AUO. 8, 1896.] 
FOREST • AND STREAM. 
108 
THE SPADE-FOOT TOAD. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The story of the frogs of Wyndham, in your last issue, 
reminds me that no one has suggested that some few 
spade-feefc, if that's the proper plural, might have helped 
in making that great alarm. Few people know this singu- 
lar animal, which can raise more din than almost any 
other animal. It is quite rare. It is solitary and lives 
underground, good reasons for not being well known. 
About April 18 or 20 last, a few days before I moved 
from Long Island, there was a great row one evening up 
the road. A neighbor stopped to ask if we had heard it, 
and thought that a great fight must be going on among 
some people living there; perhans tramps were murdering 
them I 
On opening the door a babel of yells, shrieks and howls 
greeted us. Imagine a dozen steam calliopes each play- 
ing a different tune, while hundreds of Salvation Army 
bands were trying to silence them, and thousands of bag- 
pipers were screeching to be heard, and you have a notion 
of the sounds that came down the hill. Two more neigh- 
bors from across the harbor came to learn what the diffi- 
culty was, and one of them, who is hard of hearing and 
lived nearly a mile away, said that the noise woke him 
up. "They're killing somebody," said the deaf man. 
"What can it be?" asked another. I knew, had heard it 
years ago, but never before on Long Island. 
"Gentlemen," said I, "that music comes from a few 
spadp-foot toads, known to the scientific duffers as 
Scaphiopus holbrooM, and there are probably six or eight 
of them there, and they are singing their love song in the 
pond above." 
"Six or eight million, you mean, don't you?" asked 
one; "no such racket as that could be made by toads 
anyway." 
"What did you say his name was?" asked the deaf 
man. 
"Get a lantern and let's go up and see what the row is," 
said another. 
We went, but when the lantern came near them all was 
still. The light was put out, and soon a shriek rent the 
air that made the deaf man stand back. 
"That's no toad," he said. 
"More like the devil," remarked his friend, and then we 
got it at close range. We could see nothing, and soon left 
them. Next day I went there and caught two, and was 
satisfied that I was right. I had not heard them in over 
forty years, and then only once, but did not know what 
they were at the time. 
This animal is hardly as large as the largest common 
toad. It is of a brown color, with a yellowish band on 
each side. It has a horny spade-hke attachment to its 
heel, and is solitary and burrowing, except when it seeks 
the water for breeding. The question arises: If this 
noisy animal lived in the hills about me for thirteen years, 
why did I not hear it before when it was breeding? No 
doubt the scientists of the Brooklyn Institute, some of 
whom are now at the laboratory at Cold Spring Harbor 
could find the tadpoles of this toad in that pond, as it is 
close by and supplies the hatchery with some water. 
After this description it seems possible that the Wynd- 
dam frogs might have employed a band of spade-foots to 
sing the wedding march in "Lohengrin," if it was at 
the time of year when that music would be appropriate. 
^ „ ^, Fked Mather. 
Brooklyn, N. Y, 
The Copperhead in New England. 
Boston, Mass., Aug. 1.— Editor Forest and Stream: In 
reference to the copperhead snake in New England the 
inclosed clippings, taken from this week's Sharon, Mass 
Advocate, may throw some hght on the subject. Blue 
Hill, Milton, has been noted for years as one of the 
places m Massachusetts for rattlesnakes, 
, , , Albert E. Crafts, 
The Advocate records: "People who travel leafy wood- 
land ways in this blithe summer time see strange things 
when they don't have their guns. Some of these things 
bite and some of them don't, but those discovered in the 
Blue Hill reservation of late decidedly do, if you give 
them a chance. Superintendent Hind has at his office 
near Houghton's Pond a croquet box with a glass top in 
which dwell three ugly customers, two rattlesnakes and a 
copperhead. With them is a 5ft. blacksnake, which keeps 
pretty quiet, and a poor little hop toad. The hop toad 
doesn t say much either. He seems to feel that 1^'s got 
mto the wrong bed. Blacksnakes and hop toads are well- 
known inhabitants of the reservation, even the rattle- 
snakes we have learned to put up with, but the copper- 
head is a new feature. He is about 2ift. long, slender in 
build, with a slim neck and arrow-shaped head The 
color is that of old copper, mottled light and dark, and 
the whole snake looks like a very poor thing to introduce 
into a Sunday-school picnic. He is an agile little chap 
and slips about in the box in a happy, careless way that 
gives the hop toad nervous prostration. He was captured 
by Supt. Hind, himself in the part of the park over to- 
ward Qumoy, and may be one of those which St. Faxon 
18 busy driving out of Quincy boots. There are people 
who say that the copperhead is strictly a Southern sn^e 
and is not to be found in this section of the country and 
that this is merely a harmless snake that looks something 
like one. When the reporter sees these unbelievers hold 
the copperhead on their knees and tickle his tail without 
getting a bicycle face on them he is prepared to believe 
their story; otherwise he takes the copperhead at his face 
value and doesn't require him certified." 
