324 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
noted hunter and trapper, killed an Indian named Drid on 
one of the lakes of the Fulton Chain. 
The Indian had frequently threatened to kill Nat— in fact, 
did try to kill him, and once wounded him with a knife. 
Nat, fearing for his life, waylaid the Indian at a narrow 
place in one of the Chain lakes and shot him dead, was tried 
for murder in the village of Herkimer and acquitted, with the 
usual applause, etc. 
Now then, has our friend Mather gotten these three stories 
mixed, or am I mixed? . , 
By the way, if our friend won't throw bricks and things, 
I will tell him that his creek below Greenbush, sacred to the 
memory of Port Tyler, isn't spelled Popskinny; neither is 
it what the other fellow called it, but it's Papscannee; at 
least a very old map in my possession says so. S. 
Troy, N. Y., April 10. 
AFTER DINNER TALK. 
From the after dinner talk at the Hillsborough County 
Association, of New Hampshire, the other day, as reported 
in the Manchester Mirror, we take some paragraphs, all 
suggestive, and which will have an interest outside of New 
Hampshire. 
Law Obsarvance Better than Law Tinkering. 
Mayor Wm. C, Clarke. 
The present laws are strong and competent, and they 
ought not to be changed nor interfered with for a number 
of years. It would be better for the interests of sportsmen 
to educate our people to a proper understanding of the pres- 
ent laws, and thereby secure a fuller observance of them 
than (o keep making changes from time to time. The laws 
as they now stand are good enough. They should be let 
alone. 
Trap-Shooting and Field Shooting. 
G. M. Starlce. 
To the beginner, or to the man who is not even a fair 
wing shot, trap-shooting will be of some assistance. A be- 
ginner usually handles a gun rather awkwardly. Practice 
at the traps will overcome it. He will learn how to handle 
a gun quickly and also where to hold. To become a fair 
wing shot on game he must learn where to hold on birds fly- 
ing in various directions. A partridge on the wing is' a 
good-s'zed mark to shoot at, but as compared to the space 
around it^ it is very small. Watching an expert trap shot 
will give some good points, seeing how quickly and appar- 
ently without eflEort be handles his gun, how nearly every 
target seems to land in the center of the charge of shot. 
To make good scores at the trap when standing at the 
regular distance a close-shooting gun is required. Such a 
gun is not suitable for our cover shooting unless very late in 
the season. Therefore, when trap-shooting for the purpose 
of getting accustomed to- handling and using an open shoot- 
ing gun, it is well to stand quite close to the trap. 
Twenty-five or thirty years ago there was not more than 
one good wing shot where to-day there are fifty. Tears ago 
trap-shooting was confined to live pigeons and gun clubs 
were not very numerous Pigeons were expensive and often 
hard to get. With the advent of the cheap artificial targets, 
gun clubs have sprung up all over the country, and I think 
they have had a great deal to do with developing the large 
number of good wing shots of to-day, A good wing shot on 
game will, as a rule, learn quickly to shoot well at the traps, 
and so 1 think will the good trap-shot take to game shoot- 
ing. 
Our principal game bird in New Hampshire is the par- 
tridge. In this part of the State it is hard for the best of us 
to shoot, and it is well that it is so, or there would be very 
few left. Where they are not hunted they are very tame. 
I have shot a good many when hunting large game, that 
were so tame that I could easily shoot their heads off with a 
.45 rifle bullet. One day while in Nova Scotia moose hunt- 
ing I beard a partridge drum quite close to our camp. Tak- 
ing a shotgun and five cartridges I went after him and in 
less than ten minutes I shot him, and, without moving from 
nay tracks, four more which I saw standing around. If our 
partridges were as tame as those they would be almost as 
scarce as black foxes by the end of next season. 
As I have said, the expert wing shot knows enough 
already, but the man who seldom can kill a woodcock or 
partridge on the wing had better try practicing at the traps. 
It may be of great benefit to him; it is not likely to do him 
any harm. 
Fishing at Newfound Lake. 
Col. F. G. Noyes.. 
For many years I have made, in April and May, an annual 
pilgrimage to Newfound Lake. The waters of the lake teem 
with that king of inland-water fish, the land-locked salmon, 
and in my judgment they are increasing. The lake trout 
are also taken in goodly numbers as yet, but our accom- 
plished Fish and Game' Commissioners, as well as broad and 
fair-minded men who live near the lake and who take great 
interest in and give much time to the subject, and who have 
watched this matter closely fer several years, are by no 
means sure that these fine fish are not decreasing in these 
waters. . 
