Feb. 25, iSgg.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
found on every hand; besides, crows are often seen feed- 
ing on them. But the crow's worst habit here is his per- 
sistent robbing of the nests of that much-valued bird the 
pinnated grouse. For the past eight years I have found 
abundant evidence against him in this respect, and al- 
most every year find many egg shells scattered about 
and showing plainly the work of the crow, while on 
more than one occasion I have actually observed the 
offender carrying off the egg in his bill. 
Several countrymen hereabouts have also complained 
of the crow in this particular, and on one farm not far 
from this village they were reported to have destroyed 
three sittings of "chicken's eggs" the past spring. The 
nesting cover for the grouse in this locality is rather 
scanty, and with the crows, minks, weasels and numer- 
ous hunters, the future outlook for their preservation 
seems altogether discouraging. The crow, in my esti- 
mation, far outnumbers all other evils combined. That 
all crowds are equally addicted to this bad habit I really 
cannot say, but probably not, though from what we know 
of their habits in general it is questionable whether 
a favorable opportunity with a much-coveted meal like 
this would pass unnoticed, and when robbery is once 
begun, the nest is never deserted until the very last 
egg is gone. However, in the case of the robbing 
and killing of very young birds, nestlings and young of 
domestic poultry, individuality may cut some figure. 
This may be described as an acquired taste. An acquaint- 
ance of mine engaged in the poultr}' business and living 
close beside a piece of woodland tenanted by crows 
tells me that this is true. A crow one season robbed him 
of six young chickens and seven ducklings — the same 
identical crow whose nest, containing a brood of yoimg. 
hold a conclave. There would be anywhere from S-OOO 
to 10,000 of them, all of them cawing away at a great 
rate, when suddenly, as if by a concerted signal, every 
one of them would stop. Then one would apparently 
make his remarks, extending over possibly a quarter 
of a minute, after which they would go to work, all 
of them, discussing what he had to say. This will occur 
three or four times in the course of a half an hour. Then 
the birds, as if by some concerted signal, would start 
off in a certain direction. Some years ago we had a very 
cold winter there, and in this same woods I found hun- 
dreds of dead crows. The neighbors around the woods 
told me that they would find large mmibers of them 
entirely blind that had not yet died. The crows Jiad 
apparently had their eyes frozen so that the pupils 
cracked open, and they could not see; but they were not 
otherwise injured. I might say, however, that I never 
personally examined them to find whether the eye had 
been cracked in this way or not. Certain it was, there was 
a great mortality in the flock." 
This same observation on crows becoming blind during 
exceptionally cold weather is also mentioned by Mr. 
Frank L. Burns, in Bulletin No. 5 of the Wilson Or- 
nithological Chapter of the Agassiz Association, "The 
American Crow" (.see page it), as occurring during the 
winter of 1894 in Chester county, Pa. For a more de- 
tailed account of the economic habits and life history of 
the American crow the reader is referred to this bulletin, 
also to the exhaustive treatise prepared by Prof. Walter 
B. Barrow, and assisted by Mr. E. A. Schwarz, compris- 
ing what is knoAvn as Bulletin No. 6, U. S. Department 
of Agriculture, Division of Ornithology and Mammal- 
ogy, as well as to the very able paper of Mr. E. H. For- 
THE MUSKRAT'S LODGE. 
Photographed by Ernest Harold Baynes. 
was nea^ at hand. Others of his tribe associated with 
the poultry on the best of terms and apparently without 
any evil intentions. The robber and his progeny were 
destroyed, after which no losses from crows were suf- 
fered. 
On May 21, 1897, I detected a crow in the act of car- 
rying off a young robin, with the old birds in close 
pursuit. This is the only case of a robbery of this kind 
actually coming under my observation, though others 
since have been reported to me. Of several of our native 
birds whose eggs I have personally known to have 
been taken by the crow, the following may be men- 
tioned: Loon, king rail, bittern, and (a rather remarkable 
incident to me at least) the entire settling of a pair of 
red-shouldered liawks, the shells of their eggs being 
afterward found on the ground beneath the tree, with 
punctures which clearly showed the crow's work. Pre- 
vious to that I had observed that the crows harassed 
the hawks somewhat, but it never occurred to me that 
they really had designs upon their eggs. 
