184 
He had no trouble in finding the house to which 
Benjamin Ferris had directed him, where he also found 
that good man still tarrying with Ruby and her little 
sister. The one neat room was presided over by a brisk 
little brunette matron, whose dark eyes and ruddy cheeks 
looked familiar to Josiah. 
*'Oh-h-h!" she cried, after a long, intent look at the 
new-come guest. "It ees M'sieu Josi. An't you rem'ber 
Matilde — Pierre some tarn? Dat is me, ^n' Mali Deck 
he w^as go wid de harmy. Ah 'ope "ee come back to me 
an' hee's boy. See la petit Deck?" and she showed with 
pride a miniature counterpart of Dick Wheeler. "An' 
you, M'sieu Josi, was dat yo' famile?" 
"No, but they're goin' tu be," said he. "Father an' 
mother both dead an' left 'em on my hands. I Avant tu 
leave 'eni wi' you till I can captur' a pa'son or a square." 
It's very proper you two should be married," said 
Benjamin. "And it's a pity you wa'n't members among 
Friends, an' so not be pestered with magistrates or hire- 
lin' priests, but marry yourselves in the presence of your 
Heavenly Father, which seems most solemn, sensible, an' 
fittin' way." 
But as this was not feasible, Josiah went out in quest of 
some one competent to perform the office, and found a 
clergyman, whom he brought forthwith to Matilde's 
house, when the ceremony was duly performed. Friend 
Ferris was greatly grieved that the strict discipline of 
his society would not permit him to be present at the 
marriage, and that he was obliged to stand out of doors 
during the ceremony; but he would peep in at the window. 
So after this brief and unique courtship, Josiah Hill 
became, against his will, a married man; yet he never 
regretted it. When, many years later, he sat by her 
death bed in their Danvis home, he took her wrinkled 
hand in his own, and with unwonted tenderness he said: 
"I hated the idee o' bein' merried. Ruby; but if I'd 
hunted the wide world over, I couldn't ha' faound a bet- 
ter womern 'an I got, for there hain't one in it faithfuller 
ner truer 'n what you've be'n." 
And she answered, with love lighting her dimmed 
eyes: "You've alius be'n a good man tu me, father." 
Andrew Downs, F. R. S., Zoologist. 
By CHARLES HALLOCK. 
The fairly good portrait of Andrew Downs which is 
presented with the accompanying sketch, was made when 
he was in his seventy-ninth year, at which advanced age 
he was engaged in the construction of a museum annex 
for accumulated stuffed specimens and a new aviary for 
small living birds. Nevertheless, he was already feeling 
the weight and disabilities of added years, for he writes, 
Dec. 9, 1889, quite pathetically: "I don't suppose I can 
hold on much longer. I am not as young as I once was. 
This is a world of great beauty, and of very great distress. 
Life is too short to accomplish much in, and I will say 
with the poet, 
" 'If so soon we are done for, 
I wonder what we were begtui fori" " 
Three years after this he passed away, on Aug. 26, 1892, 
lacking but one month of eighty-two years. He seemed 
to have overtaxed himself in installing a natural history 
exhibit for a provincial exposition the year before. He 
said then it would be his "last show." He was quite ill 
afterwards and unable to endure prolonged exertion, but 
was able to "be about" until within two days of his death. 
Like most scientists, he was a confessed agnostic. He 
writes: "I know nothing about any hereafter. My re- 
ligion is that of humanity. The woods and lakes are 
my church." He was a native of New Jersey, but his 
relations were royalists, and he moved to Halifax, N. S., 
when he was fourteen years old, and he always claimed 
that the British Government was the best in the world. 
Ornithology was his eclectic study, hi the same time he 
was probably in his day the most intelligent curator and 
breeder of large American fauna known to history, for 
his charge included not only all varieties of the antlered 
tribe and bears, but many fur-bearing animals and ro- 
dents. He cultivated rare breeds of dogs, such as Scotch 
deerhounds, black Russian poodles, Pomeranians and 
Skye terriers. He tried the propagation of black foxes, 
but failed in the attempt to cross foxes with terriers. He 
exchanged with all the principal zoos of Europe and was 
collector at home or abroad with Chas. Waterton, the 
South American explorer; John J. Audubon, George A. 
