Jan. 28, 1899.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
60 
very much closer to him than the bird is in orainafy 
flight, and only reah;zes the si?:e of the giant when he 
comes to step the distance to him. 
Of late years, Mr. Averill and his friends in Japan 
have taken to fishing. They do not tell just everyone 
about this, and are a bit vague and indefinite when asked 
where it is that they find their sport. I suppose that not 
everybody knows there is trout fishing in Japan. I never 
knew it before, nor ever heard it mentioned. Yet there 
is trout fishing, and the trout fishing is of a most interest- 
ing sort, and the Japanese are skillful fly fishermen, with 
a style of their own. I know all about this now, but I 
am not going to tell about it, but shall promise the read- 
ers of Forest and- Stream before long a treat in the form 
of an article on this subject by Mr. Averill himself. He 
will tell a lot of things in the way of angling news from 
this far-off western countrj^ which I think have never 
found their way into print in any sporting journal. We 
do not know ah about fiy fishing in America. There is 
temptation to break into print over this myself, but I shall 
not forestall Mr. Averih, who promises this very inter- 
esting storj^ at an early date. 
I asked Mr. Averill what people thought of the United 
States now over his way, and he said that since the late 
war every American has grown a couple of inches, and 
that in the opinion of all the other powers America has 
grown several feet. He says that Japan used to think, 
after the Chinese w^ar, that she could whip the whole earth, 
but certain little transactions in the year of i8g8 have led 
the intelligent Japanese to believe that America is some- 
thing of a scrapper herself. 
I must not pass Mr. Averill's visit without pointing out 
one very pleasant lesson which it leaves. He says that the 
Japanese do not live altogether for work or for money. 
When a man gets to be about forty-five years of age, he 
retires from business and his son takes care of him. 
After that the old gentleman has a house of his own, and 
doesn't do anything but drink tea and swap lies with the 
neighbors. (I think I would like to go to Japan.) An- 
other pleasant custom is one which the Japanese have in 
regard to public vacation trips. The inhabitants of, say, 
a certain village, contribute each year a little toward a 
public fund which is to be expended in giving some poor 
persons a vacation. Lots are drawn and perhaps 'ten 
persons, the lucky ones, are given the means to take 
vacation pilgrimages, which last during the summer. The 
amount paid to each one is only about $10, but this will 
last about all summer, for things are cheap in that land. 
These vacation pilgrim people may be seen in many parts 
of the island, attending the shrines, climbing mountains, 
^'isiting the places of public interest. They carry a scrip 
a staff and a mat, and they sleep where night finds them 
if they do not happen to have the price of a room.' Thus 
they wander and enjoy themselves, and learn about their 
country, until their ?io is gone. Then they go back 
home and go to work, and put their money in the fund 
fcr some other fellows to have their vacation after awhile. 
This,-it seems to me, is a beautiful custom. It is slightly 
different from the American method. Here we take our 
vacations after we are too old to digest a beefsteak or to 
walk a mile. It shall happen one of these centuries that 
the Americans will awaken to find that they did not know 
everj'thing in the world, especially about vacations. It 
w^ill give me great pleasure then to turn over in my 
grave, wherever that may be, and say, "I told you so! 
You ought to have read Forest and Stream." 
Singing Mowse No» 7. 
It was but a little while ago that I made mention of 
another singing mouse that had been discovered. This 
week I have still another one to chronicle, which 1 be- 
lieve is either No, 7 or No. 8 in the series recorded in the 
Forest and Stream. One evening this week my friend, 
Mr. C. W. Lee. handed me a clipping from the New- 
York Herald of Sunday, Jan. 8, describing a captive sing- 
ing mouse. This was very interesting, and I kept the 
clipping. On the folownng morning I received the same 
clipping from Mr. Henry J. Howlett, of New York City. 
Later in the same day my friend Mr. Bridgman, of the 
Crane Company, New York City, sent me the clipping, 
and stiU later my friend Mr. J. B. Burnham, apparently 
foreknowing, also mailed it to me witfi the following re- 
mark: "Here is something about a captive singing 
mouse. No doubt half a dozen people have sent you 
this, but on a chance they all expected the other fellow 
to do so, I will run the risk of being de trop. I don't 
imagine you care for the mouse, or I would send that." 
