346 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April ,30, 1898. 
Boulder Creek, are bigger and sassier than ever before. 
I have earher spoken of Mr. Losekamp's efforts in 
planting the Mongolian pheasant in his countrj'. He 
tells me that he has the most sanguine hopes of the 
success of his experiment, and has no reason to regret 
the expenditure of hundreds of dollars which he ha-s 
put into this work. He is using, not the ring-necked 
pheasant, but the uncrossed bird known as the Denney 
pheasant, which he obtained at considerable trouble from 
Oregon. He has these birds scattered out over the coun- 
try among the ranches of his section, and he thinks they 
are doing well. He says they are the gamiest birds he 
has ever met, and speaks of their qualities with the most 
unqualified enthusiasm. One of the cocks was found with 
a broken leg, but was ready to fight even on that basis. 
A doctor set the leg and the old fellow is now going 
round as good as new on the patched leg, and ready 
to fight anything that moves. Mr. Losekamp says that 
one of these birds will whip a bullet hawk so quick that 
the latter will not know how it happened. He thinks 
that the Yellowstone Vallej', with its great area of grain 
crops, will eventually be a feeding ground for many 
thousands of these valuable birds. 
Mr. Losekamp is one of those practical, executive men 
of whom the world has but too few. He -is a business 
man and knows that you cannot always sell goods un- 
less you purchase stock. Besides his experiment with 
the pheasants he is now doing what he can to get the 
Fish Commission at Bozeman to stock the beautiful 
sheet of water known as Bear Tooth Lake with trout. 
This is a grand sheet of water, with many fine tribu- 
taries, but being above the falls of the Clark's Fork, is 
barren of trout. As the fry can be taken to these waters 
in less than sixteen miles from the railroad, and as the 
Billings men offered to pay all the expense, it is hoped 
that the Fish Commission will grant the above request. 
Dr. Henshall is an angler himself, and has not been 
at Bozeman for nothing, I imagine; so as an angler I 
hope he will see what he can do tOAvard thus increasing 
the mileage of mountain trout waters in the grand State 
of Montana, where there is such angling as Eastern men 
never knew. 
So far very well in the news from Montana, but Mr. 
Losekamp has a report of a much sadder sort. It may 
not be generally known, and it was indeed not wished to 
be generally known, that for some ten years the ranchers 
of Montana have been trying to preserve a little band 
of buffalo which ranged in Fergus, Custer, Choteau and 
Dawson counties. At the time I was in Montana in 
1895 this herd was reported to have eight head in all, 
and two or three animals were killed that year and the 
year previous. Mr. Losekamp tells me that the little 
bunch gradually increased, under the watchful care of 
the cowboys, until there were twenty head two years 
ago. The cowboys would round up these buffalo each 
year, and they had made a practice of branding such 
as the}' could rope from time to time. The "79" outfit 
had their brand on thirteen head, and branded five buf- 
falo calves in one year. The Montana ranchmen had 
great hopes of this little herd, which was the largest 
left outside the Park, and which ranged in a country little 
visited and difficult of access. All their hopes came to an 
end season before last, when a wandering band of Cree 
Indians came in from the North and cleaned up the en- 
tire herd. Since then not a liead of the lot has ever 
been seen, and it is thought that not one is left alive. 
Mr. Losekamp is accompanied in town by Mr. War- 
ren Evans, of Crow Agency, Mont., who is East on a vis- 
it. I should not forget to add that both gentlemen speak 
in terms of the highest praise of a new fountain of 
youth, the springs of the Stinking Water, south of Bil- 
lings, on the stream of that name. Here with several 
friends Mr. Losekamp spent some weeks last season, 
trout fishing, having all the wild game they wanted all 
about them, with fine angling and the best waters on 
earth. Methinks that neither White Sulphur of old, nor 
Saratoga of later years, ever offered such a programme 
as this of the little known Montana healing springs! 
The Tree and the Bird, 
If there were no trees and tlo birds, we might think 
that this old world was a pretty poor place to live in. 