It seems to me also proper to say that to the angler of mod- 
erate skill and good stock of patience and persistence, the, 
reward of land-locked salmon and lake trout from these 
waters awaits him. When an 8 or lOlb. land-locked salmon 
strikes one's lure at the end of a 7oz. rod and 50yds. of small 
silk line, one thinks that a cyclone has broke loose and has 
somehow got tangled up with his tackle. When I say there 
is nothing like it, I am not talking "thro' my hat." 
I know of no waters within 100 miles of here that promise 
so good sport to the average angler for land-locked salmon as 
the waters of Newfound Lake. Lake trout are taken more 
numerously in some other lakes, but in none of them are the 
fish so well fed and delicious. The "limge" of Lake 
Memphemagog and Willoughby Lake^ the trout of Winnlpe- 
saukee are caught more freely, but for game qualities and 
delicious flavor they are, in my judgment, inferior to the 
"lakers" that the angler kills with rod and reel in the cold 
waters of Newfound Lake. And when he takes one, com- 
pensation comes. 
NItro Powder. 
Hon. W. H. Beasoni. 
My gun, being made by the oldest manufacturers of 
breech-loading shotguns in America, I considered it perfectly 
safe with either load, and my mind was at ease. In an evil 
moment I wrote the manufacturers of the gun about some 
method of lessening the recoil when using 3dr. As an after- 
thought I also asked them if they considered these loads ex- 
cessive for the gun. They replied that they not only thought 
these loads excessive for tliis gun, but they did not guarantee 
any of their guns to withstand nitro powder, saying that all 
who use nitro do it at their own risk, so far as their guns are 
concerned. 
The worst part of it is that these barrels do not burst at 
any particular time, but often occur after years of use, and 
with a charge that has always been used successfully. 
When an accident happens we wag our heads and say, 
"Some ©bstruction in the barrel." Don't you think this ob- 
struction theory is getting overworked— something akin to 
"heart failure" diagnoses among physicians? Isn't it rather, 
in many cases, at least, that the powder is either variable in 
bursting pressure or else the barrels of the gun are too weak, 
as scientists tell us the variation in gas pressure observed in 
standard nitres is not sufficient to cause the bursting of a 
sound, well made barrel with a proper load? Isn't the 
fault, therefore, fully as apt to lie in the gun as in the 
powder? 
We, most of us, remember that day when we were hesi- 
tating about trying new fangled stuff. When, late in No- 
vember, after a hard freeze, there came a day of Indian 
summer, we took the old dog to try and find a belated wood- 
cock. Our chance now is beside the spring in the hillside, 
that trickles down between the roots of leafless birch and 
alders, to join the brook at the bottom of the run. An hour 
passes without sign of scent ; we cross the run and start to 
work back on the upper edge. Suddenly the pointer lifts his 
head and draws slowly on — one rod, two rods, then firmly 
points. We step in ahead, when from under a low clump 
of hazel bushes the strong, full-fledged bird whirls up; a 
hurried snap shot with the right barrel turns sunshine into 
shade, and somewhere beyond the murky cloud that settles 
upon us, shutting out a second shot, we hear the defiant 
twitter of the escaping bird. The last shot of the season is 
missed by devotion to "soft coal," and we resolve then 
and there, no matter what the risk, to quit its use for- 
ever. 
Fishing In the North Country. 
jB. H. Cheneij. 
Fishing in any country and under almost any circum- 
stances is simply heavenly pastime indulged in upon earth. 
The barefooted, light-hearted, though possibly sinful, boy, 
who gets out of school at intermission on an excuse forged 
by the kind-hearted hired man, and scuds away across the 
daisy-covered fields with mud worms in his pocket and a 
big string of fish in his head; the older boy who writes his 
own excuses and can work an oar and get his fly out of the 
boat without snapping out an eye; and we old fellows who 
have come to look on our June fishing as one of the steady 
lamps hung out by heaven to guide us across the Saharas 
and through the pestilential vapors hovering over the mires 
and marshes of the year, all find it so. Surely I need not 
tell any one present how to bend or bait a hook — how to tie 
or cast a fly — for that is the particular inspirational wisdom 
of which you boast. It takes intuitive ideas, art and good 
tackle to make a fisherman who'can fill a basket with square- 
tailed trout. Fishing is like milking. Go up on the wrong 
side of a cow, thump her in the ribs with the milking stool 
and command her to stand over and hoist, she won't give 
down her milk; but let the maid who has done the milking 
before come along on the milking side with soft words and 
gentle pats, and there is no trouble in filling the pail. Thus 
does nature yield to all who know and treat her kindly. 