I would like to thank all these gentlemen for their inter- 
est, and perhaps it might be interesting to print some- 
thing of the Herald's story about this mouse, which pur- 
ports to have been caught in a trap by Augustus G. De 
Tartas, of 709 Columbus avenue, New York City. The 
latter writes: 
"I was very fortunate the other day to catch a singing 
mouse, and, having since ascertained that it is a gi^eat rar- 
ity, I would very much like to hear from some of your 
numerous readers why it is so rare, and to jvhat species 
of vermin it belongs. 
"The one I caught is an ordinary-looking mouse to me, 
and the only difference I see is that it sings like a bird. 
It eats anything I feed to it, sleeps most of the day and 
sings all night. It was very small when I caught it, but 
has grown considerably since then, and at present is the 
normal size of an ordinary mouse." 
This rnouse is described as singing so loud as to "wake 
the baby." This I should think unlikely, unless the 
baby's slumbers were set upon a hair trigger. 
PersonaU 
Mr. A. Lent, President of the Austin Cartridge Com- 
pany, of Cleveland, O., will be in this city for a brief visit 
on Monday next. Thus I am informed by Mr. C. M. 
Wills, Superintendent of the same company, who called 
at this office yesterday on his way to Galesburg. Mr. 
Wills carries also the very sad news that Mr. Coleman, 
President of the Austin Powder Company, has been very 
seriously sick for nearly three months, and is still unable 
to be at his desk. Mr. Coleman is one of those able and 
pleasant gentlemen Avho can ill be spared, even tempo- 
rarily, from the business world, and I hope his recovery 
will be speedy. E. HoUGH, 
1200 BoYCE BuiLDiKG, Oilcago, 111. 
Exhibition of Catlin Pictures. 
When we consider the primitive American hunter and 
his ways of life in the old days, before contact with the 
whites had greatly changed him, we always think of 
George Catlin. His name is as closely linked with the 
Indians as Audubon's is with the birds of this countrJ^ 
Catlin was the first man who in any large way attempted 
to write of, and to picture on canvas, the North American 
Indian, and his habits and customs, and in carrying on 
this work he traveled over many thousands of miles of 
land and sea, for he was not satisfied with showing the 
Indian to the white inhabitants of this continent, but in- 
troduced them as well to the public of many of the capitals 
of Europe. 
Cath'n's enthusiasm for his work was unbounded. For 
years he journeyed over the land, north, south, cast 
and west, visiting different tribes of Indians, living with 
them and studying their life. He pictured their sports 
and their religious ceremonies, and showed how they 
obtained their food and how they lived from day to day 1n 
their camps and permanent villages. The work that he 
did in portrajang the customs of these primitive peoples 
was long undervalued in America, but it is coming to "^be 
appreciated now, and within the past few years the Gov- 
ernment at Washington purchased a great number of his 
pictures, and prepared a large volume on his work. 
Catlin was an indefatigable worker, and besides the 
well-known Catlin gallery, left behind him a vast amount 
of scattered material, pictures and manuscript, which is 
gradually coming to light. A few years ago a consider- 
able amount of this was secured by Mr. Archibald Rogers, 
of Hyde Park, N. Y., in whose hands^it is happily safe. 
There is now in this city a collection of thirty-three oil 
paintings to be exhibited next week at Norman's, 234 
Fifth avenue, \lhich should be seen by every one who is 
interested either in Indians or in Western big game, or in 
the transformation that has taken place in our Western 
country within the last sixty years. Many of these pic- 
tures are identical in subject and treatment with those in 
the Catlin portfolio, which is sufiliciently familiar. They 
deal in large measure with life in the West, and hence to 
a great extent with buffalo and buffalo hunting in different , 
ways. There is the chase by Indians mounted on swift 
ponies and armed with bow and arrows, or with the 
lance : the ordinary stalk from behind cover ; the approach 
under the disguise of wolves ; the killing in deep snow 
by hunters on snowshoes. But besides the taking of the 
extinct buffalo, the capture of other game is pictured. 
