Al*feit 22, 1899.1 
Witness --great good fortune by which Mr. Horace 
Kephar-t-; -of-St; Louis, made me a gift of that very dear 
old book. Mr. Howe's "The Great West." which dates 
back to 1S55. Yet this old treasure of "Coahoma's" is 
still' older. The Pike narratives, of course, date 1805 and 
t8g6, and this worn old copy seems to have been printed 
not much later than that date. It is soiled, and stainei. 
and torn, and bruised, but its good leather backs holds 
manv a good hour's reading. Sturdy, devout, expansion- 
ist Zebulon Pike, what a good time he did have in the 
days when Louisiana ran all the way to the British line 
on the North, and nobody knew how far West! Per- 
haps some day I may find something curious in this old 
book for Chicago and the West. 
And this does not end the chapter of good neighbsrs 
who send in things which I need and things which I love. 
I don't know why they do this, but they do. Thus, f 
have another letter which touches me, bearing as it does 
* upon the belongings of a good sportsman who has closed 
his chapter of sport and put aside his gun and rod for- 
ever. I don't know that I ought to print such a letter, 
but these things all seern to me to belong to the family. 
It is from Mr. Wm. Cuppage, of Newkirk, Okla., and 
reads: 
"I used to be very fond of fishing, but have not done 
any since '70. I have some flies which belonged to my 
brother. Col. C. who used some of them in India, Nor- 
way and Great Britain. He died in '72, and I have had 
them ever since. It is not likely I shall _use them soon, 
and if you could use them I would mail them to you. 
They will be spoiled if I keep them much longer, and I 
would like some one have them that would appreciate 
them." 
I hardly need say that I wrote Mr. Cuppage that I 
should always keep safe these things which his brothsr 
prized so much during his life. No doubt their former 
•owner knew Forest and Stream, and derived pleasure 
from it, and these possessions which come back to th'^ 
Forest and Stream have a certain fitness as well as n 
pathos of their own, and should be sacred. 
Personal. 
Capt. O. C. Guessaz writes from Havana, Cuba, that 
he is dead in love with Cuba, and is going to locate there 
when this cruel war is over. I don't altogether like to 
hear this, as it will rob San Antonio of one of its main 
delights for me. Captain Guessaz tells me that Cuba is 
by no means without sport, for he has found six bevies 
of quail in a half hour's tramp. He says also that the 
streams are numerous and clecr and full of fish, and all 
in all he thinks he has found the promised land. As to 
the yellow fever, he scoffs at it and says there are men in 
Havana who never heard of it, who have been living 
there for years. Guessaz is indestructible himself, and I 
imagine will never discover there is any such thing as 
sickness so long as there are such things as quail. I am 
glad to be able to add that he conies back to San An- 
tonio for the summer, and may possibly come around by 
Chicago. Tliis last is a part of the programme which he 
■bad better not omit. 
Minresota. 
■ Having been partially off the earth- for some time 1 
- -have not at hand the new Minnesota game law, which I 
• "take it is now passed. Last week the Minnesota Senate 
passed an amendment abolishing spring shooting; and 
■ isked the House to concur in this act. A section was 
- passed- compelling all non-resident big game hunters to 
-pay a $25 license, residents to pay a 25 cents license fee. 
Brook trout were forbidden to be sold till 1902. Spear- 
ing with artificial light was prohibited. I take it we may 
depend on these features going through all right,- and 
m.ay congratulate Minnesota as being the one State to 
come close to living up to the interstate wardens' con- 
vention, whose bill has been often referred to in this 
paper. There. is progress in Minnesota, though in Illinois 
we can write a whole book on Looking Backward. 
Opening Day. 
To-day is opening day of trout in Wisconsin, and as 
we have'had a week of beautiful warm weather, it is more 
than likely that on a few of the earlier streams, such as 
the White River, and other streams near Princeton, to 
say nothing of waters lower down in the State, there have 
been some trout taken. The best of the sport on trout 
in that State, however, will come a little later, and 30 
days later will be far better for the fly. Bait fishmg, and 
that for dull fish and in uncleared waters, is the history 
of most first weeks in this section. 
Snipe. 
