4 24 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Nov. 26, l8o8\ 
and nothing we did was too trivial to escape comment. 
It anlused them to see us comb our hair, and we re- 
membered this suspicious fact when they wanted to try 
on our hats. I never saw Mac madder than once when 
he caught a bushy-headed Indian strutting around in 
his new fur cap. that he had just gotten out from his 
clothing bag to forestall the colder weather. 
They were very vain, and next to white flour and 
sugar and fat, "gree" they called it, they desired articles 
of personal adornment. When we left for the coast we 
held an auction sale to dispose of our surplus outfit. 
This was patronized by the Indians, and nothing went 
so well as little fancy articles. The women bought sus- 
penders and men's colored socks, and they hung oil 
cans and nickel wrenches around their necks as orna- 
ments. Pocket handkerchiefs and towels and any little 
metal articles were in great demand. A fancy leather 
belt brought as much money as a good light weight 
overcoat, and the oil cans and medicines were the star 
bargains of the lot. 
Indian Financiers, 
The Indians had plenty of money, for they had earlier 
in the season sold meat and dogs at exorbitant prices. 
In a general way they knew its value, but they prized 
silver a good deal above the sixteen to one ratio. When 
they wanted to drive a good bargain they always specified 
that the price was to be paid in "silver money," and 
similarly they hated to part with their plunkers. They 
seemed relieved when we accepted their gold pieces at 
par, and when they got silver money in change they 
tried hard to conceal their satisfaction for fear we would 
find out the mistake we were making in parting with it. 
There are very few pennies in circulation on the 
Yukon, the bit being the unit of value, and the Indians 
have not yet learned how to place them. 
One of the Indians named Bailey tried to purchase 
a rifle with six cents he had in some way accumulated. 
The Indians are suspicious in their bargains, and 
afraid of being cheated, and in our desire to do the 
square thing by them we suffered financially. Instead 
of getting many times the value of the articles sold, the 
price received for the better class of things, as a rule, was 
below the real value. 
The Indians are honest in their way, but not moral. 
Early in our stay at Selkirk I traded a new pair of 
trousers for a caribou skin, that we might sleep the more 
comfortably at night. It took the Indian nearly two 
hours to complete the bargain, and he had thumbed 
over the trousers in the meanwhile till they looked as if 
they had had a week's wear, and discussed something 
like a hundred permutations and combinations with 
all the other articles of our property he could see or 
imagine. He got nothing to boot that way, however. 
The next day an entirely different Indian came to the 
cabin with the trousers on his arm and a very serious 
expression on his face. He turned them over and 
over, and finally pointed out some very minute flaws in 
the cloth, and solemnly shaking his head said: "No 
good!" 
Then he laid down the trousers and walked oyer to 
where the caribou skin hung and made a motion to 
pull it down. Mac promptly interfered, and it looked 
as if there was going to be a fight then and there, for 
the Indian seemed bent on repudiating the exchange. 
Thinking, however, he had carried his bluff far enough, 
the Indian suggested that Mac's hat suited him very 
well, and intimated if we would give him that he would 
overlook the defect in the trousers. It was a flim-flam 
game pure and simple, and we showed that Indian the 
door in a way that surprised him. 
Forty Dollar Snowshoes. 
The Indians have one uniform business rule in their 
dealings with white men. They raise their prices when 
opportunity offers, but they never come down. Snow- 
shoes at the Pelly are now $40 a pair, because a white 
man with more money than brains tried to buy from 
an Indian woman a pair which did not belong to her. 
He offered her $10 first, and when she said, "No sell 
urn," raised the price by fives to $40, and then the woman 
told the other Indians that white men give $40 for snow- 
shoes, and the price has been that ever since. 
We had previously bought two pair of snowshoes for 
$25, and the Indians came around and tried to collect 
the'difference. When we refused to pay and turned them 
out they seemed to think they had been cheated. 
J. B. Burnham. 
[to be continued.] 
The Twenty-third Trip to Maine. 
A busy Boston man writes: 
My trip to Maine this year was an attempt to mix oil 
and water; that is, work and rest. I did not care much 
about the hunting, though I got one little buck, mainly 
out of shame because of the letters of my children, ask- 
ing if I had shot anything, and if I was goin<r to. The 
truth is I took down hundreds of pages of manuscript 
to work over, and did spend most of my time quietly in 
camp, feeling that the relief from things done, things 
which have been present and have grown to be a 
nightmare, was more vacation than anything else. Then 
came an attack of the grippe, which laid me out. For- 
tunately my companion, the owner of the camp, was a 
first-class nurse, and he pulled me out, but my twenty- 
third trip to the Maine woods was not all T could wish, 
though the camp and country and the weather were. 
