2S4 
Camping Ways. 
How well I recall my first attempt at camping. Alone 
and in a dismal drizzle I tried in vain to set up a small 
tent. Disgusted and disheartened I soon wandered over 
to a stranger's camp, where I was liospitably received, and 
inducted into some of the mysteries of camping life. 
Since then I have lived and learned, and have evolved 
some practical ideas which may be of some service to 
other campers. 
First the tent. A small wall tent 7 by 7 or 7 by 9 is 
amply sufficient for one person. And to each man his 
tent is the best rule. Here is a place where each one 
can be as orderly or disorderly as he pleases. In tenting 
with another person one loses somewhat of the pleasant 
solitude and independence of camp life, and even with 
the best of companions is liable to some of that social 
friction from which we flee to the woods. I hinge my top 
pole in the middle and cut my side poles in the center, 
joining by a sheet iron tube, which works freely. Thus 
the whole tent outfit can be folded together into small 
compass, and put in a trunk strap, and checked to des- 
tination. A very convenient form of small tent which 
would be worth trying would be to do away entirely with 
gU3--ropes, which are always tripping one up, and fasten 
the tent by strong pockets at the corners, said pockets to 
snugly fit over iron stakes and tie there securely. I 
have never found any use for a fly, which is sure to be 
noisy in a wind. When camping I live wholly'- outside 
the tent in the open air except when weather or night 
drives me in. 
For cooldng my main reliance is a home-made oven, 
constructed of a biscuit tin covered with asbestos felt and 
then with thin boards. A hole in the bottom admits the 
chimney of a double wick lamp, or better, oil stove. The 
cost of the whole lamp and all was about $2, and it 
fits into a compartment in my provision chest. On 
awaking I light the lamp, put my breakfast in the oven, 
and inside of half an hour it will be ready. This oven will 
warm the tent in cold and rainy weather, and I can camp 
with it in places where open fires are not allowed, as in 
the Park at Mackinac Island. I now regard the oven as 
quite indispensable, and I think every tent in a party 
should have one. I use the open fire mainly for broiling. 
This open fire should be built on a heap of earth, turf or 
sods about 3ft. high, and hanging your implements around 
this altar, you can sit in your chair, read a paper and 
broil a steak or fish in great comfort. As to provisions, 
get the best. Sink a pail of the best butter in the earth 
in a cool corner vof the tent, and cover with a box. and it 
will keep in the hottest weather. 
For a bed a wire mattress folding cot is best. This 
with the mattress should be in two sections, and fold with 
the bedding into a large valise, whose handle will be top 
and bottom bed rails. The bed sections when set up can be 
fastened together, staple or cleat, and the near ends should 
be elastic steel. The whole bed apparatus can then be 
checked as baggage. If you are skillful you can put your 
whole outfit into baggage form and limit, namely, bed, 
provision chest, tent, grip, and save all the bother and 
expense of freight or express. A party of campers might 
with these outfits make a very enjoyable and cheap tour 
of the world, living at their own hotel. Thus, camp on 
some quiet farm near London, and go in daily by train, and 
the same for Paris, Berlin, etc. These outfits are also 
most convenient for gypsying, and can be set up and taken 
down in a few moments.. 
The place and time for camping is first of all the Great 
Northern Lakes, preferably near to rivers and .small lakes 
as on the Lake Superior shore, and after mosquito time, 
that is alter the middle of July. have camped with 
little annoyance on Mackinac Island from the niiddle of 
June, where for three weeks myself and companion prac- 
tically had the island to ourselves. The wonderful salu- 
brity of the air and beauty of view are best appreciated by 
the camper who pitches in the Fort, and I am much sur- 
prised that more do not take advantage of the best and 
cheapest wav to enjoy that wonderful island. 
Hiram M. Stanley. 
''The Poetry of Sport.'' 
All sportsmen may be divided into three classes, viz., 
(i) those who, like the proverbial Britisher, say. "Come, 
let us kill something"; (2) those who have the real love 
of sport at heart, minus its poetry; (3) those who have 
the real love, with the poetry of sport. 
