different kinds, at different periods of my existence, but 

 each specimen for only a very brief season, but like the 

 majority of your contributors, I never saw a snake spit, 

 or eject venomous saliva or other material, and the con- 

 sensus of opinion seems to be largely against any such 

 habit. When a person states positively that he has seen 

 a snake eject froth, spittle or venom, that ends it as far 

 as that specimen goes, or as far as the spittle went, though 

 we are as much in the dark as ever as to whether it was 

 froth, spittle or venom, whether the snake just "b'iled 

 over" with rage and frothed at the mouth because he 

 couldn't help it, or whether he had "malice prepense and 

 murder aforethought" in mind, neither do we know that 

 any other snake would do it if he had a chance. There 

 is 80 much individuality about snakes, as there is about 

 other animals (never mind now, whether a snake is an 

 animal or not) that it isn't safe to generalize. Some 

 animals (men included) when angered right smart will 

 "tear passion to tatters" and froth at the mouth like "all 

 possessed," but they are not always the ones you want to 

 watch the closest, generally it's the non- spitting kind that 

 bite. So with snakes, maybe. Seems to me if a snake 

 ejects venom, being as how it comes from his fangs on 

 each side his jaw, he has got to have his air-gun trained 

 down pretty tine to hit anything, though maybe he is 

 choke-bored. If the current shoots out the center of his 

 mouth it wouldn't hit the venom on the side, unless the 

 snake has muscles specially formed to convey the venom 

 to the center, and you don't suppose that is the case, do 

 you? And if the current went every which way, he 

 couldn't shoot anything with it, I am impelled to the 

 belief that any case of snake spitting was purely acci- 

 dental and shouldn't count. 



But what I set out to say was about the skin shedding 

 of snakes. Dr. Gibbs wrote a very interesting account 

 of the process as performed by a massasauga. That 

 snake had much "method in its madness," We infer 

 from the doctor's article that snakes in casting the skin 

 begin at the head and work backward, inverting the 

 skin as they crawl out. This is not always so, I believe. 

 Once, while hunting in the South, I found a snake skin, 

 not long cast, lying stretched nearly perfectly straight, 

 by the side of a brush heap. The tip of the tail was 

 firmly glued to a twig and the skin wg^s right side out. 

 That case needs no demonstration. 



I was reading the doctor's article to my little daughter, 

 who is quite observant and who has found a number of 

 cast-off skins, when she remarked, "Why, papa, I , don't 

 believe all snakes crawl out of their skins in that way, 

 leaving them wrong side out." "Why not?" said I, 

 "Because," she answered, "I have seen a good many, and 

 the skin over the eye was convex side out, which 



wouldn't be the case if the akin was wrong side out." 

 Which I thought quite natural and a very rational con- 

 clusion. O. O. S. 



A Habit of tlie Robin. 



At my home in New York a robin had built her neat 

 on a projection over a window which was well shielded 

 by a rose bush. From the story above I could plainly ob- 

 serve her every action through a small hole in a card- 

 board which T had tacked to the window sill, and which 

 projected sufficiently to shield my head from the bird's 

 view. Generally, after she had fed her young, she would 

 stand upon the edge of the nest as if in meditation. As 

 soon as one of the birdlings began to stir, as with a trem- 

 bling motion, her attention was at once directed toward 

 it. With this motion of the birdling its rump became 

 elevated and it voided excrement, being a globule the 

 size, say, of a small marble. Instantly the old bird took 

 it before it coiild drop into the nest, and invariably swal- 

 lowed it. If the naturalist has never observed this I have 

 taught him something. N. D, Eltino. 



Migiating Martens. 



BtroKSPORT, Me., Aug, 26, — Migratory martens are 

 coming into Bucksport daily from the eastward. On the 

 evening of Aug, 35 a bird house on thR premises of Mr. J. 

 F. Moses was filled with these birds, and the writer 

 counted forty which could not crowd in and were cling- 

 ing to the outside during a rainfall. Mr. Moses has an- 

 other bird house over his carriage shed, but the martens 

 never enter it, and nobody can tell why they prefer the 

 other. The resident martens left Bucksport on Aug. 15. 