This list might be materiallj'' increased by the addition 
of names of other of our wild birds whose eggs were 
known to have been broken and robbed under suspicious 
circumstances, but the evidence in their case is not quite 
as conclusive as in that of the foregoing. Crows must 
have greatly increased in numbers within this county 
during the past forty years, judging from the observa- 
tions of William Le Baron, M.D., who, writing from 
Geneva, Kane county. 111., a few^ miles west of here, 
under date of Dec. 12, 1854 (see Illinois Agricultural 
Report, 185s, p. 559), and speaking of other birds then 
scarce, but now common, has this to say of the subject 
of our sketch: 
"The crow, which is so common and troublesome in the 
New England States, is rare at the West. It is only oc- 
casionally that we see them, and then only in small com- 
panies of less than a dozen." Now, it is not uncomnion 
to see 100 of them together at a time; in fact, this is 
of almost daily occurrence during the winter months, as 
the}^ flock to the northwest of here about the middle of 
each afternoon to a roost, as I am informed by Mr. R. 
P. Sharpless, of Chicago, a few miles east of Elgin. 
Of these winter roosts of the crow my correspondent, Mr. 
Sharpless, has given several interesting facts, from which 
I take the liberty of quoting the following in his letter 
to me under date of Dec. 9, 1898, viz.: 
"For a number of years I lived down in Pennsylvania 
and found several crow roosts there, some of them of 
immense size. The birds in Bucks county, Pa., had a 
habit which I never saw anywhere else. They would 
gather in a large woods about two or three miles east 
of Doylesiown, the county seat, and would apparenUy 
bush, in Bulletin No. 4, series of 1896, of the Massa- 
chusetts crop report, all of which seem to draw the 
conclusion that the crow's usefulness in various ways is 
fully equal to, if not more than a counterbalance for, 
those qualities which are notoriously bad. 
Inasmuch as a final decision has not been reached 
concerning the true value of these birds, would it not 
do to devote still more time to the nest-robbing side 
of the question? A chemical analysis of the stomach 
contents would perhaps give the best results, yet even 
this might be held as untrustworthy in view of the 
rapid digestion and assimilation known to take place 
with the crow. 
How then shall we finally dispose of this much-vexed 
question? Perhaps some of our friends associated with 
the biological work of the United States Department of 
Agriculture can show us the way. 
Benj. T. Gault„ 
Louisiana Winter Rail. 
Jefferson Island, La., Feb. 14. — I mail you to-day a 
Virginia rail, killed here by me this A. M. The whole 
country here is frozen up and about 2in. of snow. Ther- 
mometer yesterday at 7 A. M. 4 degrees. The rail was 
feeding in an open ditch near a cherokee hedge, with ice 
everywhere. This effectually tells where the rail birds go. 
ROBT, C. LOWRY. 
[The rails go south in winter like the other birds. We 
have seen them feeding among the reeds of North Carolina 
w^hen the country was all frozen up. If the freeze lasts 
long, however, they move on to warmer climes.] 
Wyoming Vermin Bownties. 
MoRGANTOWN, W. Va., Feb. 13.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: The last issue of the Grand Encampment Her- 
ald, of Grand Encampment, Wyoming,, gives these fig- 
ures, which may interest your readers : "During the past 
two years the State of Wyoming paid bounty on 13,326 
coyotes, 4,281 wolves, of which number 3,493 were grav 
wolves, 19 black wolves, and 769 wolf pups. The tota'l 
number of predatory wild animals on which bounty was 
paid during the tw^o ytars just closed was 21,888." 
I hope manj^ of Forest and Stream readers enjoyed 
the third part of "In Old Virginia" in Feb. 11 issue as 
much as I did. Never did I laugh so much at the reading 
of anything as that of_ the doctor and his buck. Such 
mirth provoking narratives add years to our lives, 
Emessoh Carney. 
A Four-Footed Architect. 
We were taking a winter walk along the bank of>,a, 
frozen Connecticut stream, when my companion stopped 
and pointed inquiringly toward a dome-shaped mound of 
leaves rising perhaps 3ft. above the surface of the ice. 
"Oh," I said, "that's a muskrat lodge; let's go over and 
have a look at it." It was about 30ft. from the shore, 
at a point where the river was .shallow and sluggish, and 
looked precisely like a heap of dead leaves, such as gar- 
deners rake up on the lawn in the autumn. In reality, 
however, the leaves were not loose, but were cemented 
together with ice, and formed a substantial circular wall 
to the cozy little chamber inside. The foundation of 
the dwelling was on the bed of the river, about ift. below 
the ice, and the entrance was under the water. Had we 
broken through the walls, we should have found that 
they were still further strengthened by many dead sticks 
laid horizontally amongst the leaves. Inside we should 
have seen a small room with a leafy, shelf-lik-.. bed, built 
a few inches above the surface of the water, which 
formed the floor of the apartment. Here the furry own- 
ers slept in daytime, diving into the water at dusk, when 
they generally set out in search of food. 