There were plenty of deer in the woods and a few 
moose. I was at Little Benson Pond, a dozen miles or 
so west of Katahdin Iron Works. Our cook shot a 
deer after I left without going out of the camp yard, and 
the trains on the Canadian Pacific, which ran within a 
quarter of a mile, did not seem to do any harm, and 
the cleared up space along the road seemed to be the 
favorite stamping ground of the deer. 
New York Zoological Park. 
The work of preparing the grounds of the New York 
Zoological Society's Park, which was begun last July, is 
progressing rapidly, under the superintendence of the 
executive committee of the Society, Mr. W. T. Horna- 
day, the director, has taken up his quarters in the Park 
in a comfortable office, and spends all his time in per- 
sonal direction of the operations. , 
A number of the low spots in the Park, which are to 
be used as lakes and pools for various purposes, are 
being excavated, and on the beaver pond, the pond for 
other aquatic rodents, one of the wildfowl ponds and the 
elk pool, much of the excavation has been done. The 
plans for the enclosures for buffalo and mountain sheep, 
with their shelter houses, have been determined on, and 
work commenced on them. The wolf dens are being ar- 
ranged, and the foundations for -a number of the bear 
dens, with their tanks and the plumbing which is to 
supply the tanks with water, are in position. The 
foundations for the reptile house are above the ground, 
and the walls of the bird house are rapidly growing. 
Even though the work has only just begun, a visit 
to the Park will well repay anyone interested either 
in zoology or in the progress of New York toward 
better things. While as yet only a beginning has been 
made, anyone familiar with the plans of the Society, as 
explained in its last annual report, can gain a very good 
notion of what will be seen here in the course of the next 
year or two. South Bronx Park is still unimproved. 
There are no roads, no paths, no water system nor 
sewerage; but all these things are being provided for, and 
all will go on together with the building, so that in a 
comparatively short time a great transformation will be 
worked in this beautiful spot. 
Every effort is being made by the executive committee 
of the Society to carry forward the work as rapidly as 
possible, and it is greatly to be desired that members of 
the Society should show their appreciation of this energy 
and their interest in the work by visiting the grounds 
and keeping themselves informed of what is being done. 
The director will no doubt take great pleasure in af- 
fording to any member who may call on him every 
facility for inspecting the work, and in offering full ex- 
planation to the Society's plan and purposes. 
Minister (on his way home from church, to little boy 
fishing): "Oh, you wicked little boy, to fish to-day! 
Do you not know that it is Sunday?" Little Boy (un- 
abashed): "No. it ain't wicked, mister; T ain't caught 
nothing." ._ 
American Ornithologists' Union. 
The sixteenth congress of the American Ornitholo- 
gists' Union convened in Washington, D. C, Nov. 14, 
and continued until Thursday, the 17th, 
The evening or business session was held at the 
Army Medical Museum, the public meetings, com- 
mencing Tuesday, Noa^. is, being held at the U. S. Nat. 
Museum, the Eastern High School and the Cosmos 
Club. 
The active members present were: Drs. Coues, Mer- 
riam, Merrill, Gill, Fisher, Richmond and Shufeldt, and 
Messrs. F. A. Lucas, E. W. Nelson and Wm. Palmer, 
of Washington, D. C; Drs. J. A. Allen, Jonathan 
Dwight, Jr., and Messrs. Frank M. Chapman and Wil- 
liam Dutcher, of New York city; Chas. B. Corey, 'o£ 
Boston; Ruthven Deane, of Chicago; Dr. Thos. S. 
Roberts, of Minneapolis; Witmer Stone, of Philadelphia; 
and John H. Sage, of Portland, Conn. 
