164 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
tA'uG. i8go. 
cuts off his air and poisons him as well. Twelve to 
twenty-four hours are allowed for him to die, and then he 
is squeezed. Th^y are not very common, but our tender- 
foot in the woods traveling for snake bites will average 
getting at least two or three grubs for every bite. _ Carbolic 
or mercurial ointments might be better applications than 
tobacco. 
While on the subject of pests, I will mention one in 
the vegetable kingdom which easily takes the prize over all 
competitors. The natives call it pica-pica, which means 
a double-barreled itch. It is a bush growing in the woods 
and waste places, often in patclies and thickets. It bears a 
profusion of downy pods, and it is in the down that the 
trouble resides. Each filament of that down, though fine 
as gossamer and so light as to float in the air like 
dust, is a tiny arrow, covered with barbs, which seems to 
have the property of wriggling itself into the pores of 
whatever it touches. It will work through ordinary 
clothing and reach the skin beneath, and then the trouble 
begins in earnest. Each little arrow gets its tip Into a 
pore of the skin and at once takes a grip and begins 'to 
wriggle in deeper. Scratch it and you find it possesses two 
rare qualities in perfection. The first is of adhering to 
the fingers and being transferred to infest all sympathetic 
places which are scratched. The other is that quality of 
the-more-you-scratch-the-more-you-have-to-scratch. These 
two qualities combined form a regular blue-print device 
for distributing the pica-pica to the remotest sections of 
one's cuticle in the shortest possible time. There is no 
natural selection about it ; it is blue-print pure and simple. 
Even unimaginative people grow eloquent and picturesque 
in describing the itch which pica-pica generates. Fire is 
one of their mildest comparisons. The only relief is a 
few hours of rubbing in oil. On dry days this down de- 
taches itself from the pods, and infests the breeze to the 
leeward of thfe bushes, and should one jar or shake the 
bush a cloud of it disperses like smoke in every direction. 
A gentleman told me of a tragic occurrence in connec- 
tion with this vegetable, though having its root, as all 
tragedies do, in human depravity. He was invited to 
supper and a dance at a hospitable home near an interior 
town, to meet a number of the loveliest young ladies of 
all that section. The young lady who was hostess had 
tM'o younger brothers, who were evidently degenerates. 
She had been so unfortunate as to offend these brothers 
that afternoon. What should these wretches do but 
scatter pica-pica on the ballroom floor while the guests 
were at supper! When the dancing began, naturally the 
swirling skirts of the senoritas generated ascending eddies 
about their flying feet, sucking the fatal weed upward 
from the floor, and soon filling the whole air with it. Not 
one escaped ! There was but a single dance ! What 
those poor girls endured will only be known at the last 
day, and then, it is to be hoped, we shall all know and 
actually see and applaud what is to be done to those 
boys. 
But let lis turn to more cheerful topics. The Atlantic 
Sea beach is mostly of shifting' sands, and very few shells 
are found, but many pretty and curious "sea-beans." The 
most common is the ox eye, or borrichia, which is often 
borne by the Gulf Stream as far north as the Carolinas. 
It is often carried in the pocket as a preventive of rheit- 
matism and other troubles, as the buckeye sometimes is 
in the States. A flat, black, four-lobed seed, doubtfully 
identified as an ipomea, is called contreveneno, and is said 
to cure snake bites. A sort of pear-shaped, grayish, 
polished nut, the size of a filbert, is called "hembra y 
macho" or "female and male." It is much prized as a 
charm, to be worn by children among their beads. It 
keeps off all evil eyes, and especially a sort of sunstroke 
often given to young children by the eyes of persons who 
have been working in the sun. It is doubtfully identified 
as Ccesalpina bonducelli. It is said to be called female and 
male because the seeds grow in pairs on a single stem, but 
that is not sure. 
Of native birds, I have been most interested in the 
jacana. Black-green head, shading into red-purple body, 
the wings when spread of pale gold, and when he lights 
he holds them open for a few seconds as if for you to 
admire. Slender, delicate and graceful, with long toes 
and toe nails like cambric needles, for walking over 
floating grasses. A stout golden bill, a clover leaf, cut out 
of gold leather, above his bill and lying back on his fore- 
head like a little skull cap, and sharp and elegant golden 
spurs on his elbows. He is very tame along the edge of 
the town, and is said, with his elbow spurs, to whip off 
all chickens which trespass in his vicinity. 