It is freely admitted that all who have accomplished 
anything in the field of sport should feel with Whyte 
Melville that they "have earned for the nonce a con- 
sciousness of thorough self-satisfaction intensely grati- 
fying to the vanity of the human heart." We cannot all 
fully comprehend with the poet the pleasant influences ot 
soft winds and singing streamlets, and shady coverts, o| 
the violet couch and plane-tree shade, nor can we \11 
combine the qualities of keenest sportsmanship with the 
rare talents of geologist, entomologist and ornithologist; 
nor can we, on the other hand, quite concur with hun 
who said, "You talk of the poetry of sport; I can see 
nothing in it but animal excitement," adding, "As a fact, 
the majority of sportsmen are the most unpoetic type of 
manhood— men who look upon 'the primrose by the river 
bank as but a primrose still.' " We may. however, sym- 
pathize with those who, in lonely hours, in forest and on 
stream, find pleasure in the song of birds and in the beau- 
ties of nature. . . 
Merely to touch upon that most interesting subject, 
the song of birds, who, at this season, when eagerly look- 
ing forward in this northern and eastern part of the con - 
tinent, to the first cast for trout, does not greet with af- 
fection that harbinger of spring, the robin, so unlike his 
Anglo-Saxon- cousin, the redbreast, that warbles round 
his leafy cove? 
The robin, with his accompanying summer tourists— 
the song sparrow, and hermit thistles, the thrush, and 
crow blackbird— brings sweet melody. _ - 
How unlike his British cousin, too, is our blackbird.'' 
Of the former it is said: 
"The blackbird's song at eventide. 
And her's who gay ascends. 
Filling the heavens far and wide, 
Are sweet — " 
How often are those birds of ours disappointed in their 
FOftEST AND StRfiAM. 
search for sunshine; frequent snow flurries remind thi.m 
that summer is not yet. 
The hungry crows, as if to poke fun at the new comers, 
gravely stalk about as if they should have undisturbi.- 1 
possession of the land, their somber coloring forming a 
marked contrast with the gay plumage of many of the 
late arrivals from the tropics, who, in common with the 
flowers of that region, dress in gay and bright colors; 
but as the flowers have no perfume, their companions, tlie 
birds, have no song. 
It is remarkable that all migratory birds return to the 
same spot year after year, the swallows to build their 
homes without hands under the eaves of chitrch or chapel; 
others, thrushes and sparrows, robins and blackbirds, 
return to their familiar groves and hedges, while vet 
others seek uninterrupted repose in the forest deep. 
May we not sympathize, too, in early spring witii 
the fur-hunting trapper or the lumberman alone in the 
forest awaiting the departure of ice from stream and 
river. Each counts the hours, the former until he can, 
on the approach of summer, pick up his traps and seek 
pastures new in the settlements; the latter until he can 
exchange the axe for the handspike and follow the course 
of stream and river to the market of his hopes. He sits 
awhile in the brief spring sunshine at his hut door; but 
how cold it is; he still has to wait and watch. In his 
despondent mood a bluejay, his silent companion during 
the long winter, appears on the scene, and from an 
overhanging branch favors him with a cheery, chatty 
song, and this is what he says: "Summer is coming; 
summer is coming." 
Later on, when even birds are sure of a warm climatic 
reception, as you are perhaps busily engaged in selectin.g 
a killing fly for a monster trout, who, unUke some mem- 
bers of the rising generation, is shy in his desire to rise 
in his search for food, do you not rejoice to welcome the 
return of the bobolink, with his merry, joyous note, or 
the much valued vireos; or, on reaching camp, after a 
good forenoon's sport, as you smoke your pipe, after 
the midday meal, do you not rejoice to see your old 
friend, the moose bird, in his easy going way, in full con- 
fidence that he is amongst friends, noiselessly light upon 
the frj'ing-pan at the tent door and enjoy a luxurious re- 
past from the remains of the pork and beans of your 
meal? And how eagerly, on your return homewards, 
you look out in every bit of open country for your 
friends the thistle birds and yellow warblers; they never 
fail to bring their music with them. 
Thus, so long as summer lasts, we who cast no stone 
at the poetry of sport, enjoy to the full the presence ot 
our feathered visitors and their joyous melody. The 
question never enters our heads as to which country or 
which climate can boast of the best songsters, for as 
Burroughs says. "The charm of the songs of birds, like 
that of a nation's popular airs, is so little a question of 
intrinsic musical excellence, and so largely a matter of 
association and suggestion, that it is perhaps entirely 
natural^ for every people to think their own feathered 
songsters the best." When winter again sets in. when 
the silence of the forest, and the comparative absence of 
bird life cannot fail to strike one, the blackcap til.mou.se 
is sure to greet you in your woodland walk with his 
cheery note, called by the lumbermen "gee up." as it is 
supposed to give a fillip to the weary- team hauling logs 
to the brow on river bank. The Canada jay, too, seems 
to follow one's footsteps from the camp to the spot y(ju 
kill caribou, with his low, soft note, ever soothing, ever 
sweet, and moose birds, with an occasional member of 
the woodpecker tribe, with his auctioneer's hammer and 
a "here-we-are-again." are, like our best friends, ever 
with us. Mic-Mac. 