The doctrine of more trees and more birds is a safe 
one and well worth promulgation. At least so thinks 
Gov. Schofield, of Wisconsin, who has issued procla- 
mation setting apart Friday, April 29, as Arbor and Bird 
Day for that great State. E. Hough. 
1206 BoYCE Building, Chicago. 
About Maine Moose. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In Forest and Stream of April 23 there appeared a 
very suggestive article signed M. H. Who can won- 
der, after the perusal of that article, that one of the 
noblest animals on this continent has been well nigh 
exterminated, and that the most skillful of hunters may 
now hunt for days or weeks in the territory mentioned 
• by M. H. without getting a shot? His hero, Hiram 
Leonard, it appears, had killed four moose in two days, 
but that onI_y served to arouse his lust for blood; so he 
and M. H. go out and kill another. That night they 
shot the sixth, and four days later Mr. Leonard demon- 
strated his propensities by putting lead into still an- 
other. His biographer then goes on to state that two 
years later, after Mr. Leonard had already killed five 
moose in less than two and a half days, he started out 
to indulge in further carnage, and killed eight more, 
making for himself the unenviable record of slaughtenng 
thirteen moose in less than fourteen days! to say noth- 
ing of the probability of having wounded several others, 
during that time. 
As Mr. Leonard was a rod maker, and presumably 
went into the woods as a sportsman, he could not even 
plead the excuse made by the market hunter. He goes 
further and sneers at the man who kills but one moose, 
and ventures to relate the circumstances in Forest and 
Stream, as though the story of killing one moose m a 
sportsmanlike manner were not more entertammg and 
agreeable than the nauseating and gory picture portrayed 
by M. H. "Maine men used to know how to hunt, but 
they did not do it with the pen," says M. H., and yet 
he has demonstrated with his own pen that at that day 
some Maine moose hunters did not know how to hunt 
as sportsmen, but wantonly destroyed game they had 
no use for, and did their full share toward robbing the 
present generation of its heritage. 
It is true that at the time of which he writes the game 
laws were not in effect in Maine, but there were laws 
of humanity and sportsmanship in force then, as at all 
times, and as now. Thank God, the time has gone by 
when men can safely turn a forest camp into an abattoir, 
and the time has come when even the recital of such 
things as M. H. writes about cannot pass unnoticed or 
uncondemned. The day is at hand when through wise 
legislation, and better still, a generous spirit of true 
sportsmanship, the game will be protected and allowed 
to increase, until the fields, woods and waters will be 
again tenanted by the birds, animals and fishes which 
folly and selfishness have well nigh exterminated. Then 
the game hog will suffer such penalties, both legal and 
social, as he deserves. Arthur F. Rice. 
The Old Gun. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Under the head of "Ready, Aim, Fire," you vividly de- 
pict the charms of the modern gun. 
Compared with the arm of a generation ago, it is in- 
deed a wonderful weapon and a source of pleasure to the 
possessor; but it has its disadvantages, the chief of which 
is the ephemeral character of its charms. In the time 
of the muzzleloader a man kept a good gun during his 
lifetime, and bequeathed it to his favorite son or grand- 
son. It was as well known among his friends as himself. 
Its "voice" was recognized at a distance as readily as 
that of its owner. 
It's different in this era of invention and improve- 
ments. We have to change guns every four or five j'^ears 
or shoot a "back number." 
When the breechloading shotgun appeared we fought 
against it and disparaged its shooting qualities faithhiUy 
as long as we could, but had to fall in line and try to 
keep up with the procession. Soon improvements were 
made necessitating another change. Still other im- 
provements followed until the climax, as we supposed, 
was reached in the hammerless gun and smokeless pow- 
der. But no; if we want to be up to date we must have 
an ejector, and now comes the single-trigger gun trying 
to seduce us from our allegiance to our latest, which 
we haA^e owned just long enough to get well acquainted 
with, and which we already love next to om wife — or our 
dog. 