Another verjr interesting bird is a large oriole, which 
builds hanging nests over a yard long, as large as one's 
head. Sometimes fifty or more hang on a single isolated 
tree. The colonies seem to be polygamous, but I am not 
sure. 
Still another oriole, like our Southern mockingbird, 
makes himself most at home of all the birds in the 
country. He is always in evidence in the most con- 
spicuous place he can find, and whistling as if he owned 
the town. For a repertoire he has at least fifty sentences, 
about a third of them good English, and the others, ap- 
parently, good something, but I don't know what. I call 
him "Charlotte's bird," for I first noticed him whistling 
"Who kissed Charlotte?" Afterward I recognized m.any 
English calls such as "Come here, sweetheart," "Please 
don't deceive me," "She never will forgive you," etc., and 
there are scores which I cannot translate. I hear very 
many strange bird calls in the woods, which excite my 
curiosity, but tall trees and dense foliage make it very 
difficult to see the birds. And between my limited 
knowledge of Spanish and the limited knowledge of birds 
by the natives, I net but little information by questions. 
By the way, as we are taking so much Spanish now into our 
happy familjr, some of j^our readers may find it useful to 
know how to ask in Spanish what anything is called. 
Point at the object and say: "Come and see Emma?" 
The Spaniard will think you said in beautiful and correct 
Castilian, "Como se llama?" — how itself calls that? 
Let me ask space for one thing more. There have been 
several letters in your columns recently discussing whether 
animals have reason. The question seems to me much 
like discussing whether dawn is daylight, but I am not 
proposing to debate it. I only wish to call attention to 
the fact that the numerous instances of intelligent ani- 
mals, made famous by your correspondents, are all dogs! 
Blood is thicker than water. Please record the following 
instance of intelligence and other equally admirable 
qualities in another race, somewhat nearer to us on the 
family tree. Dogs are only mammalia. Monkeys are 
primates. 
A friend who was encamped in the woods recently wit- 
nessed the following occurrence: A troop of monkeys, 
which seemed to be a picnic party, under the charge of 
chaperons, came to cross a creek by his camp. They 
came along, traveling as usual, from tree to tree by inter- 
lacing limbs, and at the creek side soon found some vines 
which iiiade a suspension bridge. There was considerable 
skylarking going on in the procession, but the chaperons 
marshaled all across the bridge except two. These two 
had dodged behind ti-ees and palpably and deliberately got 
left on purpose, and when the rest of the picnic was 
safely out of sight they selected a nice narrow seat, where 
they sat extremely close together, apparently deep in con- 
versation and as happy as could be. After some time the 
larger one spied a fruit hanging not far below him, and 
began to reach down to try and get it. His reach proving 
too short, he took a twist with his tail around the limb 
and swung for it. But even his tail was too short, and 
the fruit still hung a foot or more out of his reach. His 
smaller comrade saw the difficulty, and solved it at once. 
She grabbed the tail firmly, loosed it from the limb, while 
at the same time her own tail took a turn around it, let 
her comrade's tail twist about her wrist, and then, all 
securely braced and anchored, she reached down until 
she had lowered him in reach of the fruit. He gathered 
it, and in a minute was back by her side, and they were 
eating the fruit together. What dog could have ever 
figured through a problem like that, beginning with getting 
left by the picnic? And what dog would have failed to 
eat the whole prize himself, only growling at his comrade 
to keep off? But blood will tell! Jack Hildigo. 
An Animated Steel Trap. 
A HOT summer day ; a party gathering apples under the 
shady trees of the old orchard; a sound of a chicken in 
distress, and the exclamation of a visitor, "A hawk!" 
But the lady of the house, with the air of one worried with 
the recurrence of an old vexation, said : "No, it's that old 
turtle again !" 
I had heard of the turtle which by his industry dis- 
tanced the hare, but to learn that the cries of the fowl in 
the distance were occasioned by its capture by a turtle 
was a revelation to ine. I ran for my rifle, for certainly 
this turtle justified the use of a gun. 
We hurried down to the spring branch at the foot of 
the orchard, and saw a chicken of "frying size" being 
dragged down into the mud by some irresistible invisible 
agency.- It was disappearing slowly, and I fired to one 
side, having detected a slight movement in that direction 
of the surface of the mud hole. 