"The copperhead, hardly heard from since the days of 
the war, seems again to he prevalent. Some years ago a 
Ponkapoag man declared that he had seen one an^i was 
promptly laughed at, people asking him if it came out of 
his boot. One has lately been captured in the park how- 
f7^^h. 1"^^*® foUowing from the Milton News- 
'While mowmg in the field the other day Peter Mclntyre 
cut m pieces with his machine a large copperhead snake ' " 
increase of the flock has been due to the destruction of 
the nest and eggs, at times by the female, oftener by 
others of the flock, and to the killing of young birds after 
they leave the nests by the old males. The period of in- 
cubation is fourteen days. Mr. Deane gives a number of 
interesting bits of information about the habits of these 
birds in captivity. 
There are a number of records of the breeding of the 
passenger pigeon in captivity, and, if we recollect aright, 
Mr. Frank J, Thompson, now of Buffalo, N. Y., who 
formerly was in charge of the Zoological Gardens at Phil- 
adelphia and at Cincinnati, was quite successful in rearing 
these birds, and it is our impn'ssion that we published 
something on this point. In 1887 a note appeared in 
Forest and Stream which told of the rearing of these 
birds in confinement by Mr. Ben Frost, a successful 
pigeon trapper residing in Michi^an, not very far from 
Toledo, O. It would seem, therefore, that the rearing of 
thp passenger pigeon in captivity presents no very great 
difficulties, and it is greatly to be desired that more ex- 
tended efforts should be made looking to the breeding of 
these birds on a larger scale. Similar experiments might 
advantageously be made with the band-tail pigeon of the 
Northwest coast. 
make an engagement with them unless you are sure to 
keep it. It is very discouraging to a guide to have a party 
engage him in advance for perhaps the best part of a sea- 
son, and when the time draws near to suldenly give up 
the trip or perhaps go somewhere else. Of course there 
are times when owing to something unforeseen a sports- 
man cannot keep an engagement with a guide, and from 
no fault of his own, but I have known of instances where 
a^ guide got left in this manner, and when apparently 
there was no good and sufficient reason for it. 
In writing as I have about these two guides I have 
no pecuniary interest in any sense. I should feel quite 
confident of shooting a bull moose should I go hunting 
with either of them, and perhaps what I have said may 
be of interest to parties wishing to kill their first moose 
during the season of '96. c. M. Stark. 
Wild Pigeons Bred in Captivity. 
In the last number of the Auk Mr. Ruthven Deane con- 
tributes an interesting note on some wUd pigeons in cap- 
tivity which are in the possession of Mr. David Wliittaker 
of Milwaukee, Wis. There are fifteen of these birds six 
males and nine females, and the first pair of this flock'was 
obtained by Mr. Whittaker in 1888. The pigeons breed 
ynth some regularity, laying only a single egg. The slow 
^^njc md §mu 
MOOSE AND SOME NEW CAMPS. 
At various times during the past eighteen months I 
have received a good many letters from sportsmen in 
different parts of the country asking for information 
about good grounds for moose-hunting and also reliable 
guides. To one and all I wrote, describing grounds I 
knew and guides with whom I am personally acquainted. 
Many of my correspondents had never hunted moose, 
some had, but with no success. I have always endeav- 
ored to impress upon parties asking for information that 
there was a great deal of uncertainty connected with 
moose-hunting even on the best grounds. In calling time 
the weather may be unfavorable and remain so during 
the greater part if not the whole of the time you can 
spend in the woods, also in the still-hunting season a 
slight thaw or rain will often spoil what would otherwise 
prove first-rate snow. 