The associate members present during the session 
were: Mrs. Olive Thorne Miller, Mrs. Julia Stockton 
Robins. Vernon Bailey, Outram Bangs, Job Barnard, 
Paul Bartsch, J. Newton Baskett, Prof. F. E. L. Beal, 
R. P. Currie, R. H. Dean, H. W. Fowler, Louis Agassiz 
Fuertes, W P. Hay, A. H. Howell, W. A. Johnson, 
Sylvester D. Judd, F. C. Kirkwood, Dr. F. H. Knowl- 
ton, Colton Maynard, G. S. Miller, Jr.. Harry C. Ober- 
holser, H. W. Olds. W. H. Osgood, Dr. T. S. Palmer, 
E. A. Preble, Dr. W. L. Ralph, Jos. H. Riley, Dr. W. C. 
Rives, Dr. Hugh M. Smith. W. E. C. Todd. C. H. 
Townsend, John Van Denburs?, Nelson R. Wood. Sam'l 
N. Rhoads, A. E. Colburn, John W. Daniels, Jr., W. 
L. Baily, Prof. B. W. Evermann. 
Robert Ridgway, of Washington, D. C, was elected 
President; Dr. C. Hart Merriam, of Washington, D. 
C, and Chas. B. Cory, of Boston, Vice-Presidents; John 
H. Sage, of Portland, Conn.. Secretary; William Dutcher, 
of New York city, Treasurer; Charles F. Batchelder, 
Witmer Stone, Ruthven Deane, Jonathan Dwight, Jr., 
A. K. Fisher, L. Stejneger and Frank M. Chapman, 
Members of the Council. 
Mr, William Palmer, of Washington, D. C, was elected 
an active member, and the Hon. Walter Rothschild, of 
Tring Museum, England, a corresponding member of the 
Union. One hundred and one associate members were 
elected, the largest number in any one year since the 
foundation of the Union. 
Mr. Witmer Stone, chairman of the committee on 
protection of North American birds, read a most inter- 
esting report of the work done by his committee during 
the past year. The report will be published in The Auk, 
the official organ of the Union, and reprinted as a sepa- 
rate pamphlet to be sold at a very low price. 
Through the kindness of Prof. W. B. Powell, Supt. 
of Schools of Washington, a hall at the Central High 
School was placed at the disposal of the Union Wed- 
nesday afternoon. Certain papers illustrated with lan- 
tern slides were read there before a large audience. 
On Wednesday evening the Union met at the Assem 
bly Hall of the Cosmos Club, by courtesy of that club. 
Here several communications, illustrated with lantern 
slides, were read. 
Two members of the Union, Messrs. Nelson P. Wood 
and Louis Agassiz Fuertes. by special request gave 
imitations of the notes of birds. Another interesting 
feature was the graphophone demonstration of a brown 
thrasher's song by Sylvester D. Judd. 
Resolutions were passed thanking the regents of the 
Smithsonian Institution, the Army Medical Museum, 
Prof. W. B. Powell and the Cosmos Club for the use 
of halls under control for a meeting place of the Union, 
and thanking the Washington members for the cordial 
welcome and generous hospitality extended to t.lie visit- 
ing members. 
The character of the papers read was higher and the 
attendance, much larger than at any previous congress 
of the Union. ~ . 
It was voted to hold the next annual meeting in Phil- 
adelphia, commencing Nov. 13, 1899. 
Following is a list of the papers read at the sessions: 
1. Among the Birds in Nevada— Harry C. Oberholser. 
2. The Moult of Passerine Species in the Vicinity of 
New York City— Jonathan Dwight, Jr. 
3. A Brown Thrasher's Song per Graphophone— 
Sylvester D. Judd. 
4. The Distribution and Relationships of Ammodra- 
mus maritimus— Frank M. Chapman. 
5. The Geographical Distribution of the Wrens of the 
Bewickii Group— Harry C. Oberholser. 
6. Polygamy among Oscines — F. E. L. Beal. 
7. The Prothonotary Warbler (P. citrea), a Common 
Summer Resident of Southeastern Minnesota— Thos. S. 
Roberts. ' 
8. Some Early Philadelphia Collectors and Collec- 
tions — Witmer Stone. . . 
9. Chadbourne on Individual Dichromatism m Me- 
gascops asio, with Some Evidence in the Question — 
William Palmer. . .„. 
10. Some Characteristics of Neossoptiles— William 
Palmer. 
11. The Bird Rocks of the Gulf of St. Lawrence 
(illustrated with lantern slides)— Frank M. Chapman. 
12. Exhibition of lantern slides of birds, birds' nests 
and nesting haunts— Thos. S. Roberts. 