Boardman, Spencer F. Baird, H. G. Torre, a Church of 
England clergyman who was tutor to Lord Faulkner's 
son; Thomas iBlackiston, a Royal Engineer of the Cri- 
mean War; Col. Chearnley and Arthur Wm. Crichton, 
who was credited with the largest private natural history 
collection in England, especially of eggs. Sir William 
Thompson, naturalist of the famous Challenger expe- 
dition, said that he never saw Downs' work surpassed. 
From first to last his grounds, comprising 100 acres, have 
received many distinguished visitors. The Prince of 
Wales, one of the Bonapartes, Lady Faulkner, Sir Rich- 
ard Grant and King Victor Emanuel's daughter were 
among his earliest patrons. For forty-five years Downs 
was widely known to men of science all over the world. 
He was a fellow or corresponding member of many nat- 
ural history societies in Europe and America. There is 
hardly a museum in either hemisphere that does not con- 
tain specimens obtained from him. He has sent up- 
ward of one hundred moose heads and scores of entire 
specimens across- the Atlantic. Many of these went to 
reigning sovereigns, of whom King Victor Emanuel 
showed himself foremost in zoological zeal. At one time 
thd latter had in his Garden of Acclimatization, at Pisa, 
Italy, no less than twenty-five live specimens of moose 
and caribou, furnished by Downs. In 1864 he made a 
European tour, receiving multiplied courtesies from the 
nobility and the scientific associations, as well as the dis- 
tinguished compliment from the Queen of England of a 
free passage across the Atlantic on one of Her Majesty's 
war vessels, on which occasion he carried with him fifty 
living specimens, two cases of stuffed birds and a stuffed 
Wioose which he presented to the London zoo, receiving 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
;oin(; seventy specimens in exchange. And yet his mod- 
esty was always such that his name is Igardly known out- 
side of scientific circleo, xvhile his credentials lie folded 
away in a napkin. The light of the eminent naturalist's 
reputation has never shone upon that part of the be- 
nighted world which lies in shadow. Certes, there is one 
glory of the sun and another of the stars, 
time, though he bridged that interval by educating the 
Downs started about a third of a century ahead of his 
time, though he bridged that inerval by educating the 
public up to his standard. He was contemporary with 
Audubon, but he worked in a different groove. While 
Audubon killed and stuffed and painted, he preserved and 
propagated. The one perpetuated the vraisemblance. the 
other the natural life. His abilities were duly recognized 
by the Central Park Commissioners, and in 1867 Andre\V 
H, Green and Salem H. Wales were earnest in their wish 
to have him made superintendent of the animal collection, 
as the following letter attests in, part : 
Office of the Board of Commissioners of the Central Park, 
Bank of Commerce Building, 31 Nassau Street. — New York, Oct. 
9, 1867. — My Dear Sir; Will yon have the kindness to let me 
know whether you have written to Mr. Downs respecting the 
zoological matter, and what the prospect is of his coming this 
way? and much oblige yonrs very tpwy, 
AnI). H. Green. 
To Chas. Hallock, Esq. 
Prof. Baird warmly indorsed Downs for the position, 
declaring that no one was more competent. But a hitch 
occurred along the line of negotiation, and the proposal 
went off. Downs was so confident of the appointment 
that he actually broke up at Halifax and moved his fam- 
ily to New York, expecting to b^ installed forthwith. 
This movement, it appears, was premature, or "too pre- 
vious," as it were, and the bottom fell out. Rlr. W. A. 
Conklin got the appointment. Downs was obviously 
short on official etiquette. 