Some four or five years ago I considered some parts of 
Nova Scotia fully as good if not the best moose region I 
kncpt of ; since I have had reason to change. A friend, 
who is a resident of the Province, and who is a keen and 
succepsful sportsman, and who, although a comparatively 
young man, had killed twenty-two moose, and who rarely 
failed to get one or two bulls on every trip, wrote me 
some time since that his last two trips were failures and 
that in the future he should try New Brunswick. It was 
not on account of the scarcity of moose on his former 
hunting grounds, but for the reason of there being so 
many hunting parties that whenever he tried calling he 
would hear others doing the same. While I feel quite 
sure there are a good many moose now in Nova Scotia, I 
think it very uncertain about getting shots in calling sea- 
son for the above reason. My last trip to the Province 
was to the region around the headwaters of Shelburne 
River in Shelburne county. I found moose and signs of 
moose scarcer there that season than I ever did in other 
parts of that country. Yet Mr. H. W, Hamlyn in a re- 
cent number of Forest and Stream speaks of the num- 
ber he found there last season, and I also know that Mr. 
Hamlyn was successful in the same place for two seasons 
in succession previous to the year I was there. Again 
Mr. John Bower, who is game warden in Shelburne, 
writes me that moose have been plenty the last season, 
and at the time of writing (some two weeks before the 
closing of the season) he knew of eighty-two being killed 
in that part of Nova Scotia. 
In my letters to parties who have asked about guides I 
have given the names of several whom I considered 
among the best. A, J. Spearen, whose address is Maro, 
Aroostook county, Maine, and C. R. Peavey, of Oxbow, 
are two of the number. Spearen is building some camps 
in a part of Aroostook which he says is good moose 
ground, and which has not been hunted. I take it he 
means but little hunted, as I think it would be rather 
difficult to find a section of Maine which had never been 
hunted, although I have heard of sportsmen who imag- 
ined they had found certain tr.tcts which were unknown, 
to others and of whose location they are very careful 
never to speak. The new camps of Spearen will be ready 
before the next season opens. They will be fitted with 
blankets, canoes and provisions, So much per day wiU 
be charged, which includes sportsman's board, guide and 
board, and use of canoe. The charges are not as high as 
I have paid in similar camps in western Maine. I shall 
not give the location of the camps or the route to them. 
They cannot be reached in a few hours from the railroad, 
as they are quite a distance back in the wilderness. They 
can be reached by canoe before the lakes and streams 
freeze. Spearen will furnish any information required 
by parties wishing to go there. Last November he took 
in two sportsmen. On the first trip they had but two 
days of still-hunting owing to noisy snow; killed a bull 
moose and two deer in the two days. The second trip 
was late in the month, and they found some 3ft. of snow 
with a sharp crust. One day it rained, and, starting out, 
they got very close to an unusually large bull moose, and 
the sportsman missed three shots at him. A cow and a 
two-year-old were seen at the same time. 
Now as to Peavey. C. R. Peavey is well known all 
over Maine as a very successful guide, whether in calling 
or still-hunting. He writes me that there were nine bull 
moose killed in his region during the pas'c season, and he 
was present at the killing of seven of them. He was 
with a party who killed four bulls, joining them after 
they had killed one and helping to get the other three in 
six days' hunting. From Oct 1 to Jan. 1 he saw thirty- 
seven moose. Saw three with large heads get away after 
sportsmen had had good shots. Thirteen caribou were 
killed around his camps. He also killed one bear and 
wounded and lost six more. Peavey has just sent me a 
number of photographs of views at and around his camps. 
There is one of a moose in the water and one of some 
caribou on a bog, but the pictmres are too small to be re- 
produced. 
Should any of the readers of Forest and Stream pro- 
pose to go on a hunting or fishing trip with either of the 
guides I have named, I liaye oae request to mak©, Do not 
THE ALLING GAME PRESERVE. 
Tacoma, Wash., July 27.— Editor Forest and Stream: 
The writer has read with delight the graphic descriptions 
of the "Game Preserves of America," as they have ap- 
peared in your valued paper, and has noted with approval 
the extensive efforts which are evidently being made to 
save our native game from total extinction. 
The spirit which prompts these efforts cannot be too 
highly commended. We have some of it here, though 
truth compels me to state that as a rule there is a repre- 
hensible carelessness among sportsmen about the observ- 
ance of the plain rules of game protection. 