There are representations of moose hunting by an Indian 
on snowshoes, of deer killing by night and by dayr 
and of salmon spearing by torchlight. Two pictures 
show the chase and capture of the wild horse, one a fight 
between buffalo and bear, and another a combat between 
three mounted Indians and two grizzlies. Other aspects 
of Indian life are mirrored in the picture of a small panip 
of people who have just discovered a prairie fire ap- 
proaching them, in scenes where three Indians appear to 
be in the path of a stampeding h&rd of buffalo, and where 
Indians in camp are alarmed and have just seized their 
weapons as if to resist an approaching. 
While most of the pictures belong to our own West, 
there are five which present South American scenes. 
One of these, a leopard hunt, shows the artist about to 
fire at two of the animals, one of which is already 
wounded. There are two pictures representing flamingoes, 
one of which shows their nesting ground; tliere is an 
ostrich hunt on the Pampas of the Rio de la Plata, and a 
semi-tropical forest scene with Indians bathing. 
The paintings to be exhibited were shown in London 
in 1S59 in connection with a collection of Indian costumes 
and weapons, which was purchased from Mr. Catlin by 
the King of the Belgians. The exhibition will begin Jan. 
31, and will continue for one week. 
The Fleeting Fox. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Judging from a letter, my young friend at Philadelphia, 
N. Y., has been hunting muskrats, minks and foxes pretty 
steadily since the arrival of snow, and the net result so 
far has been a red squirrel, a rabbit (great Northern 
hare), one muskrat and a bag full of experiences. A rab- 
bit, a muskrat and a '"puny red squirrel" are rather too 
small game to tell about, according to the rather pot- 
hunting instincts of boys who figure usually by the size 
and number of kills made. But I will say this for boys 
who hunt, they commonly give more space to telling how 
they missed than how thej' came to kill. For instance, all 
I know about the hare is embodied in this sentence : 
"Cousin Min cooked'the raggit I got down the river 
yesterday, and, it was good." 
It took more to tell about a fox which is "still skedad- 
dling." 
"I went hunting across the trestle last Saturday. Snow 
was kind-a deep, and the day just like the woods. Had 
my shotgun. That makes me think, I guess I'll get a 
camera first chance I get, because it would be fun to take 
pictures of things. I climbed the wire fence and went 
down the top of the ridge and into them woods, you know 
where the little open is like a choppin' up home, and all of 
a sudden I seen something above a log 'bout ten rods 
away. It was kind-a white and kind-a red. It bobbed up 
and then out of sight. First it was at one end of the 
log and then it wasn't anywhere for two or three minutes, 
then up it would come at the other end where the branches 
was. 
'T figured it out that I'd sneak down the bank and back 
up through the woods to see t'other side of that there 
log. I done it, and by Jee it wa'n't there at all, but on 
t'other side the log. But I seen a track on the log like a 
place some critter had climbed over, and that thing wav- 
ingjooked pretty interesting. I thought it too hard work 
to go sneaking way round again, so I went sneaking crost 
the open straight at the log just like any other idjit, as if 
I hadn't still-hunted partridges and buck rabbits long as I 
can remember. But I bellied along through the snow, and 
pretty soon I was about three rod from the log, and I 
looked. Nothing there. Got a little higher, then higher. 
Nothing, so I stood up and shook the snow out of my 
hair and blew on my fingers. 
" Gosh! There sot a fox with his mouth wide 
open and a mouse's tail hanging out the corner of his 
lips. He wiggled his lips a little and looked 'bout as 
silly as I felt when I ploughed the ground up with shot 
two rods to one side of his fleeting carcass. He'd been 
eating mice from under that log — guess he got five or six. 
I don't see why a fellow can't just aim at a beast and hit 
it like it was a can or fence board or anything. But 
who'd 'a' s'posed a fox Avould be dancing round a log at 
9 o'clock in the morning like it was just daylight. I seen 
an owl too, but I didn't get him — didn't even shoot. Just 
as well, considering the fox, I reckon. I'll bet that fox is 
still skedaddling. He went sideways, and made one track 
like a rabbit's— reg'lar Y. I had 4s in, and just think 
what they'd done to that beast at four rods." 
So far' as I am concerned. I am rather pleased at the 
outcome. Think of that fox with wiggling lips and 
dangling mouse's tail struck silly with surprise done to 
death the next instant. We would have missed the "fleet- 
ing carcass" then. Raymond S. Spears. 
New York. 