Downs founded his zoological garden at Halifax in 
1847. It was not until 1863 that the animal collection in 
Central Park, New York, was opened to the public. The 
Philadelphia Garden opened its gates in 1874, although 
the society was incorporated in 1850. The Cincinnati Zoo 
opened in 1875; the St. Lquis Zoo in 1877, and the Lin- 
coln Park Garden, in Chicago, in 1881. Woodward's 
Aquarium, in San Francisco, was opened, I think, in 1876, 
though this was not technically a zoological garden, and 
a small affair was started in Detroit in the latter part of 
the summer of 1883, but it failed to pay and was aban- 
doned in August, 1884. For several years a sort of 
menageris annex to the Smithsonian Institution was 
maintained at Washington, D. C, which formed the 
nucleus for the magnificent zoo established in 1890 at 
Rock Creek, now constituting by long odds the finest site 
in the world, having nearly four times the area of the 
largest garden, and comprising advantages of natural 
environment such as exist nowhere else within corporate 
limits. The final culmination in this direction, we all 
know, is the inimitable Bronx Park, in New York, estab- 
lished in 1896, of which Wm. T. Hornaday is managing 
director and presiding genius. Hornaday was formerly 
in charge of the Smithsonian animal collection, and as 
practical taxidermist there mounted the principal groups 
in the National Museum. 
My acquaintance with Downs was intimate thirty years 
ago, and it is a great pleasure to me now, at this late 
day. when the kind old naturalist has passed into Cim- 
merian darkness, as it were, to turn the searching calcium 
upon his lethean seclusion and call upon the enlightened 
world to recognize and honor his works. To this end I 
wrote recently to Director Hornaday that I had a framed 
group of sketches of suggestive parts of Downs' premises, 
taken in 1864, which I begged him to hang up in one of 
his spacious bird or animal houses at Bronx Park. All 
I expected was just a bit of wall space 30x3oin., and pho- 
tos, you know don't eat. And this is the reply he made, 
literatim: 
"Since Downs' establishment has never attained any 
historical importance, and very few Americans have ever 
heard of it, I hardly think it wortli while For us to accept 
th"e pictures and try to exhibit them." 
Did the astute director imagine that I wished to use 
these photos as an advertising card for a Nova Scotia 
syndicate? Downs' methods of caring for his moose, 
beaver, seals, hawks, caribou, pheasants, ducks and what 
not were unique and on common sense lines. Most of 
these were not caged closely, but were placed in environ- 
ment as nearly as possible to natural habitat, and the illus- 
trations which I offered will instruct more, as object les- 
sons, than a column of written description, which I could 
give you on request. I am sorry that Downs is too ob- 
scure to engage that attention at Bronx Park which I 
would bespeak for him; but men of eminence have differ- 
ent ideas. A good deal depends upon the structure of the 
eye and the standard of estimation. To a man up in a 
balloon the whole earth looks flat. 
Poison Oak ot Ivy. 
Carthage, O— Editor Forest and Stream: In Henry 
Talbott's article in a recent number of "our paper," allu- 
sion is made of a case of poisoning by that frequenter of 
good camp sites, and I am moved to give to the readers 
of Forest and Stream a simple and efficacious remedy 
which is almost always to be found in any vicinity where 
poison oak abounds. 
An old and esteemed friend, as well as genial hunting 
and fishing comrade, who is now in the seventies, is 
still, and has been since graduating in early life, a prac- 
ticing physician of note, following the profession of his 
father, told me years ago that his father learned from 
an old Indian that a plant commonly known as the "ragged 
milk weed," cut fres'h during camping time, or cut when 
in the milk and dried, was an infallible and quick remedy. 
It is cut up in small pieces and steeped in a little water 
and the decoction used to bathe the affected parts, A few 
aonlications effect a cure, and the itching is at, once 
relieved. 
Being myself an "immune," I never had occasion to use 
it except upon others. On two occasions camping friends 
were poisoned, and I at once instituted a hunt for the 
serrated leafed antidote (whose botanical name I do 
not know), and having found it, I prepared it in a dis- 
carded fruit can, and as soon as cool enough had the 
parties use it, and the result was simply astonishing. By 
this mail I send you a stalk of the herb, cut in full milk, 
and before the top had bf anched into several outshc , ■ 
for blossoming. Perhaps you can give its botanical nan- . 
E. S. Whitaker 
fWe are unable to identify the plant from the specimen 
sent. Will our correspondent kindly send us a carefully 
pressed leaf, and if possible the flower.] 
