166 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 27, 1897. 
on a gentle slope, bearing a good crop of clover and timothy. 
Thf poults tDust be well protected from the broiling rays of 
the sun, and the clear stems of the clover do not clog ihe 
young birds witb wet to their exceeding detriment in rainy 
weather or when the dews are extra heavy. It is all im 
portant to keep the rearing field free from intruders of every 
kind, so the space needed should be inclosed with wire 8ft. 
high, the lower portion being snake and vermin proof. In 
this inclosure coops should be placed 15yds. apart every 
way, a narrow path being mown to connect each. The 
coops are constructed of thin planks, 2ft. square on the 
ground, veith a sloping roof 20in. high in front and lOin. at 
the back. The front of the coop should be barred with 
lathes suflaciently wide apart to allow the young birds till 
two months old to pass between, but close enough to retain 
in confinement the maternal hen. 
Everything being in order and the little pheasants being 
strong and lively, remove them and their mothers ia baskets 
to the rearing fields and place them in the coops. In front of 
each coop construct little yards, a broad plank high, 2ft. 
wide and 3ft. long, in which to confine the little creepers 
till they have learned their mother's call and are strong 
enough to make their way through the grass. These yards 
are only required for the'first two or three days, and when 
dispensed with, the coop must be daily moved onto a fresh 
piece of turf. 
As regards the food of the young pheasants, fowls' eggs 
must be their chief sustenance. There are many ways of 
preparing them. The easiest way and certainly as success- 
ful as any is to boil them hard and when cool hash them 
up, shell and all, quite small. Then add some bread crumb*, 
or, what will save" an immensity of trouble, the finer portioD 
of Spratts patent game meal, slightly soaked in water. Thus 
an excellent food is lealy. S >me people prefer to give 
custard made with swett unskimmed nilk and esrg-', from 
which the whey has teea expressed. But this is slightly 
more troublesome to prepare After a tortnight the f( od 
need not be given quite so fine and a little well-boiled rice 
and chopped lettuce can be mingled with it. borne barley 
and corn meals should be sifted over the other ingredients, 
enough to make the mixture neither sloppy nor too floury, 
but of a crumbly consistency. When the birds are a month 
old add some meat to the other food, and if more bulb is 
required some boiled potatoes pressed through a colander. 
During the first month the food should be given six times a 
day, and the frequency reduced by degrees to three times a 
day at ten weeks, when whole grain can bi substituted for 
the last meal each evening This is a brief account of how 
to feed the young birds till they are old enouah to leave the 
maternal care and fly away lo the woods. Then, they will 
be able to support themselves for the remainder of their 
existence, till a charge of No. 5 causes it suddenly to cease. 
When first put in the coop the hen requires no more food 
than is giv n to her young ones, as she must teach them to 
eat. Aft.rward a handful of soaked grain can be given to 
her evtry day. 
The giving of water to young pheasan s is a very much 
debated subject. It is unnecessary in damp weather, but 
when the days are hot and dry I consider it a sine qua non. 
The water must be fresh drawn, given in a china saucer, and 
oaly left for the birds to drink of for ten minutes. 
Of course, where an unlimited supply of ants' eggs can 
be got regularly, nothing exceeds their perfection as the 
principal article of diet, but it is dangerous to commence 
giving them if the quantity obtainable is doubtful, for the 
young birds find them so appetizing thit they will not touch 
any other food when once accustomed to this, and will often 
pine away sooner than accept other sustenance, which would 
otherwise have contented them. 
A much vaunted but entirely overrated article of nutri- 
ment are maggots. They are quite unneces ary considering 
the extremely offensive operation entailed in procuring 
them, and if needed on a large scale the neiahborhood of 
the charnel house becomes perfectly pestilential. I once 
essayed to re ^r some ihousauds of young pheasants on this 
diet, and as half a dozen dead horses a week were required, 
1 rendered the life of everyboiy, including my own, unbear- 
able for a radius of a mile round. Ih addition, the maggots 
must be very carefully prepared or they will scour the poults, 
and So do more harm than good. 