It's wicked, this breaking up of family ties, this parting 
of man and gun; but what are we to do? We don't want 
to be classed with Rip Van Winkle. We must keep up 
with the times and have a gun that is up to date, even 
if we must, as Mr. Hough says, forego the pleasure of 
feeding and clothing our families. 
The factory-loaded ammunition also, loaded in an un- 
imaginative and matter-of-fact machine, takes away the 
individual characteristics of our gun, as well as dispels 
the fond illusion that our own particular gun, loaded 
as we alone know how to load it, excels all others in 
killing power. 
I am free to confess, however, that these thoughts be- 
come more prominent with us old sixteen-to-one sports- 
men (sixteen silver threads to one of the original color) 
when in a reminiscent mood, with chair tilted back and 
feet on the table, than in the field with dog and gun, or 
when at the trap smashing the elusive bluerock (or try- 
ing to). 
I don't see any one going back to the muzzleloader 
and G. D. caps, though the old fellows hate to break 
the "ties that bind" to the old gun. Mc. 
Loggfing; Head Works, 
I SEE that your printer has changed what I intended to 
read as "head works" into "breastworks." As a state of 
war does not exist in the Maine woods, we seldom see 
breastworks when hunting; but we could not possibly 
drive our logs without "head works." A head work is a 
large raft of logs or hewed timber, which has a capstan 
in its center. This capstan is provided with ten or twelve 
capstan bars, which are turned by as many men, or often 
by double crews. The head work is placed at the forward 
end of a boom of logs, a long warp is attached with a 
900 to i,ooolb. anchor at the end. This anchor is boated 
ahead as far as the warp will reach, and then the boom is 
by means of the capstan wound up till the anchor is 
under foot; then another warp is attached, and another 
anchor boated ahead, and the first anchor is raised, to 
be in its turn placed ahead again. In this way all our 
logs are warped across our lakes, often 10 to 15 miles 
at a stretch, when the wind is ahead, except on those 
lakes where steamers have been placed for the purpose 
of towing. 
Deer are coming out in abundance on the railroads. 
A conductor who lives near me counted twenty-.seven in 
one week from his train. M. H. 
Pheasants in Rhode Island. 
If the residents in the vicinity of Warwick Neck hap- 
pen to see a strange bird resembling in size and form the 
native partridge, but differing somewhat in color and 
plumage, they need not be surprised, for it is probably 
one of the Mongolian pheasants which have recently 
been liberated by the Warwick Neck Game Association. 
It is expected that these birds will propagate rapidly and 
stock the surrounding country, and be a valuable addi- 
tion to the game supply. The result of the experiment of 
the Warwick Neck Game Association in introducing 
Mongolian pheasants into this State will be watched by 
all who are interested in birds, and it is confidently ex- 
pected that it will prove successful and stimulate private 
enterprise in the same direction. — Providence (R.J.) Press. 
mid §iv^r Si^liing. 
Fresh- Water Angling. 
i 
No. rV.— Blacfc Bass, 
BY FRED MATHER. 
The black bass is the gamiest of all fresh-water fish, 
taking it pound for pound. If a 251b. salmon had as 
much fight in each one of his ounces as a black bass 
has he would be a terror and we would have to devise 
some new salmon tackle to hold his avoirdupois. 
The black bass can be found in all fresh waters, from 
the cold Adirondack lakes, where brook trout live, to 
the \yarmest waters of Florida. Therefore ' the black 
bass is accessible to more anglers and is a more popular 
angling fish than any other that is caught in the fresh 
waters of America. It is a superior game fish to an\ 
that exists in Europe, if we except the trout. 