The snipe are in. Frank Bissel a week ago reported 
a good number of snipe at Water Valley, Ind., where !;e 
was shooting ducks. Yesterday a bag of twenty-one 
snipe was made on the Skoie marsh, north of Chicago. 
The past five days have been exactly right, and I highly 
recommend anyone caring for snipe shooting to have 
himself ready for this coming week. The best know-i- 
Kankakee points should be productive. 
Singing Mouse No. 13. 
Mr. Harry S, Loftie, of Syracuse, N. Y., writes me 
about a singing mouse which he has captured, and I give 
this as Singing Mouse No. 13 in the Forest and Stream 
series. He says: 
"I have in my possession a singing mouse, or, in fact, about as 
near as yon can come to it. It is not any different in appearance 
irom the ordinary mouse, but his voice is where the mystery is. 
Before I cau!?ht him we were trying hard to discover where the 
noise came from, as at times it resembled a canary bird exactly. 
A great many notes sounded exactly like one, only not very 
loud. It could be heard at a distance of 100ft very plain. But 
since I have had him in a cage he does not sing any in the 
daytime, but some nights he -will sing and chirp for hours at h 
time. No one has ever heard anything like it. I wish you would 
kindly give me a brief history of the singing mouse, and I -U'ill 
be much obliged to you for your kindness." 
I cafmot give Mr. Loftie very much of a history of the 
animal known as the singing mouse, except to say that 
it is well accepted by scientists, though no one seems to have 
discovered what it is that causes it to sing or enables it 
to sing. I have heard it' suggested that the singing note 
is only uttered by mice that are diseased, but this I take 
to be a merely fanciful and unsupported assertion. I dis- 
covered a singin.g ii-ioose.— or rather two of them— before 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
I had ever read or heard of any such thing being known. 
It was at first rather hard to believe one's ears — or rather 
his eyes and ears together — for it does not seem natural 
to hear a mouse sing. Yet once in a while a mouse does 
sing, and very sweetly and thrill ingly, too, as Mr. Lofti^i 
has by himself also discovered. I beseech him to take 
care of the little creature, and hope it may live long an-] 
prosper. I never owned a singing mouse myself, as both 
those I heard were not captive. I imagine there are few- 
persons who can claim such live stock. The few speci- 
mens of singing mice of which I have heard in captivity 
did not live very long. I hope Mr. Loftie may have bet - 
ter luck with his. E. Hough. 
1200 BovcE Building, Chicago. 
Concerning an Epithet/' 
"How absolute he is! we must 
Speak by the card, or equivocation will 
Undo us." —Hamlet, Act V., Scene 1. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Your Philadelphia contributor, Mr, Childress, seems 
anxious to continue a controversy that has already taken 
up far too much of valuable space in the columns of your, 
paper, but as he insists upon holding me strictly to the 
letter of my remarks and a.sks certain questions relative 
to them, in order to place myself right before your read- 
ers, I will, with your permission, answer theni; 
The gentleman charges me with having in a prior arti- 
cle made an argument, thanks! I attempted none; life is 
too short for that sort of thing; I merely made a few 
statements of individual opinion. I would much rather 
run a foot-race any day than get into an argument and 
am no sprinter at that. But to the questions. Ques. 
"Would Mr. S." — meaning me — "if clothed with full 
authority, kill a man for taking more than his share of 
game in a day?" Ans. Not on your life; probably 
wouldn't say a word about it to him either, if he hap- 
pened to be large and appeared to be vigorous. Our 
friend must not imagine that when a reader of Forest 
AND Stream tells him that his trigger finger itched with 
righteous indignation, or something like that, that he is 
"intent on murder bent," the language is figurative only. 
The great family of readers of that paper are too well 
bred to even mistake a man for game and kill him that 
way, they always have in mind the maxim "when you 
shoot be sure you know what you are shooting at." But 
this is digression; let us get back to our sheep. Ques. 