My friend and I now began to look for the opening in 
the ice through which the muskrats must come on their 
way to breakfast. We soon found it close to the bank, 
and from it a trail led up a little hill, through a hole in 
a stone wall into a corn field beyond. Here the trail di- 
vided, and the tracks of the little animals led out in every 
direction. Most of the corn had been carted away in the 
autumn, but many ears had been dropped or overlooked, 
and for these the muskrats evidently made nightly- visits 
to the field. 
Muskrats live chiefly on a vegetable diet, and have 
been known to raid barns in search of apples, turnips, 
corn and other farm produce. They are not very strict 
vegetarians, however, as their fondness for fresh-water 
mussels is well known, and the gnawed shells of these 
bivalves may be found along the banks of almost any 
stream where muskrats abound. 
In appearance a muskrat is dark brown on the back 
and light brown, shading to gray, underneath. Each 
paw is armed wath five substantial claws, suitable for 
making burrov\'s in the banks of streams, where most of 
the.se rodents live in the summer, and many of them all 
the year round. The forelegs are short and the paws 
small, but the hindlegs, those chiefly used in swimming 
and diving, are provided with large, slightly webbed feet, 
set on at an angle and pointing outward. The tail is 
flat and knifehke, with the edges at top and bottoni, 
and is covered thinly with coarse black hairs. It is nearly 
as long as the body. The head is ratlike, with a small, 
sharp nose and black, beady eyes. The front teeth are 
long and chisel-shaped; there are also grinding teeth at 
the back of the mouth. The ears, though in realitv quite 
large, are so completely hidden in the thick fur that they 
cannot be seen without a special search being made for 
them. 
The fur of the muskrat, though not high-priced, h 
handsome, and is often made up into garments eitlrer in 
the natural color or dyed to imitate a more expensive 
article. Ernest Harold Baynes. 
Two Ways of Killing Rattlesnakes. 
The following was related to me by Mr. Howard E. 
Case, of 92 Wall street. New York, who formerly owned 
a ranch in Texas: 
We always killed a rattlesnake at sight on the range. 
We even went out of our way to kill him because of 
his destructiveness to sheep. Not that a rattler pursues 
them with murderous intent — nothing of the sort. He 
isn't a bad fellow in his way. no fighter except in self- 
defense, and always gives warning of his presence, so 
that you may take the other side; but when he is run 
down by a flock of sheep, and their sharp hoofs cut 
through his mottled hide, it is to be expected that he 
will strike back. When he does strike it is always on the 
under side of the jaw. If we see a sheep apart by it- 
self, its under jaw so swollen that it cannot eat. we know 
wrhat is the matter, and treat it accordingly. 
"What is the treatment?" we ask. 
"We take a leaf of the Spanish bayonet, which has a 
point like a needle, and thrust it into the jaw. A milk-^ 
white fluid exudes, and when this has all been discharged 
the animal recovers quickly." 
As I was saying, we always kill the rattler on principle, 
but we never waste powder on him. Every ranchman in 
Texas carries a "quirt," a whip with an iron handle about 
2ft. long, and a leathern lash about twice that length, and 
ending in three thongs. There is a loop attached to the 
handle, through which the wri.st is thrust. 
On seeing or hearing a snake, I would slide from Kin- 
tana— who hated the varmints as badly as I did. often dis- 
covering them where I failed, and who would remain per- 
fectly still while I killed them. 
The reptile on seeing me, of course, threw himself into 
his coil. 1 approached until within striking distance, whip 
in hand, and with a blow of the lash never failed to dis- 
able them, by breaking their backs. Then it was an easy 
matter to put my heel on their heads and grind them into 
the dust. 
I remember one combat I had with a rattler, in which a 
different weapon was used. We were loafing along one 
moonlit night— Kintana and I — when we both heard 
the familiar rattle coming from a bunch of chaparaprietta 
bushes, near the trail. The sound proclaimed it an old 
settler. I at once dismounted, but could see nothing, the 
moon having gone behind a cloud, I could hear the 
snake, however, and cutting a long switch from the 
bushes, went at it by the sound, and we had quite a battle 
ill the darkness. By and by the moon came out, and then 
i quickly dispatched it. It proved a whopper. 6ft. long, 
with twelve rattles. 
In my long, lonely rides over the prairie visiting the 
stations, I often had ocular evidence that another rattle- 
snake killer was abroad. More than once I came 
upon a circle of leaves of the prickly pear, or cactus, as 
it is called in the East, and in the center of it a deaci rat- 
tler, often with the needle-like spines sticking in his body- 
For a long time I could not imagine what built this 
wall arounel the snake, evidently when it was asleep; bui 