I chanced to choose the right side, and a spot of blood 
showed on the surface of the slough, and the chicken was 
released and hobbled away. 
I got a fence rail and reached in and pried up the turtle 
and shot it through its ugly looking head. The first shot 
was through the shell. The two shots killed it in an 
hour. I had given the animal credit for more vitality, and 
also that when it closed its jaws on an object it would not 
let go until it thundered. 
The victim was a mud or water turtle about a foot over 
its shell. It had claimed several chickens as its own by 
waiting around until, unconscious of danger, the fowl 
ventured near enough to be .snapped and dragged under. I 
proposed a terrapin stew, but the suggestion not being 
well received by my hostess, the matter was laid on the 
table. Andrew Price. 
MahlI'ST^S, W. Va. 
The Rattlesnake's Venom. 
HiLLSGEovEj R. I. — Editor Forest and Stream: I nole 
in your paper of July 15 the question of Fred Skinner in 
regard to the rattlesnakes being poisonous between 
October and February. I deal quite largely in reptiles 
and, have done so for four years, and sometimes have as 
many as fifty rattlers on hand; and in my opinion, as well 
as personal experience, the rattlesnake is deadly poison if 
he gets a good snap at his victim. That is, the diamond- 
back. I find the handed and the black rattlers are not so 
quick to kill. I have put chickens in a box for a diamond- 
back to feed on, and the reptile would be vexed by the 
fluttering of the chick, whereupon the snake would strike 
it and the chicken would die quicker than it would if its 
head had been severed. But in the same cases with the 
banded and black, I have had them live for hours. We 
have twenty-seven distinct species of the rattlesnake in 
the United States, and the diamondback is the one most 
dangerous. I do not think a person could live an hour 
after being struck by this species at any season of the 
year. I have a few fangs over lin. long taken from some 
of these snakes. If Mr. Skinner would like some of them 
I will look them up and send them to him. 
W. W. BUDLONG. 
WM Pigeon in New York. 
Michael Healy, of the Bolivar (N. Y.) Gun Club, 
killed a wild pigeon in the woods on Aug. 10. 
The New York Sun says that Inspector Frank W. 
Pierce, of the State Forest Preserve Board, reports that a 
crane was shot near Moose River in the Adirondacks 
which had forty-five trout iti its stomach. 
The photographs of the Vermont deer McKinley, which 
Avere published in our issue of June 24 should have been 
credited to the camera of Dr: W. K. Draper, of New 
York. 
I DON'T SHOOT 1 
*i until you SEE yowr deer — and see that j| 
mJ> 
$1 it is a deer and iiot a man* 
^^^^ ^^^^^^J^^^^^^t^^^le^^^^^fe^? ^^^^ ^^^^^^ 
? 
Maine Bear Trappers. 
The Maine hunter stands neither in fear nor respect 
of the black bear. He knows him to be a tricky customer, 
only dangerous when cornered, something like a big, over- 
grown rat, but not half as courageous as the rat. He has 
a contempt for the bear, savored only by the knowledge 
that the animal is powerful and armed with teeth and 
claws that may work mischief under certain fortuitous 
circumstances, and also by the ever-present consciousness 
of the money value of the beast. A Maine man always 
has a warm spot in his heart for any proposition involving 
■dollars and cents. The bear is worth, when dead, $5 in 
bounty and several times that amount in the proper season 
for its robe. Consequently at the bottom the Maine 
man has a feehng not altogether unfriendly toward the 
sheep-stealing, cowardly vagabond of the woods. Get 
one of the Maine trappers to tell of his bear hunting ex- 
periences and sooner or later he will certainly come around 
to the money value of his catch and dwell on that as the 
principal feature of the story. Personal danger is touched 
upon lightly, or left out when not essential to the nar- 
rative, and sensations are never mentioned — except per- 
haps the sensation of disgust that the bear has , gotten 
some temporary advantage as a result of the narrator's 
short sightedness. Warren Wing, of Flagstaff, and John 
Cushman, of Sherman, are two typical Maine trappers, and 
both their stories hinge on the number of bears killed in 
a certain period, and the money value received for the lot. 
I shall tell them as nearly as possible, as the men told the 
stories themselves. 
