266 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept. 39, 1894. 
BIRDS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT. 
The glow of sunshine is gone, and the night herons 
have long since departed on their regular foraging expe- 
dition to the "fish ponds'' in the bay. Only an occasional 
qaah is heard from some, straggler, as he hurries through 
the dusk of this quiet evening. 
Were it not for "insect music," and now and again the 
intermittent rustle of a leaf under the touch of the light 
southerly air, the stillness would be complete. 
The sky is beautifully clear, and the planets, as they 
swing far out in space, are glowing with the mellow 
light of early autumn. The moon, a slim crescent in the 
south, casts its dim light about me as I wait kere for the 
birds. 
'Tis a perfect night for the little migrants. A light 
southerly air to bear them on, faint moonlight to guide 
them, and the Eeason, too, Sept. 12, is about the proper 
time for their first flight. 
Hark! Here they come! Now I can hear the soft call 
and chirp of little voices in the sky. It falls with an in- 
describable charm of suggestion, this "small talk" of the 
little travelers. How swiftly they pass! They are gone! 
There ! Another flock ! Crisp and silvery the tiny notes 
drop thro' the darkness. Seldom do I hear a voice that I 
may identify. The sweet sounds float in the air, but the 
little fellows hurry on, as though desirous of escaping 
recognition. 
That was a plover! What a start his ringing call gave 
me, as he slipped by unseen. 
There is a fascination in being alone at this hour, under 
the stars. 
There is the added charm of mystery. lb lurks in the 
tangle of the thickets where the shadows rest. It breathes 
in the damp mist of river fogs. It is voiced by the "Birds 
that pass in the Night." Wilmot Town send. 
Bay Ridge. N. Y., Sept. 17. 
ON THE TRAIL. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Most people, during some part of their lives, have been 
alone. But there are degrees of loneliness. I have heard 
a young woman sigh heavily when for a period of twenty- 
four or thirty -six hours there were no callers outside of 
the family at the fine residence of her parents. She 
selected first one book and then another, dropped them in 
despair, assailed the piano, and tried numerous other arts 
to pass the dragging and heavy hours. She seemed to 
have no recourse independent of her surroundings or her 
particular friends, and probably suffered more than some 
persons would in the most dreary desert. 
In the center of a city I have found it difficult to find 
companionship or themes for quieter pleasing contempla- 
tion. After the novelty of artificial surroundings has 
passed, nothing, it seems to me, is more difficult to endure 
than idleness in a great city. It is true there are many 
things constantly happening to attract and divert the 
attention, but most that occurs seems rather to weary than 
satisfy the spectator. To him all is artificial, and beyond 
man, in his constant strife and selfish competition, the 
paved streets, rails and wires, engines and smoke, fires 
and furnaces, gaudy colors and grinding wheels, seem false, 
heartless and superficial. 
Surrounded by all the din and bustle, and in the midst 
of thousands of his own species, I believe a man can feel 
loneliest in the heart of a city. I mean a man who is not 
identified with such surroundings, or interested in the 
weal or woe of those about him, any more than those 
about him manifest their recognition. The "Ancient 
Mariner," who was 
Alone, alone— all, all alone, 
Alone on a wide, wide sea— 
(unless he was a city man) could not have felt so pain- 
fully solitary if he had a few biscuits and a little fresh 
water with him. He had the sea and sky, the sun, moon 
and stars all to himself, and then he could have fished 
until he got a breeze. 
Under present conditions, I have no doubt, cities are 
almost as necessary as taxes. He was a wise man who 
observed that "necessity is the mother of invention," but 
I cannot help but admire the villain who proclaimed that 
"invention is the mother of necessity." In my ideal 
Utopia, which will precede the millenium, there will be 
no great cities. Those who wish to lose their identity 
and merge themselves into a soulless sea, will please fol- 
low the illustrious example of Jonah in his contact with 
the whale. I would have my whales less eructive. 
However, I am endeavoring to explain what it is to be 
alone. In the midst of the most deserted part of a great 
American desert there is a sign post set up. On the 
ghostly white board, in large letters, is the word Solitude; 
but as hundreds of people pass there on the railroad trains 
the sign is a standing falsehood. Besides there are jack- 
rabbits, prairie dogs, owls and coyotes there. Away out 
in the oceans there are islands, some of them mere rocks, 
protruding from fathomless depths of briny billows, but 
from them a sail is occasionally seen and migratory or 
native birds are there. As far as my knowledge reaches 
there is no place where man can exist and be absolutely 
alone. There is society everywhere, and man is alone 
nowhere. He may be lonely in a city and he may be 
lonely in a desert. There are degrees of loneliness, and 
these degrees are the imaginary gradations of man him- 
self. 