I have forgotten to mention the chief ingredient in the 
pheasants' food, viz , common sense. The exercise of this 
quality and scrupulous cleaaliness in everything connected 
with the birds far outweigh experience alone. 
The last subject is the diseases that young pheasants are 
liable to. Their chief complaints are four in number, viz., 
gap38, scours, blindness and cramp. In every case prevec- 
tion is better than cure. If the ground is damp, low-lying, 
or is in any way not sweet and clean, especially if lately run 
over by fowls, gapes will infallibly annihilate the broods. 
The scours are caused by ill-prepared food, either stale or 
sour, or put in dirty utensils. If too much food is given 
and allowed to lie in the sun the birds will soon sicken. 
Bhudness is generally the result of aa insufficiency of shade, 
and cramp comes after wet where there is no natural drain- 
age. Young pheasants will never recover entirely from any 
attack of these four destroying agencies, even if their lives 
are saved. So again I urge to avoid giving any excuse for 
the presence of such pests 
In th>3Ee few notes, which I trust will prove of use to those 
anxious to stock their demesnes with these superlative game 
birds, I have carefully avoided all really controversial points, 
and have tried to give as much information as possible within 
a brief space. Needless to say, I have not been able to enter 
at length into details, or been able to give all my reasons, or 
fully discuss the pros and cons. Nor have I been able to 
attend to the many nostrums advocated as infallible for 
pheasants, nearly all of which are needless. Only remember 
that till the down on the occiput is replaced by feathers, 
young pheasants are more delicate than chickens; but that 
when once approaching maturity, they will undergo severi- 
ties of climate that would exterminate the hardiest barnyard 
fowl. 
In the winter time I have often over a thousand pheasants 
on an open, exposed field, the snow lying 1ft. and moie 
deep, and the thermometer ranging about z;ero, and never a 
bird sick or sorry. No greater proof can be given than their 
success in Vermont and Nova Scotia, where I have sent lots 
of these birds for stocking preserves I have written the 
above for sportsmen who may desire to rear a more or less 
considerable head of pheasants, not for the mere dilettante 
who potfers around a coopful of poultg, and at the end of a 
few weeks proclaims his experience, as often wrong as right 
uriietorbe for public admiration and guidftnce. The rear- 
ing of pheasants is not a new firt, but was reduced by our 
grandfathers, and by geueratdgDS before them, to a regular 
fcjstem, I b»Ye occupied m:yielf witb the paclical {liatiage- 
ment of these birds for over a dozen years and am still learn, 
inar, taking world-wide authorities as my guidp, backed by 
experience, I shall be glad if the know'edge I have gained 
f>nd sketched in outline above may be of some slight service 
to all go'd lovers of sport. Verneb db Guise. 
Mahwah, n j. 
CATCHING A DEER. 
New Yobk, Feb 13. — Editor Fcn'est and Stream: It isn't 
everybody who can put salt on a bird's tail, neither is it 
everybody who can get their hands on a deer's tail, providing 
the deer is running at large in the full popsession of his pow- 
ers and understanding. "When such a feat is accomplished, 
therefore, it is worthy of mention, and particularly when the 
facts of the case are so well substantiated as the deer catching 
episode in which Mr. Champaign (spelling not guaranteed), 
of Whitehall, N Y., took pait. 
Last week I was in Whitehall talking with Mr. C. B Pike, 
the spoon bait manufacturer, when a little man ran by the 
front door, his coat tails flying and evidently in a hurry. 
Mr. Pike no sooner saw him than he exclaimed, "There's 
Champaign, the Frenchman, that caught the deer on South 
Bay," and he sent one of his clerks after him post haste, so 
that I could hear the story from his own lips. 
Meanwhile Mr. Pike volunteered a few words of explana- 
tion. 