The New Yofk Deer Law. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Senator Cahoon has introduced a bill to amend the 
law relative to the killing of deer in this State, and a hke 
bill has been introduced in the lower house of the Legis- 
lature. This bill provides for the shortening of the open 
season on deer to one month, viz., from Sept. 15 to Oct. 
15, and permits hounding throughout the entire period 
of the open season. This bill, in my opinion, would not 
stand a ghost of passing were it not for the fact that its 
sponsor — Senator Cahoon — is the chairman of the Senate 
Committee on Game Laws, and while confident that our 
present Governor would not permit it to become a law 
I still believe it to be the duty of every true sportsman 
to endeavor to prevent, if possible, the passage of a 
measure so fraught with danger to deer preservation. 
There has been but a single year of trial of the non- 
hounding law, and it is doubtless true that the average 
hunter has not found it quite so easy to procure his 
venison as under the old hounding law, but give the 
present law a decent trial, and we shall find the same 
conditions as now exist in the State of Maine, where 
the veriest tyro can kill his deer without difficulty^ with- 
out the aid of the hound. A few years ago. under the 
old system that permitted hounding, deer had become a 
scare commodity in the State of Maine, and it took 
several years of hard work on the part of friends of game 
protection — none worked more diligently than Forest 
AND Stream — ^to educate the people of that State up to a 
point where they could see the great benefits of a non- 
hounding law. To-day deer are plentiful and easy to get 
in Maine, and the people there are almost a unit in op- 
position to any change looking toward the old order of 
things. 
The same will be the case in this State if we will only 
wait long enough to give the present law a fair test. 
In the interests of deer preservation and of sports- 
manlike methods in deer killing, in the name of human- 
ity and common decency, it behooves every true sports- 
man to make every possible effort to prevent the repeal 
of the present law. Everybody perhaps recognizes that 
the shortening of the season may be a move in the right 
direction, but if a return to the inhuman practice of 
deer dogging is to be the price of securing such an 
amendment, better a thousand times leave matters as they 
are. M. Schenck. 
Tkov, N. Y., Jan. IS. 
A Virginia Shooting- Countyy. 
LumbertoNj Sussex County, Va. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: There is no doubt in the minds of the sports- 
men who have visited this district during the bird shooting 
season, which is fast waning, that the country round 
about possesses advantages fully equal to any in the South. 
North Carolina is for a variety of reasons the favorite 
resort of quail hunters, and in consequence this district 
has not suffered. On the contrary, it has gained. The 
close season which reigned here during 1S96-7 has given 
the birds an exceptional opportunity to increase, and 
doubtless many have come across the Carolina line, not 
far distant. This year few sportsmen knew of the coun- 
try, and not many came, but those who did went away 
heavily laden, happy and determined to come again and 
bring friends. 
The country is an admirable one to hunt, low, level, ex- 
tensive and not too thickly settled. The lands are not 
generally posted, and then only as a protection against 
the inroads of the "pot-hunter." Visiting sportsmen are 
extended every courtesy, and royally welcomed. The 
sportsman who stops off at any one of the manj'' stations 
lying between Capron and Semora is sure to find quail in 
abundance, guides at reasonable prices, fairly good dogs 
and comfortable quarters. Several points offer fine turkey 
shooting, and everywhere hares and squirrels are to be 
found in abundance. The woodcock is not unknown. 
Deer are hunted in season, and fox hunting furnishes 
exhilarating sport for all lovers almost, one might say, the 
year round. 
The country is beautiful with its stately pine, oak and 
hemlock here and there, the air invigorating and the 
climate very charming to one who comes from the snow- 
bound North. The quail season ends Jan. 15, save in 
several counties, of w'hicli Sussex is one, where the time 
exten'is to Feb. 15. Turkeys may be killed until Feb. I, 
and hares and squirrels until March or later. 
A few sportsmen are enjoying the late shooting, inci- 
dentally joining in the fox chase from time to time. 
There are still many quail left for next season to furnish 
pleasure and exhilaration for the hunter. 
Herbert L. Jillson. 
A Houghton, Mich., dispatch says: "Jerry Murphy, a 
well-known miner, living in Calumet, sold his big St 
Bernard Barney to a Klondike party eighteen months ago. < 
The dog was taken to Dawson City and performed good 
service. Last night Barney reappeared at Murphy's home 
in Calumet. How he succeeded in returning from Alaska 
is a mystery." _ 