The North Country— and I draw the line wherever the 
waves of thoughtless and fashion-serving humanity register 
their high water mark — the North Country of New England 
and Canada is a land toward which the man of clean heart 
and liquidated obligations may set his face and feel that he 
is climbing toward heaven. In it there yet remain some of 
God Almighty's soul-lifting hills whose virgin robes have 
not been torn or soiled by lustful lumber kings; some of 
His streams that in their seaward tumbUngs, unchoked by 
sawdust or the wash of towns, utter divine truths in liquid 
notes. There every hillside is an ever-shifting canvas of de- 
light, and every vale and virgin wood a matchless and in- 
comparable temple. I cannot paint it, gentlemen. Before 
the eye its landscapes blossom forth in all their wild, unsul- 
lied beauty, jeweled at morning's dawn and evening's glow 
by lake and stream ; the ear is ravished by the blended har- 
monies of tuneful winds and white-capped waves; the intel- 
lect, awed and subdued, re asks its never- answered ques- 
tions, but the tongue is dumb. It matters little if the knee 
bend not in gilded temple with the throng, if here the soul 
can feel and own the overshadowing law, and the heart in 
simple worship, washed of aU bitterness and evil, learns the 
true thou shalt and thou shalt not. And, gentlemen, of 
such are they, mainly, who do the fishing in the North 
Country. They are men of character, men of force, men of 
humane impulses and all sweet charities; right-minded, 
tender, loving and approachable; and yet, rugged as the un- 
chiseled granite that forms the understructure of New 
Hampshire, 
Always and everywhere I have found the men who love 
the forests and the streams, the mountains and the lakes, 
among the wisest and the best; doubting neither God nor his 
purposes, seeking no angels in the mud and strewing no dust 
and ashes in the highway which connects the two eternities. 
God bless them! 'They are saved already, and their sunny 
lives tinge with brighter colors the web at which all human- 
ity weaves. However little their souls may be weighted 
with dollars, they are making this world pay fair dividends, 
and in the next they will be millionaires. And if you are 
putting these things down, put it down also that the man 
who does not love the glorious North Country in all its 
purity and freshness, has ice around his heart and murder 
in it. 
Osprey, Fishhook and Sinker. 
AsBUBY Park, N. J., April 13 — While perch fishing on 
Deal Lake one day recently my attention was attracted to an 
osprey circling high in air and emitting cries plainly indicat- 
ive of something out of the ordinary. 
Soon after it lowered its flight and passed near to the 
point where I was standing. In its talons was a fish of good 
size — evidently a pickerel— and swinging from which was a 
section of line with sinker attached. This was plainly the 
cause of worry, and the worry was soon shared by the bird's 
mate. After making several circuits of the lake, they 
alighted upon a dead tree and held what seemed a consulta- 
tion over the case. After the lapse of perhaps an hour, 
judge of my surprise to see the line of flight again taken up. 
The fish had disappered, but the line and sinker were hang- 
ing from the mouth of one of the birds, which in partaking 
of its repast had evidently gorged the hook and committed 
unintentional suicide, Leonakd Htri.iT. 
A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS. 
I.—'Tn tenten Time, when Leaves wax Green." 
"In the budding hedge tlie robin cock sings, 
For the sun is merry and bright, 
And he joyfully hops and flutters his wings, 
Tor his beart is all fuU of delight." 
To THE student of birds spring is the hopeful season of the 
year, for with it come the absent and loved "guests of sum- 
mer." After the long, dreary interval of frost, cold and 
storm, how one's heart thrills when he hears for the first 
time the sweet, plaintive song of that little harbinger of 
spring, not the festive cuckoo of England, but our own 
little, plain dressed song sparrow; or when near the top of 
some high tree tjie ruddy breast of an early robin appears, 
seemingly bright now, not only because it has been "lost 
awhile," but also from the fact that the redbreast of March 
turns to a dingy orange by August. 
"In the spring a fuller crimson comes upon the robin's breast, 
In the spring the wanton lapwing gets himself another crest, 
In the spring a livelier iris changes on the burnished dove, 
In the spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of 
love.'' 