That man is a social animal is true — but whether he can 
exist without companionship of one or a thousand of his 
species is probably a mere habit or custom. If I was to 
select a man to experiment with, to see if he could sur- 
vive in solitary existence for say ten years, I would select 
a wise man, give him Shakespeare's works and ask him to 
manage to endure worse society when he got back. The 
foregoing statements which I have made are comprised 
in some of my incomplete philosophy, which I expect one 
of these days to array more attractively, thereby using 
many more words. 
The other day I felt unusually carnivorous, and as I had 
seen a large-sized deer track a short distance from my 
lair, I deliberately decided to go forth, like Esau of old, 
and get venison. I devoted the evening to putting my 
rifle in shape, sharpening my knife, and other aggressive 
and warlike preparations. About an hour before day- 
break the morning following I was well up on the side of 
a mountain, making progress toward the top of a deep 
canon. I say top because the canon is inclined to incline 
more than ordinary canons. If it only tipped up a few 
degrees more it would, I think, be the biggest well in the 
world. As it is, however, it is really open on one side, 
although the front has tried its utmost to close it com- 
pletely. The stream which tumbles down through it is 
at constant war with the huge granite boulders, logs and 
trees which impede its course, and if the water was not 
so fresh and vigorous it could never continue in its eternal 
roaring and tumbling, I should think the trout would ' 
crawl out on the banks and rest. 
I had reached a big shelf Tihat there is near the canon, 
about the time it was light enough to see to shoot, and 
two deer ran across it 50yds. from me. I might have 
shot one of them but I didn't know they were there, and 
I was out of breath. Besides, just as I saw the deer I 
stepped on some moss which felt like a snake and stepped 
back so quickly that I took my dog by surprise and almost 
went over a precipice with him. The dog is very well 
trained, but he saw the deer going away, and doubtless 
thought I was trifling, so he started out to catch the deer. 
He is one of those dogs which, in order to run fast, yelp 
every jump. Sometimes he gives out two yelps to one 
jump. In fact he makes so much noise with his mouth 
that he forgets to work his feet properly, I think. 
If this dog didn't yelp when he runs he would be a bet- 
ter dog than he now is. He is speedy, and he made those 
deer run for their lives. If he had only shut his mouth 
for a few jumps, and had devoted the surplus energy to 
his legs and feet he would have made the connection. As 
it proved the deer got out of sight and the dog got tangled 
up in the noise he made and gave up the race. All the 
deer in the vicinity knew he was a bad dog and so they 
left there also. 
This was rather discouraging after the hard climb I had 
made, but I never waste energy after I know an effort is 
futile. I found a good place to rest and wait for the dog 
to recover his voice, so I made the most of circumstances 
by thinking them over. I sat down under a big fir and 
contemplated. After I had been there an hour or so, four 
or five big grouse flew from a limb above my head. The 
dog wanted them, too, but as they flew across the canon 
he only made two jumps and a few yelps, found he 
couldn't sail and gave it up. If I had known the grouse 
were just over my head for an hour I would have killed 
something. However, I discovered that my dog, in order 
to yelp well, had to be moving. Whenever he stopped 
going his mouth quit also. It is a fact worthy of note 
that dog can sit and howl, but when a dog yips and yelps 
it is a sign he is in motion in other respects. I bethink 
me of a proverb here which I will do up in a package for 
posterity, viz.: 
When yips the cur 
You'll see him whirr. 
Whirr does not suit all dogs, but my dog whirrs — that 
is he goes with a sort of a whizz — especially when he 
wants to make so much noise that he cannot hear me call 
him back. 
After I had discovered these good traits in the dog I 
began to observe that I was in a lonely, weird sort of a 
place. The big trees made deep shade, the stream sent 
up a dreamy roar, several squirrels barked in subdued 
tones — probably making remarks about the dog — and 
somehow, although the mountain, the canon and forest 
were full of life and sounds, all seemed marvelously still 
and soothing; probably owing to the contrast caused by 
the opening and closing of the dog — at any rate it was a 
queer, wild place. 