Fredericton, Marcli 25. 
The Northern Porcupines. 
A Chapter in Degeneracy. 
As ONLY a probable tenth of the population of North 
America live where porcupines are found, there is a good 
share of ignorance regarding them. Early English colo- 
nists coming to New England gave the Canadian animal 
the name of hedgehog, as the nearest approach to the 
spiny little insectivore which inhabits Great Britain. But 
the Germans and other immigrants from southern Eu- 
rope, where the great quilled porcupine, Hystrix cristata, 
is a native, quickly saw the real family resemblance in our 
species, and stachelochwein, quill pig, porcupine, etc., 
were the names by which it was most commonly known. 
The hedgehog lives almost entirely on animal food and 
belongs to the same order of quadrupeds as the mole, 
whereas the porcupine is a vegetable feeder and near kins- 
man to the ground hog and beaver in the great class of 
rodents. 
In South America and southern Mexico there are tree 
porcupines, mostly smaller and slenderer animals than the 
Canadian species'^ with long, tapering, prehensile tails, 
which they use in climbing as do the monkey and opos- 
s.ura. They also, have a peculiar adaptation of the fore 
feet which gives them greater grasping power upon the 
small limbs of trees, and they possess no hair or fur 
among their thick covering of long quills, as does the 
northern animal. 
The great Cuvier was the first naturalist to undertake 
the prickly problem of classifying the porcupines. To the 
Canada porcupines he gave the name Erethicon (irritable) 
and to the long- tailed, tropical forms Synetheres and 
Sfhiggnrus (strangle tailed), on account of their use of 
that member in climbing. If he had given Erethizon, a 
name signifying club-tailed, it would haA'-e fitted the case 
more exactly, for the whole tribe seem to be alike in their 
irritability, but the way Erethizon u&ts his tail is the most 
characteristic thing about him, and has given rise to the 
popular fallacy that he uses it as a catapult to discharge 
arrows against the enemy. 
Besides, anatomical differences, however, there is an 
insuperable geographic and climatic barrier separating 
the monkey-tailed and club-tailed porcupines. Somewhere 
in the past few thousands or tens of thousands of years 
our big, lumbering Canada porcupine got separated from 
[April i?, T'^i';--. 
the ancestral stock in the tropics, so that there is u.'>^ ■ 
stretch of country from one to two thousand miles wide, 
and reaching from ocean to ocean, which is devoid of 
porcupines, its climate too cold for one and too hot for 
the other. 
As I have just hinted, the Canada porcupines are con- 
fined to a cold climate. Their habitat reaches from the 
northern limit of trees in Alaska and the Hudson Bay re- 
gions down the mountain systems to Virginia and Colo- 
rado, but they are not found in the lowlands nearly so 
far south. In this respect they are unique, forming a dis- 
tinct and isolated climatic group which has no representa- 
tiA^e in the old world, and are at once separable from all 
the others in the world by their possession of a true 
hairy covering, which grows thickly among and overtops 
the spinous coat in the winter season. 
There seems little doubt that porcupines originated 
in the tropics, and with one exception they yet remain 
in comparatively warm climates. It is interesting to spec- 
ulate a little how the cold-weather porcupine, so dift'eri'nt 
from its nimbler, spinier, prehensile-tailed kinsmen of ihe 
South, should have been banished far from ancestral do* 
main and so eft'ectually kept in exile. Geology essays to 
bridge the gap and account for these conditions in this 
wise. The Alleghenies and Rocky Mountain systems in 
preglacial times formed a passageway from the then cooler 
tj-opics to the warm north polar regions. Along this 
highway to undiscovered lands the ten-thousand year mi- 
gration of tropical species crept and swarmed and colon- 
ized, transforming and transformed as the climate grad- 
ually passed from warm to col 1 again and the unstable 
land and sea rose and fell. Cut off at last by the trans- 
continental sea, the animal forms composing the retreat- 
ing tide of life were given two alternatives, either to ac- 
commodate themselves to the changing conditions and 
"grow up with the country" or to die in the attempt. 
Among the very tew tropical animals which succeeded m 
passing this ordeal the Canada porcupine is entitled to our 
respect and, in spite of his ungainliness, our admiration. 