These oft quoted lines, written by Tennyson when he was 
a young man, show that he knew the ways of birds, or he 
never could so poetically have expressed then- change of 
attire. He was a naturalist. What a difierence there is be- 
tween the robin of March and the robin of August, remind- 
ing one of the fabulous Gulliver; at first in Litliputia he is a 
giant among pigmies; everybody admires and looks up to 
him only, because he is the first typical summer bu'd 
that comes back to us (the song sparrow is often here in 
winter), and for that reason is warmly welcomed, and much 
is made of him too. The first robin this year (Feb. 23) as 
he strutted about the lawn seemed to say, "Behold! I am 
here, a newcomer from the balmy breezes and sunny climes 
of the South; scorn me if you dare." But by August it is 
quite the reverse. Little attention is paid to him then; like 
Gulliver, he too is in Brobdignag 
The song sparrow, with his plain, somber coat, becomes 
noticable about the last of February. It is then that his 
song is first heard and he is bodily visible. Though with 
the robin he is termed a "permanent resident" by natural- 
ists, they are both really only summer birds, for there is 
never a robin seen here in winter, and only a few song spar- 
rows; the latter being very reticent, keeping concealed. 
About the middle of February or later, as the case may be, 
the song sparrows appear, hopping about on bushes or small 
trees near fences, trying to sing. The song is then very 
feeble or weak, as if the bird's vocal organs had not been 
thawed out yet, or as if after the long season of silence he 
was out of practice. All over North America this sparrow 
is the most abundant, locally distributed, and best known of 
the sparrow family, Like many other birds, there are 
"variations." Our own song sparrow (Melosptsa fasciata) is 
found all along the eastern seaboard from F'orida to Maine. 
In other parts we have different varieties. In the Western 
States we have the mountain song sparrow; in Mexico, jSew 
Mexico, Arizona and. other arid spots the desert song spar- 
row, and many others; but there is very little difference 
between them ; the song sparrow we know so well is the 
same as that lilte chap that lives on the faraway Aleutian 
Islands. A noticeable fact about birds is that they never 
sing when on the ground; they have to be elevated, no mat- 
ter if it is only a grass stem a few inches high; the higher 
they fly the better they seem to sing; a strange custom per- 
haps, but it seems as if they must first enter into what may 
be called their "realm of song." 
On examining my note book for the present and previous 
records I find this is the earliest spring I have ever known; 
the grass is green, leaves budding, along the water courses 
violet plants and others are in flourishiog stages of growth; 
snakes are often seen, while from the neighboring ponds 
comes the shrill piping of the frogs; all signs of an early 
spring, not to mention the birds. On Feb. 23 I noted my 
first robin, on March 1 my second, by March 15 they be- 
came common and in song, while at present (March 34) they 
are as abundant as ever in summer. Feb. 25 three red- 
winged blackbirds were seen high in air; March 2 a large 
flock noted, becoming abundant March 31, and in song also. 
Feb, 35 four fox sparrows were seen, but none since then. 
These birds are the largest and finest of- the sparrow 
family, about a size smaller than the thrush, having a beauti- 
ful russet-brown plumage, and a white breast spotted with 
the same. Our weather does not suit them, so they are with 
us only a little while, and by the end of March they have 
passed northward to their Arctic homes. A peculiar habit 
this sparrow has is of scratching for food. It does not 
scratch like a hen with one foot first, then with the other, 
but with both feet at once, which it does with funny little 
spasmodic jerks. I once heard its song, which was clear 
and pleasing, and thought what a singer he must be in his 
native home. This occurrence was rather unusual, for it is 
not often that these migratory birds give us "a song in pass- 
ing." 
On March 4 my old friends, the purple grackles, returned 
a few at a time, but by yesterday they were very abundant 
and made themselves known, as noisy as ever. They breed 
numerously in the hemlocks of the town and have done so 
for years, always coming back at the same time each spring. 
They are handsome birds, having a coat of glossy iridescent 
black, with large yellow eyes. Later on another grackle 
(here a migrant) appears, so much like the purple one as to 
be indistinguishable, but it is called the bronzed grackle. 
Kecently there was a debate among the menibers of the 
LincEean Society as to Ihe difference between these two 
birds; one member stating that the bronzed grackles have 
white eyes, the purple grackles having yellow ones; but it 
was shown that the white-eyed grackles were only young 
male purple grackles, there being really no distinguishable 
diflierence between the two species. 
On March 81 observed a chipping sparrow, an unusually 
early date for this bird, for he is never supposed to get here 
before the middle of April. And the bluebirds, they are 
common once more, and 1 am glad to hear their sweet notes 
again. The cowbirds, meadow larks, flickers, phoebes, chip- 
ping, swamp and field sparrows have been arriving in large 
numbers for the last three days, and without a doubt, 
"Sweet daughter of a rough and stormy sire, 
Hoar winter's blooming child, delightful spring," 
is come at last, and indeed, if thoughts_;are n.ot enough, this 