This tendency to wink at violations of the game lawsT 
and to take a shot at a "hooter" or a flock of young 
ducks in August, is gradually giving way to a healthier 
moral tone, and convictions for illegal killing will be as 
easy here in another decade as they are, or should be, in 
more advanced society. One of the most potent agencies 
for the furtherance of this proper and refined spirit is the 
constant teachings of Forest and Stream, and I am sure 
that I have witnessed a change of heart in an inveterate 
"poacher" by giving him my old copies of Forest and 
Stream, and accompanying him in reading and interpret- 
ing the meaning of the words "game protection." 
One of our citizens deserves especial mention in this 
connection, and the earnest and persevering efforts made 
by Mr. Frank Ailing, both to foster the native game and 
to introduce exotic species, are deserving of the unstinted 
praise of every true citizen of this State. Fox Island, 
about six miles long and two miles wide, lies parallel to 
the mainland and about five miles off shore, a little to the 
southwest of this city. It is an island gem, wrU watered 
and timbered, and abundantly provided with all that pro- 
fusion of natural bird food which characterizes this whole 
region. There are a few ranches upon this island owned 
by farmers who are eager to see its game preserved, and 
who lend Mr. Ailing much valuable assistance in his 
efforts. 
Mr. Ailing is rapidly stocking this island with native 
and imported game, entirely at private expense. 
He has liberated large numbers of ring-neck, golden, 
silver and Reeves pheasants, mountain and valley quail, 
and quail brought from the north of India. Deer are 
rapidly multiplying under his protection, and all the 
birds he has liberated are doing nicely, and are now lead- 
ing about large coveys of young. 
In his efforts at game protection Mr. AHing has the 
hearty approval and practical assistance of Governor J. 
H. McGraw, and that also of the local rod and gun club. 
And he needs all the aid he can secure, for there is a 
small gang of utterly depraved pot-hunters, one of whom 
is now in jail for illegal killing, who hang upon the bor- 
ders of this island and constantly await an opportunity to 
destroy these beautiful birds. And worse than this, there 
is somebody even more lost to a sense of right, whose 
desire to put "Chinese pheasant" upon the bill of fare 
places a premium upon these illegal and disgraceful prac- 
tices. It will not be the fault of his excellency, the Gov- 
ernor, nor the neglect of the gun club to prosecute, if 
these deadly enemies of the game interests of the whole 
State are not severely punished whenever they are 
caught. 
It should be the earnest, self-imposed duty of every citi- 
zen to second the philanthropic efforts being made by Mr. 
Ailing in this direction, and the miserable, selfish nomads, 
who lurk in the shadows of the "forest primeval" only to 
desecrate its sacred precincts by deeds unworthy of men 
should be given short shift and a long term. ' 
J. A. Bbebb, M. D. 
More about Bggs and Albumen. 
SoRANTON, Pa., July 30.— Editor Forest and Stream: 
Apropos of the duck egg fake storv I inclose a clipping 
from the mission publication of the Presbyterian Chm-ch 
which explains where some of the eggs which furnisli 
albumen for the arts really do come from. 
J. H. FiSHKE. 
The story as told by Rev. W. J. Nelson, of Tripoli, is of 
a Syrian egg gatherer: "A vacant room next to our 
church in Minyara has been made a store. One evening 
I saw a man come up with two donkeys, each carrying 
two boxes tied across his back. The owner asked some 
one to help him, and they very carefully lifted the boxes 
to the ground. Then came the owner of the store, and 
seating himself on an empty box removed the grass and 
straw from the top of one of the boxes and it proved to 
be full of eggs. Then began the counting and storing of 
all the sound eggs in other boxes ready for the city In 
the four boxes there were 3,161 good eggs, besides about a 
dozen broken ones The price of these eggs is t'lirty-two 
cents a hundred— less than four cents a dozen. The 
owner of the donkeys told me that he had been away 
three or four days collecting the eggs, and often he 
travels as much as fifty miles from home, going to each 
village and trading for eggs, in exchange for which he 
gives soap. But these eggs are not to be eaten. They 
are sent o a camels or donkeys to Tripoli, a camel load 
being 3,440 eggs. There they go into an egg factory. 
The shells are broken, the white put in large tin trays 
and set on shelves to dry. The yolks are put into large 
casks with salt. These casks are then shipped away 
across the Mediterranean to France, where the yolks are 
used in preparing dressing for leather. When the white 
is dry it is packed up and sent away to Europe, where it 
is used in photography. So the chickens of Syria are 
Tjsefui to the people of Europe." 