I thereupon fell again to thinking. What a wonder is 
the mind of man and how unceasingly it labors! What a 
multitude of subjects it harbors in a day, or an hour. 
How few of the things it entertains are comprehended or 
understood; they are taken up and dropped as quickly, 
and thoughts pass by myriads in superficial review — re- 
viewed by the soul, or what we call the soul — whatever 
that is I wondered why so many animate forms of animal 
and vegetable life should have been created. Must not 
every thing endowed with life prey upon the essence of 
some other living thing or creature? Ah, may not all 
life in plant, or beast, or bird, or man be merely but a 
portion of some great all-pervading and mysterious 
element, and no life more than an atom of the whole. 
Amid the awful surroundings of oceans, mountains, 
storms, thunders, tempests, the myriads of orbs and 
planets away into infinite and unknowable space — it is 
sometimes strange to me that man should consider him- 
self as a responsible being, or as a solitary and sole crea- 
tion in himself. While I cannot indorse the fundamental 
theory of Pythagoras — that souls are shifted about from 
one domicile to another in the world, I am fain to be- 
lieve that all life is identical — an all-pervading essence, 
transmitted to differing material forms— differing veins 
or muscles or faculties, and that in these material and 
superficial forms all distinction is confined. 
Recalling my attention to myself, I concluded that I 
was a mere atom, endowed with some incomprehensible 
essence which animated my anatomy, and operated upon 
certain muscles, glands or "gray matter," and produced 
in me efftcts which I considered motion and reason. 
Here I was, then, carrying my soul around in a bone box 
that might be shattered and destroyed by a limb falling 
from a tree — aye, by a burr dropping from the lowest 
branch of a giant pine! Here I was, with the dog, prowl- 
ing about with a deadly instrument, constructed by man, 
in a fruitless and laborious tffort to prey upon some other 
insignificant atom of creation 
My gun seemed to have loat its attractive shape, and 
seemed now but an iron tube with a handle to it, contain- 
ing the villainous combination of sulphur, saltpeter and 
lead, made to deface and destroy things endowed with 
the mysterious and inexplicable blessing, life. I there- 
upon called my dog — although he always comes without 
calling — except when he is whirring — and set off for 
home. 
However,*! think now, I will go out again and try and 
get a deer. I have an inclination to exist longer. To do 
it I must prey upon something. I can be omnivorous for 
awhile, but even if I eat grass I must destroy life, for it 
lives, and is full of bugs besides. The fittest must sur- 
vive, and, therefore, if my dog can be suppressed, I expect 
to bring in something about the size of a deer shortly. If 
this much philosophy will supply you until then, trust me 
to send in a more copious installment. You have intimated 
that you prefer prose. I could have rhymed some of this, 
but I defer to your excellent taste and trepidation. This 
final sentence I write to save the balance of this sheet of 
paper. You may leave it off. Ransacker. 
Shasta Mountains, Aug. 31. 
A WOMAN'S VIEW OF IT. 
To the masculine mind, even though only slightly balanced in favor 
of the ground covered by Forest and Stream, there is an unfailing 
fresbr.essin Its weekly issue; but may I add to this another bit of 
praise, and say that there are just as many ladies who devour the 
contents of the one addressed to a certain F. F. K. as there are 
gentlemen? And precisaly the same number await it when it has 
started on its missionary rounds into another county of our State. 
In the sense of b^ing ardent followers of current periodical pub- 
lications we are a literary family, and how can we best talk about 
other than our neighbors' affairs, unless we all keep up with the same 
literature? If the world at large doesn't fill our minds, our own little 
treadmill of trading, farming, manufacturing, baking, brewing and 
boiling will, so we tacitly have taken the wider horizon- for the limit 
of our view. Our shortened vision will impel us to views at hand, but 
with field glasses and microscope, have we not the world at our feet? 
I can surely wish you "God speed" in the many paths your feet are 
treading, and those that are blazed, but are yet unbroken, and those, 
more remote, that the experienced editorial eye cannot yet discern 
between the giant boles blocking his sight. I read the editorials; and 
some of your correspondents have a rare gift at tying my eyes to 
their adventures; but mostly I skim through the fishing — because the 
fish will never take my bait^-the gunning is beyond the abilities of 
either my brain or body; the dogs I love and fear, and I am their 
unswerving slave so long as they are spiritualized on paper; the 
yachts— ya-chets I heard a not very ignorant woman call them the 
other day — are beyond my mathematical, or mechanical, skill, and 
possibly you may think I have narrowed the boundaries of your use- 
fulness. But the spirit is less captious than the latter. For what 
could be more intellectual than the lessons you gave us on the training 
of dogs? Or more graceful than those artistic lessons from nature on 
"Hunting Without a Gun?" 