"Four years ago," said Mr. Wing, "I made $120 in ten 
days' time trapping bears. I got four old bears and two 
cubs. One of the cubs was alive. On this trip I got a 
bear every other time I looked my traps over. 
"I started from home and went into my camp on Pray 
Hill in the northeast corner of the town. It was about 
the 1st of May. I went out and sot four traps and then 
went home again. In about a week's time I went back to 
look at my traps. The first trap I came to was gone. I 
hunted for it for two hours and couldn't find it. The trail 
was an old one, and it had rained since it was made, and I 
couldn't follow it good. 
"I was looking off through the woods uncertain which 
way the trail went, when I happened to see a bear's 
head cocked up looking at me. I knew well enough the 
bear was in my trap, and I walked right up to it to get a 
good shot. I saw a couple of small animals that I took to 
be rabbits run off in the bush, but I didn't pay much 
. attention to them, being so hard upon the bear. I got 
where I wanted, and knocked my bear over, and then I 
sot to to skin her. When I turned her over I see that she 
was suckling cubs, and that reminded me of the small 
animals I had seen run off, and I knew well enough then 
what they were. 
"After I took the Old lady's hide oft" I spent the best part 
of an hour looking for the cubs, but I didn't find them, and 
I had to give it up as I had the other traps to look over, 
"The next trap I visited was gone, too, but the bear had 
got into it since the rain, and left a good trail, and I 
soon found him. 
"The bear kept head on and would not give me just the 
shot I wanted, so I gave him one through the head and 
knocked him down. When I worked the gun for a new 
cartridge there was nothing there. For some reason or 
other my magazine was empty, and I could find no more 
cartridges in my pockets. About the time I found this 
out the bear rolled over and got on to his feet and stood 
there looking at me to see what I was going to do next. 
It was kind of aggravating, and I says to myself, 'Your 
hide's going back with me to Flagstaff", Mister Bear, some 
way or 'nother.' 
"'You can bet I wasn't going to lose my bear just be- 
cause I had run out of ammunition. 
"I looked around for something to kill the bear with, but 
couldn't find anything till I got clear back where the trap 
had been set, a matter of a couple of hundred yards or 
so. There I got a chunk of wood 6ft. long and sin. 
through that I'd used setting the trap. It was heavy rock 
maple, and I says to myself, 'This is good enough for a 
cartridge, and it won't play out.' 
"W^hen I got back to the bear he set there winking and 
bhnking and showing his teeth, telling me he didn't want 
me trying no more experiments on him. I crept up behind 
and swung my club, and the very first clip I drove the 
skull right in, and after that I had no more trouble taking 
off the pelt. The rifle ball had hit him in the nose and 
missed the brain, and only stunned the bear temporarily. 
"I generally figure to get a side shot on the skull be- 
tween the eye and ear. I look the bear in the eye, and 
after a while he turns his head and looks away, and 
that gives me my chance. 
"The next day I thought I'd see what I could do to get 
the cubs, so I took my boy with me and went back to 
where the old bear lay. When we got near to the carcass 
we saw two cubs going up a big spruce tree, snake 
fashion, circling round and round the tree as they went 
up. I brought my rifle up and took a quick shot 
and put a ball right through the head of one of the 
cubs, and that was the end of him. 
"Then I thought of catching the other one. I asked 
the boy if he thought he could climb the next tree to the 
big one, for that had no limbs. He said he believed he 
could skin it, and started for the tree. 
" 'Hold on,' I said; 'I want to rig you out.' 
"I went and cut a crotched pole loft. long, and fastened 
the 'crotch to his belt so he could climb with hands and 
feet, and told him to go ahead and skin up the tree. 
"He got up 30ft. or so, carrying the pole with hitn and 
then, he was on an even height with the cub in the other 
tree, and only about lOft. off. I told him to take the pole 
and put the crotch on the bear and shove it off the limb 
it was sitting on. 
"The boy gave the bear a punch and knocked him off 
the limb, but he hung on underneath. He punched again 
and the cub came back on top. 'Now,' I says, 'you give 
him a good big punch and knock him off anyway.' 
"The boy gave him a good punch and knocked him off. 
The cub made himself round like a bat-ball coming 
through the air, and he struck on his rump .ight at my 