Stick a pin here! Stop and think a moment. Trout 
worship came to us from the old world, and it is almost 
akin to heresy to whisper that any other fish could be as 
gamy as a trout. We received our angling beliefs as we 
did our language from England, and English angling lit- 
erature was the only angling literature we knew until 
our own Norris wrote the first original American book 
on angling for American fishes. He was not an ichthy- 
olog,ist, and followed the teachers of his day. Flere was 
a new fish not laid down in English angling works, and 
"Uncle Thadj" in his great-hearted, kindly way, treated 
it gingerly; he knew it as a good game fish, but as 
he told me just before he died, he was not sure of his 
ground. As the first independent American writer on 
our native angling fishes, Thad. Norris ranks first. All 
others who wrote before him were not practical an- 
glers for American fishes. Frank Forester's book on 
"Fish and Fishing" was merely a rehash' of English 
works with some purloinings from De Kay's "Fishes of 
New York" to pad it out. To my great confusion, when 
I tried to identify fishes from his descriptions, especially 
Adirondack Deer. 
A recent letter from my guide, C. L. Stanton, of 
Blue Mountain Lake, reports that the deer have win- 
tered well in that section, and that the prospect is fine 
for a good game season. J. C. A. 
helgramite or dobson, 
or alligator, or angle dog, or bloomer, or bogart, or clipper, or cobbler, or 
crawler, or devil catcher, or dragon, or go devil, or goggle goy, or hell 
driver, or hojack, or klugmite, or stone crab, or stone devil, or water 
grampus, or — 
the black basses, I had not then seen De |Kay's work, 
and knew nothing of classification. Later Dr. Gill re- 
duced the many so-called species of black bass to two 
easilv defined ones, and then it was simple; we had only 
two scientific names to remember and two fishes to 
know — the big-mouth and small-mouth. Dr.' Henshall 
upset the scientific names again when he examined the 
type specimens in Paris, and his nomenclature stands 
to-day. 
The Two Species, 
Although the species- may be distinguished at a glance 
by most anglers, there are many who cannot tell which 
of the two they are catching. Nearly twenty years ago, 
before Henshall's revision of the names, I wrote some 
doggerel verses to explain the differences. With the al- 
teration of a couple of lines to make them technically 
correct, they are: 
The little-mouth has little scales, 
There's red in his handsome eye; 
The scales extend on his vertical fins, 
And his forehead is round and high. 
His forehead is full and high, my boys. 
And he sleeps the winter through;. 
He likes the rocks in summer time, 
Micropterus dolomieu. 
The big-mouth has the biggest scales, 
And a pit scooped in his head; 
His mouth is cut beyond his eye, 
In which is nary a red. 
Tn his eye is nary a red, ray boys, 
But keen and well he sees; 
He has a dark stripe on his side, 
Micropterus salmoides. 
These lines sum up the main differences. The size of 
the mouth is not determined by opening it, but by noting 
how far the bone of the upper jaw extends on the cheek. 
In the small-mouth it stops about the middle of the eye, 
while in the big-mouth it is prolonged beyond the eye. 
As I read the above lines after many years, there seems 
to be another benefit in putting the description in verse, 
and that is to rhyme "salmoides" with "sees," for I have 
heard men pronounce it in two syllables. _ It has four, 
for in all these Latin names every vowel is a syllable; 
therefore, my boy, call it sal-mo-i-dees, and you'll be 
right. 
The Latin termination "oid," or "oides," means like- 
ness, and while the fish has not the slightest resemblance 
to a salmon the name was given as a concession to its 
popular name of "trout," in the South, where the nat- 
uralist Lacepede found it. 
Popular Names. 
Without being particular as to which species is meant, 
for the popular names were bestowed before the species 
were clearly defined, we have "chub" in Virginia and 
on the Tar River of North Carolina; "Welshman" on 
the Neuse River, N. C; "jumper" in Indiana; "trout" 
and "moss bass" in the Southern States. According to 
Goode if is also known as "pearch" in some parts of the 
South, while Jordan says that in Alabama it is known as 
"mountain trout." Goode also gives marsh bass, river 
bass, rock bass, slough bass, white bass, green bass, spot- 
ted bass, green perch, yellow perch, black perch and 