"Would he" — meaning me again— "for the same offense 
.send a man to the penitentiary for life?" Ans. No; 
hardly for life; about 30 days for first offense, with lib=- 
eral increase for subsequent ofifenses; sentence to be sus- 
pended upon promise to reform. There; that covers 
I believe the questions propounded by Mr. C, let me ask 
him a couple. Mr. C. speaks of ducks as being preserved 
game and tells us that a certain shooters' club had certaiu 
property rights in him, the duck. When, I ask, did the 
duck cease to be a migratory bird and become so per- 
manent a resident of any place as would warrant any 
shooters" club claiming any property right in him, except 
when dead and reduced to possession? If it is not a half- 
ivay sort of robbery to take more than one's share of mi- 
gratory game, what is it? The immoderate killing of even 
preserved game of any kind is usually, an indication of 
brutal instincts (see some of the criticism on the inordin- 
ate slaughter of preserved game by our friends on the 
other side of the pond, in back numbers of Forest and 
Stream). Another opinion of- mine; backed by Forest 
AND Stre.am this tim.e. 
Our Quaker City friend does not believe that the pages 
of the papers devoted to field sports are "besmeared with 
the bloody records of immoderate slaughter of gam_e.'' It 
is very evident that the gentleman only reads Forest and 
Stream — quite com_mendable— which paper, as stated by 
m-e in the article to which he takes exception, very rarely 
offends in the killing line, but let him scan the columns 
of some of the so-called sportsman's magazines and tell 
us what he finds there. True; a large percentage of 
what he will find there is exaggeration, but not ali of it; 
I only wish it was all exaggeration. 
In his last communication he says, "the unwritten law 
of common honesty." "There is no such law." I guess 
Mr. C. is right. I wrote, or at least, intended to write it, 
"common decency;" the man who set it up made it 
"common honesty," he should not be condemned,, my 
chirography is ver}- unlike copper plate. There is, however, 
such a law as "the great unwritten law of common de- 
cency," we have had it here for an age and it ought to 
have reached Philadelphia by this time. Unwritten laws 
are not always found in tlie statute books. Hope Mr. C. 
will not take this last remark in too literal a sense and call 
me down. 
All of our friend's arguments relative to property 
rights in game has been discussed, ad nauseam, on the 
pages of nearly every one of the sportsman's papers and 
magazines, for the past 20 years; discussed in the same 
manner and in almost the identical language used by him; 
it is. therefore, not new, neither has it the slightest bear- 
ing on the question of immoderate game killing; Because 
a man happens to own a small share in a piece of prop- 
erty it is no warrant for his taking the whole of it by any 
means. The game is the property of the people and he who 
takes more than a fair share of it does that which I believe 
at least 80 per cent, of our sportsmen concede to be wrong, 
intensely wrong, and he is a mighty dull man who in this 
day of enlightenment does not know that milimited 
slaughter of game is wrong. To my mind the only ques- 
tion before the house is how to right the wrong. Forest 
AND Stream suggests one way. others have suggested 
another, the doctors disagree; wdio shall decide? All the 
raps I have received in this controversy came about from 
my having offered my individual opinion of the "immod- 
erate killer," an- item in Forest and Stream: pertaining 
thereto, and I now ask that if my position in the matter 
is not entirely clear, to say that I have the same liking 
for the wilful, persistent, gaine-hog that I have for a 
fellow who would strangle an infant, or poison a well. 
As an offset to the adverse criticism on my position, 
noted by Mr. Childress, I wish to add that during the 
past 10 days I have received at least a dozen letters of 
commendation and endorsement, three of which were 
from gentlemeri connected with the Museum of Natural 
History and the New York Zoologicaal Park and had I 
permission would send them to you for publication if you 
were so disposed. For myself, however, I promise that 
you will hear no more from me on this subject, even if 
called a cosine, or even that awful name "game fanatic," 
the antithesis I presume of "game-hog." M, Schenck. 
i,TRov, April 15. 
Litchfield Park. 
I received sotne time ago a letter from you asking about 
"Litchfield Park" for your usual report on game parks. 
You have in former numbers pretty well described the 
park. My elk are breeding and doing well. I have lost 
quite a number from various causes, but the remainder 
are looking splendidly. 
I have a herd now of nearly 20 moose, all of wliich 
came from outside of the United States, some from Can- 
ada, some from Manitoba. They are doing well and will 
probably breed next year. 
A bunch of fallow deer were put in over a year ago. I 
should judge that nearly half of them are dead, as we 
only see that percentage around. These animals require 
a little feeding in the winter. 
Have not been able to obtain beaver as yet. 