13. Exhibition of lantern slides— William Dutcher.. 
14 Exhibition of lantern slides— Wm. L. Baily. 
15 On the Nesting Habits of the Brown Pelican on 
Pelican Island, Florida (illustrated with. lantern slides)— 
Frank M. Chapman. ' . - t .... 
16 A Chapter in the Life of the Canada Jay (illus- 
trated with lantern slides)— Oscar Bird Warren. 
17 Clarke's Crows and Oregon Jays on Mt. Hood 
(illustrated with lantern slides)— Florence A. Merriam. 
i'8, Crow Roosts in Eastern Pennsylvania and New 
Jersey— Witmer Stone. 
" 19 " The Generic Names Pediocaetes and Poocaetes— 
Theo. GUI. r ^ . 
20. The Blue Honey-creepers of Tropical America- - 
Harry C. Oberholser. 
21. The Water Ouzel on Mt. Shasta— Florence A. 
M 2 2 na The Nocturnal Flight of Migrating Birds— O. 
G. Libby. , 
About Trees. 
Editor E or est and Stream: 
Much of the information sought by the writers oi 
articles "About Trees" in vour issues, Nov. 5 and 19, can 
be found in "The Pruning Book," by L. H. Bailey, The 
Macmillan Company, publishers, New York. 
The common belief that sap ascends m the spring from 
the roots to the ends of the limbs, and that a return cur- 
rent exists at the end of the season, is no doubt true, but 
seems far from being the whole truth. Accepted authori- 
ties a°ree that water holding in solution matter adapted 
to the growth of the tree, and called sap, ascends 
throughout the gr.owing season to the leaves,- and is 
there by chemical action changed into food for the growth 
of the tree, and descends throughout the growing season, 
to be deposited between the sapwood and the bark of the 
tree in "the cambrium laver, the active living tissue, the 
inside of which by the growth of cells produces wood, 
arid the outside produces the .inner bark, expanding the 
outer bark to make room for the new growth." 
An experiment can be easily made with a white pine. 
Select a tree say 3 to 6in. diameter of trunk and remove 
all the limbs to a height of 3 to 5ft, and girdle the trunk 
of the tree just below the first remaining limbs by remov- 
ing the bark a few inches in width all around the trunk, 
leaving the wood bare. The tree will live several years. 
The trunk below the girdling will increase little if any 
in size- the part of the tree above the girdling will con- 
tinue to grow with somewhat reduced vigor, but the part 
of the trunk next above the girdling will increase much 
in size A tree treated in this way two years ago is inn. 
in circumference next below the girdling, 9&in. where 
girdled and 14m. next above the girdling; thus showing 
that the sap must have ascended through the sap wood_ 
and little if any of the food elaborated at the leaves de- 
scended below the place where the tree was & ird ^ ed ^ [ 
Plymouth, Mass., Nov. 19. 
Newburyport, Nov. 7— Editor Forest and Stream: 
In your paper of Nov. 5, Mr. Hardy, in an article about 
trees asks, if the sap in a tree is all of the same quality 
how it happens that part makes bark and part leaves. I 
would like to ask Mr. Hardy how it happens if the blood 
in his body is all of the same quality that part makes 
hair, part makes eyes, and part makes teeth? 
H . M . A . 
[This is putting one question not in answer, but in 
avoidance of anot her one.] 
A Bird's Nest in a Buffalo Head. 
New York, Nov. 12. — Editor Forest and Stream: I 
have been much interested in Mr. Grinnell's account of 
the stories told him by Blackfeet Indians about snow- 
birds nesting in the head of a buffalo bull. In 1884 I 
had for some time as a hunting companion an Indian— 
I think a Cree, though possibly it may have been a Sioux 
—from a little Indian reservation south of Deloraine. 
Manitoba. This man told me that sometimes, though 
very, very rarely, snowbirds' nests were found in the 
heads of buffalo. - . . 
These snowbirds are little birds of the prairie, which 
go in flocks. They are gray above, have a black crescent 
on the breast, and are elsewhere whitish beneath. The 
males sometimes show little black horns sticking up on 
each side of the head. I confess that when I heard it 1 
put down the Indian's story as fable, but now it is con- 
firmed by the Blackfeet Indians I am very much dis- 
posed to believe it. When one thinks of the thick and 
deep mat of hair between the horns of a buffalo, there 
seems no reason why this situation should not be a safe 
and desirable one for a small bird's nest. 
E. G. B. Haymon. 