A few weeks previously he had been hunting rabbits on a 
mountain overlooking the South Bay of Lake Champlain, 
which was frozen from shore to shore, and on whose surface 
a number of men were fishing through holes in the ice, when 
he saw a deer dash out of the woods, pursued by a cur dog. 
The deer ran toward the fishermen, and, as luck would have 
it, came so close that one of them, the Frenchman Cham- 
paign caught it. 
Here Champaign appeared in person in tow of the clerk. 
He was a swarthy little French-Canadian of wiry build, 
with a scrubby black beard, and very voluble. During the 
conversation which followed he never stood two cons' cutive 
seconds in the same spot, and as he became interested in his 
recital he gesticulated like a man fighting flies. They say a 
Canuck couldn't talk with his arms cut off. 
Yes, he had caught the deer, he was willing to acknowl- 
edge. ' Not bad for a hoi' man fifty-five years hoi', eh? 
An' Ah'll tell you he kicked to beat the band when Ah get 
a straddleof 'im, now didn't he, Mr Pike?" 
Then he of the effervescing name proceeded to go into 
detail. 
"Ah see him comin' at me, and Ah jumped out an' waved 
me 'at, an' the deer he slipped an' fell out like a wet towel 
on the ice. 
"He was so far from me" — Champaigo indicated a dis 
tance of about lOft. to the door. "No, little mite furder," 
and he moved back about 6in 
"His legs .slip out in front, an' Ah think Ah'll have 'im, 
but he jumps up and come right for me Ah sttpped to one 
side, an' as he went by Ah grabbed 'im by the tail an' down 
he went, and down Ah went too. That deer had the biggest 
taU Ah'll ever see, eh, Mr. Pike?" and Champaign indicated 
its size in the manner of fishermen describiag their big fish. 
"Yes, sab, his tail was 3ft. long. The deer he shook me 
once, but Ah got im again by the tail an' held 'im till Ah got 
a--traddle. He couldn't hurt me none, for Ah had on this 
big coat and the.se lumberman's leggin's So Ah took ma 
belt from around ma coat that held it together an' Ah 
stopped the deer's front legs, an' then Ah took some siring 
and I tied his hiadlegs together, and when Ah look up there 
was mos' fifty men standin' all around, looking at me an' 
the deer; but Ah got him all alone, didn't Ah Mr. Pike, 
hein? Den Mr Pike he tell me Ah'll better let the deer go 
— 'gainst the law to have deer in January. Ah'll didn't 
want to keel 'im. Ah wanted to take 'im home an' tie 'im up 
an' keep 'im. But Mr. Pike he said. Better let 'im go ' He 
was fat, an' wasn't he pret'yl He'd weigh over a hunderd 
dressed Sleek as a calf, but Ah dida't want to keel 'im If 
Ah'd been there all alone Ah wouldn't have taken my knife 
an' cut his throat. No, sah, not me, 
"Some of those mens said Ah caught 'im because he was 
too tired to stand, but when Ah'll let him go he went over 
the tops of those bushes like a bird. Den when he got lo 
the edge of the woods he stopped ard looked back over his 
shoulder. Wasn't he pretty ! You wanted tn raise j'^our gun 
and keel 'im yourself, now didn't jm, Mr, Pike. 
"Ah'll wisti Ah h>idn'c let 'im go! Ah'll never catch an- 
other deer by the tail like that, not me; no such luck! eh, 
Mr. Pike?" • J. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
The Story of a Book. 
Chicago, 111., Feb. "12.— When I was a boy I had a b !ok. 
It was the first book I ever really and truly read. Of course 
I read in the "readers" at sctool, passing from the "Primer" 
up through the "First Reader," "Second Reader,' "Third 
Reader," "Fourth Reader," and even the "Fifth Reader;" 
but I went through these literary collections of Mr. McGuf- 
fey's not because I wanted to, but because I had to. I also 
early in youth gave great delight to my good parents by as- 
siduous reading of the Scriptures, until it was by chance 
discovered one day thar I was confining my studies entirely 
to the Old Testament, more espicially to those portions 
which described the fighting and great battles between the 
contending kings. The first book, then, that I ever really 
and truly read was this one that 1 have now in mind. I 
began upon it when words of more than one syllable were 
stumbling blocks. By the time I had gotten so far along as 
Mr. McGufley 's "Fourth Reader" I had quite gone through 
this book from front to back. Then I read it through again, 
again and again, until by the time I was ten or twelve years 
of age I had read it I should not like to say how many 
times. 