Mr. Ernest Seton Thompson recommends the brook 
balsam, jewel weed, or spotted touch-me-not (Impaticns 
fulva of botanists). The flowers are orange spotted with 
reddish brown. Its seed vessels explode when touched, 
hence its name. It is abundant along brook sides in the 
summer, and its succulent stems and leaves, when crushed 
and applied as a poultice to the poisoned spots, allay and 
finally cure the malad3^ 
Wolf Puppies at Rest, 
The beautiful photograph of the litter of wolf puppies 
at rest we owe to the kindness of Mr. Arthur Erwin 
Brown, superintendent of the Philadelphia Zoological 
Society. The animals are young gray wolves, bred in 
that society's gardens April 2, 1S99, and the picture was 
taken by assistant superintendent R. D. Carson on J\'Iay 
27, the pups being then fift3r-five days old. When the 
general difficulties of taking such a picture are consid- 
ered, and also the inherent restlessness which abides in 
WOTjP puppies tfS TBCe- PHitADELtHIA ZOO. 
young wolves, the picture result which we publish will 
appear a triumph of photographic art; The wolves are 
resting at the mouth of their den in the gardens, but 
for all that the picture shows they might be sleeping on 
the walls of some rocky cafion of the far-distant mountain^ 
of the West. 
The Song: of the Wood Thfush* 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Some time ago there appeared in Forest and Stream 
an article that made the claim that birds and other animals 
■ do not educate their young. I have mislaid the paper, 
but if my memory is correct the writer claimed that 
young animals finding themselves endowed with certain 
powers exercise such powers without parental assistance. 
To contradict this claim I desire to caU to the atten- 
tion of all Forest and Stream readers the wood thrush's 
singing school, established solely for the purpose of 
teaching young thrushes how to sing. I hope every one 
who has the opportunity will go into the wods and as- 
certain if my version is the true one. 
Find a family of wood thrushes and carefully note what 
takes place. The old male thrush will sing the sweet 
song in loud, clear, flute-like notes once, and then stop 
tn listen while the young birds try to imitate the song. 
Some will utter one note, some two. Some will utter a 
hoarse note, others a sharp note. After a while they 
seem to forget their lesson and drop out one hj one. 
When all are silent the old thrush tunes up again, and 
the young thrushes repeat their efforts, and so it goes on 
for hours. 
The young birds do not acquire the full song the first 
year; so the lessons are repeated the following spring, _ 
I take many visitors into the woods to enjoy the first 
thrushes' singing school, and all are convinced that the 
song of the wood thrush is a matter of education pure 
and simple. 
Try, it, friends, and report results in Forest and 
Stream. Hermit. 
How Underbfush Occttfs in Forests. 
It is remarkable to relate that the tangled woods of 
Maine were once so free from underbrush that Mr. 
Lincoln, the lord proprietor and patentee of Nos. I and 
2, says that he could ride in 1786 and for fifteen years 
afterward through them on horseback all over this region, 
which is included in Washington county. But after that 
year the hackmatack trees first, then the hemiock, and 
next the spruces, were attacked by an insect which cut 
down the trees. In a few years the ground was strewn 
with the fallen trunks, and the woods became impassable," 
Moose were astonishingly numerous then, but the In- 
dians nearly exterminated them through jealousy of the 
intruding white settlers. One single family, it is stated, 
killed over 400 in one winter. Their hides and tallow 
only were utilized. Nevertheless moose are as abundant 
to-day as they were then. Probably no species of animal 
propagates niore abundantly than moose do when amply 
protected. Charles Hallock. 
Dennysville, Me, 
Mother Love of the Whale. 
In connection with the reference, in his story on another 
page, to the pursuit of the cow whales. Tarpon says : The 
mother love of the parent is taken advantage of by_ the 
whalemen. She will never leave her young while it is 
alive, and will not even make a violent movement for 
fear of hurting her calf. The harpooner will try to fasten 
to the calf without killing it ; this once accomplished, the 
cow can be dealt with at leisure. 