 Mr, Moses has in previous seasons observed hundreds of 

 the birds resting over night on the masts and yards of 

 vessels lying in the harbor. B. 



lit e Book of the Game Laws has all fish and game laios 

 of United States and Canada. Price 50 cents. 



VELOCITIES OF SHOT. 



Oaklakd, N. J., Aug, 2Q.— Editor Forest and Stream: 

 I notice in your issue of Aug. 11, that in answer to 

 "Cleremont, South Dakota," you give the results of Prof. 

 Mayer's trials, as to the velocities of shot. I do not know 

 what instruments he used to obtain these results, but 

 either his instruments must have been inaccurate, the 

 calculations wrongly worked out, or a misprint have 

 taken place. His results show that with S^drs. Curtis & 

 Harvey's, li shot, the following velocities were obtained: 



Size of shot. Vel. 40vds. Vel. .50yds. 



BB , 79.=i 667 



No. 3 "H 098 



^'o. 6 • 739 COO 



No. 8 749 ' 607 



No. 3 shot is shown to give higher velocity than BB at 

 SOyds. Also, No. 8 is shown to give higher velocity than 

 No. 6 at 40yds. 



I believe both of these results to be an absolute impos- 

 sibility, and I cannot understand the velocities being so 

 low, although several things may account for that. Since 

 1880 great improvements have taken place in shells, shot 

 and wadding, Curtis & Harvey's powder may also have 

 been improved, but I rather think it is the same now as 

 it was then. 



Prof. Mayer's trials may also have been shot in 

 bad weather: velocities are high in dry, still, clear 

 weather, but in a damp, rainy day they are very much 

 lower, as the following results show, the difference in 

 velocities on the two different dates being entirely due to 

 the atmosphere. 



The shot used is No. 7 Leroy's chilled trap, 276 pellets 

 to the ounce, 



Aug. 23.— Dry, cfear day: 



Powder. Size of shot. Vel. lOyd,---. 



E. C 43grs ... .No. 7, IMoz. 883ft. per second. 



C. & H., Sdrs No. 7, l%oz. Smt. per second. 



April 4.— Damp, wet day. 



Powder. Size of shot. Vel. 4Gyda. 



E, C. 42grs No. 7, D^oz. 826eT. per second. 



0. & H., 3dT3 .No. 7, 13-^)2. 813ft. per second. 



The damp causing a decrease of about 60ft. a second; 

 these averages were taken from a series of twenty shots 

 each. 



The velocities were obtained by BDuleoge electric 

 chronograph, which gives the results absolutely accurate, 

 N. E.' Money. 



THE HUNTING RIFLE. 



Editor Forest and Stream: 



I read with great interest Mr. Meyrick's article ia 

 your issue of August 18. I find that we agree that 

 large caliber rifles should be used for deer and all 

 other large game; but there is still one question 

 to be discussed; in fact more than one. Now f >r 

 example, I go into the woods expecting to see deer, and 

 knowing that I shall see all manner of small game. Now 

 the question which at once presents itself is, "what rifl'? 

 shall I take?" I need a rifle with which I can kill small 

 game (especially large birds) without breaking them a'l 

 to pieces; and as moat of these are shot (my experience 

 at least) at a considerable distance, a shotgun is of no 

 use. The rifle then must be of small caliber. In the 

 second place the rifle must be powerful enough to kill a 

 deer, and kill it quickly too. I don't want to shoot any 

 more deer with a .22 (your types make me say a .32). "l 

 have tried a great many rifles of almost all makes and 

 calibers, and now have a .33 40 Merwin & Hulbert. The 

 rifling is the best that I have yet seen for that caliber and 

 cartridge, and with a solid bullet and 40grs, of C. & H.'s 

 No. 6 powder it gives a flat trajectory and is very power- 

 ful. With a split bullet it will tear any ordinary- sized 

 cat or hawk all to pieces. I cut a crow completely ia 

 two with one of these bullets: in fact it smashes far 

 more than the solid .45 bullet has ever done to my know- 

 ledge. For deer its penetration must be suiiicient, as I 

 shot a ball completely through a dead steer at about 

 forty yards, making a very ugly-looking hole, I think 

 that this is a good all-around gun and am certain that a 

 deer shot in any vital part, or near it, will die as quickly 

 as though shot by a .45 solid bullet. 



L. D, von Iffland. 