It was a rather big book for a little fellow to handle, so I 
used to put it on the floor, pound it out flat with my fist, 
and then lie down on my stomach and read it by the hour. 
I read the covers off it, made of stout leather though they 
were, 1 read the yellow Indian off from the back read the 
title page off, read the frontispiece away ; and page by page 
Tt ad the entire book away, until after a while it had van- 
ished into thin air, going no one knew whither Before \]i\s 
lime had come, my dear mother had sought to preserye the 
book by sewing together the stout leather backs wher§ they 
had broken apart at the creases. Seeing that this would not 
do, the dear old lady made for the cover of the bo^k a hand- 
some backing of blapk and red checkerboard v. Ivet, which 
J rememb r was constructed from a frock I wore before 1 
got into the "First Reader," and wtiich was, in our family. 
copi^eyf^ to be a very iwell ^m, Qr^iml^j I read away 
this cover also, and so rn until, as I have said, the book was 
gathered unto the good fairies who produced it It made 
no difference; its contents were in my head By day I re- 
hearsed the actions of its chief characters, practicing the 
loading of my (wooden) rifle while running at full speed, 
in lo Lewis Whetzel, or acquainting mj^self with the best 
way of detaching the scalp from the head of a foe, said foa 
often being improvised from a turnip which had its leafy top 
on. By night I dreamed and shivered as the thrilling scenes 
of the book flitted before my eyes. From that day to this 
the book has been mine, although gathered back unto the 
fairies. 
This wonderful book bore the title on its back, "The Great 
West." The time when I read it was twenty-five years or 
so ago. Fremont was then but lately done with making his 
explorations across the Rocky Mountains. How I regretted 
that I had not been old enough to go with Fremont! How 
I wished that I had been a backwoodsman back in Ohio and 
Kentucky, with Kenton and Boone and Louis Wheizel ! Even 
then, twenly-five years ago, it seemed to me that there had 
departed the glory of the "Great W^est," of which this book 
spoke 80 thrillingly. The book told the story of arms and 
of men. It had not a dull page within its covers. Hunting, , 
trapping, fighting, exploring the ways of man in the primi 
five backwoods times of the "West, such were the ti'emes 
treated. As I absorbed these stories into my boyish heart, 
they came to have too great an influence over me. so that, as 
I have since told a friend, I could never tell whether I iohf-r- . 
ited from my father or from this book the love for the out- 
door life which has since then kept me from being president 
of the United States, and later led me into trying indeed 
fef bly and ineffectually, to learn about and write about that . 
"Great "West" whose spirit whispered from the first printed 
page I ever loved 
By industry and perseverance my parents succeeded io 
preventing me from becoming an Indian fighter and trapper, 
and induced me to go to school. All this I write not in an 
egotistic vein, but simply to tell the story of this book, as 
shall presently appear After I came out of school, it seemed 
necessary for me to make some sort of a bluff at making a 
living. Thus gradually, and more and more as the years 
passed by, my idolized book faded away from my mind;- 
that is to say, its incentives faded, though its records rr- 
mained somewhere in the basement of that funny thing we 
call the brain. From time to time as I wpnt back to the old 
home I would think of the book and ask about it, but no one 
could give any trace of it. It had been gathered to the 
fairies. I could find in the slough near the old homestead 
the tall weeds which used to furnish spear shafts for us boys 
when we played at being Indians; and I could find on the 
prairie not far away dark green places which might have 
been the very spots where we kindled our midnight camp- 
fires, around which we played at being hunters, thrilling 
meantime with secret fears of the darkness which compassed 
us about I could find all the places in ihe hazel brush 
thickets where I used to do the scouting act^ but I could 
not find my book. 