It isn't the dictionary, tradition, poetry or joints, that make either 
rod or pole; it is the "divine afflatus" that makes the fisherman, that 
electrifies his weapon. My husband, my father, my grandfather, who 
can wade to their waistbands all day, or lie "belly- whopper" over a 
dark and rich pool— dark to the eye, but rich in patience and reward 
to the soul— for the two-pound beauty one will bring home in the bas- 
ket, they fish with rods, whether it is a fresh-cut alder or an 8oz. split 
bamboo, with silver gleaming joints and daintiest appointments. 
May I tell you how I am an angler? It is only as fish become things 
of beauty and joys forever, when somebody else has tramped over 
field and sailed over flood, safely netted, securely bottled, and finally 
poured forth the contents of his vials into my aquarium; when the 
dust, as the children call it, has settled, the water cleared, and beneath 
the surface moss I see my "Johnny Roach," my pretty shiners, grace- 
ful, tidy afld ceaselessly attractive, my eel, who only vouches infre- 
quent glimpses of his lithe form, my mussels plowing their way across 
the sands; the delicate greens of pond wort, arrow-heads, called pond 
lilies, and the daintier water worts I cannot classify, and finally when 
the field ponds are teeming with their myriad forms of animalcu'fe , 
and for a few minutes we have red spiders, fancy shrimps, and mil. 
lions of microscopic monsters, oh, this is my angling! This is when 
Walton's gentle fever burns my veins and I take a subdued delight in 
watching the panorama before my eyes as I lift them from sewing or 
reading, or go to and fro about my washing, ironing, baking, sweep- 
ing and dusting. 
Thus with the prospect of a useful existence, added to your encour- 
aging of those elements of sport that make the human heart reach out 
to attain other ends than a narrow, clannish life, to attain to the de- 
velopment of individual life, whether in bird, beast or fish, on earth • 
in air or water, whether in man, woman or child, I wish you all pros" 
perity. A Connecticut Woman 
THE CATBIRD. 
From the time when I first became interested in our 
common birds, I have always been especially attracted 
by the catbird — not because of any peculiarity in its gen- 
eral habits, but by reason of the song and personal 
character of the bird. 
The catbird (Galeoscoptes carolinensis) is not ranked 
among famous song birds, but there are few bird songs 
more interesting than his. I take the catbird to hold the 
place among song birds of a serio-comic singer; his forte 
(if I may use such wt ighty term in speaking of a bird) is 
comedy rather than tragedy, the burlesque rather than 
the pathetic. If to burlesque be not his intention he 
shows very bad taste in his combinations, for he will 
render his imitation- of the harsh screams of the bluejay 
or hawk in the same breath almost with such soft, deli- 
cate notes as those of the goldfinch, and introduce a 
sudden nasal me-ew right in the middle of a soft-toned 
soliloquy. The song of the catbird, like that of his gifted 
cousin, the mockingbird, seems to vary according to his 
mood, and his mood seems usually a very changeable one. 
He wdl mimic, or parody, and turn, his song into every 
shape he can think of, and then lowering his voice, 
soliloquize in a sott-toned argumentative way, for per- 
haps half an hour at a time. He has an amusing way, 
too, of speaking, as it were, rather than singing the 
various sounds belonging to his song, and in a low-toned 
mysterious manner suggestive of the narration of a ghost 
story. 
The manners of the catbird are no less interesting than 
his song. A prominent trait of his character is his in- 
quisitiveness, he desires apparently to know the why and 
wherefore of everything he sees. As I pass through his 
haunts he will leavo whatever he is occupied with and 
come out through the tree branches, not in a manner sug- 
gestive of fear, but rather to see if there is anything 
about me to gratify his love for the marvelous, or, I sus- 
pect, something that will amuse him, and serve as food 
for future ridicule. I was amused by a catbird one time 
in my youthful bird-catching days. The mate of a pet 
goldfinch having died, I took a trap cage and a call bird 
to a little wood much frequented by goldfinches, with the 
hope of replacing it. I was passing a group of cedars 
when a catbird came along and showed so much curiosity 
that for his gratification I put the cage down, and after 
showing him the way it worked, retreated a little to see 