Built ten miles of first-class carriage drives last year. 
Edward H. Litchfield. 
Vermont Deer in the Sugar Bush. 
East Dorset, Vt.. April 10. — The deep snow and 
crust on the mountain have driven a great many of the 
deer down into the valley during the past tw-o or three 
weeks and they are seen nearly every day within a few 
rods of this village. Another thing I noticed a day or two 
ago is that they are drinking sap from buckets in the 
woods and it may be that in a measure which is keeping 
them in the valley. I saw one licking syrup off from an- 
old milk can which had been used to carry syrUp down 
from the woods a few days ago, so I conclude they are 
fond of sweets. 
More partridges (ruffed grouse) are wintering in the 
woods about here this winter than I have seen in five or 
six years, so I think, if we have good weather during 
the hatching and breeding season, we may reasonably ex- 
pect a good many birds another fall. C. W. Bartlett, , 
Pheasant Stocking. 
.-\PR0P0S of the Brief's pheasant breeding instructions, 
Mr, W. B. Mershon writes from East Saginaw, Mich. : 
"There is a good deal of interest taken by the sports^ 
men around here in this pheasant business. It is going 
to have a good effect in this way; it is going to educate 
the people to game protection and to prize our native 
birds more highly. 
"We never had more quail in Saginaw county than 
last year. How they wintered I cannot say. It was one 
continual storm during T^farch, and earlier in the winter 
we had five days when the thermometer ranged from in 
to 23 below, and even at noontime -ivas not above zer& 
Fortunately then there was no snow on the ground." 
How to Gjok a Snipe. 
L. D. C. asks: "What is the best way of dressing a 
snipe ? Also of cooking them ?" 
Pick it (but don't draw it), and broil. Or "wrap in 
bacon, skewer, and roast in a pot. This if one of the 
smaller snipe. The larger ones, pick, draw, spHt, add 
bacon and broil. - Some add onion, and there's a woman 
dowm on Cape Cod who does her snipe with garlick ; no 
matter how m.any birds her guests bring in, when ' she 
fixes them up they prove all too few for a Cape Cod gun- 
ning appetite. Some folks leave the trail in all snipe and 
woodcock. 
Weights of Foxes* 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
My own limited experience corroborates Mr. Stark's 
testimony concerning weight of foxes. It so happened 
that the smallest and the largest foxes I e\'er killed were 
shot when I had no knife with me. and I was obliged to 
carry them home to skin. I improved the chance to 
weigh them, and the small one weighed 7lbs., the large 
one i2lbs. The Canada lyjix -weighed I7lbs. 
AwAHSOqSE. 
Ontario Deer Killing in Water. 
Last week the Ontario Legislature legalized the killing 
of deer in water on the ground that it was inadvisable to 
prohibit it as long as hounding should be allowed. The 
great increase in the slaughter of deer, which is inevitable, 
may eventually result in the prohibiting of hounding. If 
so, the retrogressive action of the Legislature will be a 
good thing in the long run. — Canadian Champion, Mil- 
ton, Ont. 
Every Number will be Complete. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In re Woodcraft, you have served up a "menu" that oiijfht to be 
appreciated. Tlie stories by Mather, Robinson and Nessmuk 
ougiit to be enough to make 'emi bite; I hope you make each 
number complete. Frank A. Bates. 
[Yes. everv number of I'/oodcraft will be complete. There will 
be no "continued in our next." But certain papers in one num- 
ber may be supplemented by some others in a later issue. Thus, 
Philip Gilbert Hamerton's chapter on "Dogs" will have 3s a 
complement in some future number Grant Allen's "The Dog's 
Universe." A list of the contents of the April number is given in 
our advertising pages.] 
Mollie's Easter Hat 
I've got to kill a Jaybird— a robin an' all that, 
For we're goin' to economize on Mollie's Easter hat. 
She's goin' to trim it up herself— them wuz her very words — 
An' so, I've took the contract fer to bring her in the birdsl 
Now, thar's a woman sensible— don't put on any frillsl 
An' never tries to break a man with millinery bills-j 
What does she want with feathers in the shiny shops in towti. 
When I kia load my riiie up an' bring the feathers down! 
. — F. L, S. in Atlanta Constitution. 