It seems a plain case of pluck. In the process of acclima- 
tion his tail, originally long, pliable and naked, was short- 
ened one-half, at the same time growing twice as thick 
and strong and clothed with a dense mass of stiff bristles 
and spines, and was transformed from a delicate climbing 
instrument to an all-round prop, cudgel and balancing pole. 
At the same time his legs, feet and claws grew stronger 
and more like those of a bear; his back and thighs broad- 
ened, his skin toughened and became invested with a 
thick layer of fat, while a warm coat of hair and fur 
crowded in among the shortening spines and wholly iri- 
vested the unprotected under parts of his body. This is 
the scientific explanation of Eretkison as we find him 16- 
day. 
The old world porcupines have a much more formidable 
set of spines than Erethizon, and so, in fact, have those of 
tropical .America. The European Hystrix has a vc-y 
handy bobtail. It can make off with fair speed to a place 
of safety. It also has great burrowing powers and does 
not trust to trees for shelter, making for itself a refuge in 
the soil, where it fortifies itself, rarely venturing abroa/1 
till night. The Canada porcupine has not such a short 
tail zs Hystrix, nor such a long one as Synetheres. It is. 
able to do both climbing and burrowing on occasion, but 
it can do neither Avell, and has to resort to a bayonet 
charge to save its neck. 
Among the so-called ungainly looking beasts which 
we meet in the world each seems to have its native ele- 
ment where it appears to advantage and its movements 
become graceful. The ponderous walrus is transformed 
by its plunge from the rocks into the sea. The sloth, ;?o 
helpless upon the ground, rivals the monkey in its ability 
to traverse the branches of trees. The mole, painfully 
groping over the hardened surface of the ground, trav- 
erses the depths of the soil with a celerity trtfly astonish- 
ing. To this rule of special adaptation to a certain en- 
vironment the Canada porcupine seems to be the great 
exception. Under any and all circumstances he is clumsy. 
Ungainliness with him seems to be a virtue. He can 
walk, even to galloping a bit in a painful, impotent en- 
deavor to escape insults; but it is merely an effort to 
turn tail against his pursuer, and, this accomplished, he is 
content to hunch up and fall arottnd and over himself and 
sigh and moan like a very Falstaft' because he can get no 
farther. A northern porcupine never seems to have any 
faith in his outdoor surroundings. Catch one up a tree 
and ten to one he begins to back down, right into youf . 
arms, if you dare to receive him in that fashion. _ Atid 
what a ba'ckdown it is! Tail trashing from side to side as 
if it would cast its owner loose; long claws deeply scratc;;!- 
ing the tree trunk; snorts and pauses and quill raisings 
as one foot deviously follows the other, and as a grand 
finale a tumble of two or three feet to the ground, where 
he flounders about like a great ball of quills. 
If you catch one on the ground and his den among the 
rocks be not near he is sure to reverse proceedings and 
make for a tree, perhaps the very one he seemed so 
anxious to forsake when you chanced to find him in it. 
Cut him off and most likely he will put his head down 
and, quills erect, charge for that special tree with fixed 
bayonets. It takes a sharp whack on the nose to tu<-ii 
him under such conditions. The groan which follows, 
such a rebuff is pitiful in its human-like tone of helpless- 
ness. - 
Despite these apparently fatal defects in its make-up, the 
Canada porcupine is not becoming exterminated. Its coat 
of mail is a most effective protection in 99 out of 100 
cases of assault and battery upon it. Mr. E. P, Bickneil, 
speaking of the stupid audacil^^ of the porcupines 
Slide Mountain in the Catskills. thinks that the destruction 
of such animals as used to prey upon them will result in 
their greater abundance, regardless of the wanton kilUng 
by human beings. .-Vlong the southern border 01 its hab- 
itat in the East, in the mountains of southern Pennsyl- 
vania, the destruction of its food supply by deforestations 
has made the porcupine very rare south of the east and 
west branches of the Susquehanna River. Its abundau'-e 
in other parts of the State, more suited to it cHmatically. 
has not seriously lessened in spite of axe and fire, nor in 
proportion to the decrease in other forms of animal life 
in those regions. The panther, wolverine, wolf and fisher 
are known to kill and eat porcupines, but as these are now 
practically exterminated in the northern .Allegheny Moun- 
tains, its only feral enemy is the wildcat, which frequently 
makes a meal of it in severe weather. Foxes have been. 