By and by, as 1 grew older, there seemed to come into life 
a stronger demand for the thing tangible and not the thing 
imagined. I knew 1 had my book in my head, but I wanted 
to hold it in my han-is. I wanted to see the yellow Indian 
on the back, the buff -colored picture in the front, in which 
an Indian stood upon the hill and looked out .sadly over the 
settlement of the white man now extending into bis wilder 
ness. I wanted to see the strange old woodcuts, the picture 
of the emigrant family, with theit Avhite-topped wagon and 
their wayside fire; the picture of the white woman chopping 
off the heads of Indians as fast as they were intruded into 
her cabin door; the picture of the prairie dog town on the 
plains, and that of the wagon train bound for the further 
West I wanted to see the rusty leather of tae cover, and 
the yellow of the pages, and the turned-down cnrntrs 
which marked the tracts especially eood. Alas! I could not 
find my bcok. It was gone absolutely. No one could tell 
me where 1 could secure a copy. The best librarians of the 
country failed me so far as I was able to make inquiry. I 
could not learn who wrote tbe bo)k, or wh j published it 
originally, and could give no oae more accurate description 
than that the name of the book was the "Great West," and 
that it was the most woudertul book ever written. 
Thus year after year passed, and finally I came to believe 
that my old-time friend had perished off the face of the 
earth Sad commentary on the glory of letters, for it seemed 
to me that if this book could not survive, then certainly all 
books must die. 
It chanced that within the past three or f )ur years I was 
reading one of the monthly magazines, and dropped upon an 
article by Mr. Theodore Roosevelt upon "St Clair's Defeat." 
Now it chanced that the story of "St Clair's Defeit" was 
one of the choice bits of my old book, according to my 
notion, and although I had not read it since I was ten or 
twelve years of age, I should say, I knew the whole story — 
all about the reeking scalps, the bloody retr. at, the man hid 
in the tree top, and every little detail of the like. Something 
in this magazine article, which I do not at this timu exicHy 
recill, convinced me that the writer had either seen my old 
book or some of the original books from which mine was 
perhaps compiled. I was almost tempted to write and ask 
the author if he knew any place where 1 could get a copy of 
my book, but never did so, and so went on a few years more 
groping about in the dark. 1 asked all the writers on West- 
ern t )pic3 whomi knew if they had ever heard of a book 
called ' I'he Great We«t," but not one of them had ever seen 
or heard of it. Then, a couple of years ago, 1 met Mr. 
Ripley Hitchcock, editor of the "Story of the West" series 
of books published by D. Appleton & Co. Surely, I thought, 
this is the man to And me my book, Mr. Hitchcock pleaded 
itinorance, but undertook to do all he could in the search. 
Finally he stnt me a letter from Mr. George C. Hurlbut, of 
the American Geographical Society, of New Y'ork city. 
Ttiis letter bears date of Jan. 16, 1897, and is addressed to 
Mr. Hitchcock, but the writer has no satisfaction to give. 
He says: "I am sorry to say that I am unable to aid you ia 
the search for the book on 'The Great West.' It is not in 
this library, and I have not succeeded in tracing it.". Mr. 
Hitchcock promised to look further, but I had no further 
word from him, 
At about this tim-? I happened to pick up a copy of Sloooi- 
ing and Fishing, and in it saw a contribution over the name 
of IJorace Kephart. A - 1 had earlier found this name to be 
always attached to something good, I read the article, which 
had to do with rifle shooting in the early backwoods time 
As I if'M along I struck a paragraph from the first few words, 
of whicn there flashed forth an instantaneoi^s pictqre of the 
whole. I could have said it almost word for ^ord, I pould 
have told about this snufljog the candle in the dark with the 
vitie, I com teve toI4 ligw t^e; bftekWQo4a riftemao .yae^ 
