6 
A Nightingale's Outing in Brooklyn 
Streets^ (Sequel)* 
It was our privilege to watch Philomela's conduct out 
of doors for only a few more days. Taken generally, the 
even tenor of her way continued to run very nearly as al- 
ready described. But her traits and demeanor as ex- 
hibited by her in detail afiforded to us a subject matter 
for observation of increasing interest. Apparently she 
had planned for herself a mode of living suited to her 
present environments, and had settled down to carry it 
out in practice. That she had thus far maintained herself 
under such unfavorable conditions was a surprise to us. 
She certainly had thus far succeeded in her effort to make 
the best of the situation. 
The little stretch of land, 80 feet long by 20 feet wide, 
comprising three courtyards, constituted the territory 
of our princess, and not an inch beyond its boundary 
lines Avas she ever observed to go, though she was often 
seen, when at either end of her domain, to rest exactly 
on the boundary line. 
Between our premises and those of our next door 
neighbor to the right an iron railing stood on the north- 
erly line of this strip; a viburnum bush grew near enough 
to the southerly end for some of its sprays to overhang 
the iron railing standing on the southerly bomidary line. 
All this explains how we know. When she was observed 
to be only casuallj'- flitting about within the space de- 
icribed, she was in the habit of alighting on any spot 
she found convenient as a resting place; but when she was 
making her longest flights, which in spells she seemed to 
take delight in doing, these flights were taken back and 
forth from the viburnum at the southerly end of the 
stretch to the iron railing on the northerly end, near to 
which in the twilight we used to sit. In the morning and 
throughout the day, and until the sun sank very low, her 
searching for food was strictly confined to the limits of 
our own coui-tyard; but in the afterglow and in the twi- 
light she extended the lines of the area in which she 
hunted in front to a line in the street 2 or 3 feet be- 
yond the curbstone, at which stands the maple from 
which drops to the ground most of her prey. 
Her hunting and feeding were never done on 
the branches of the trees or stumps, but always on the 
ground. Occasionally, however, she made a spring up- 
ward of 2 or 3 feet only, and picked while on the jump 
a caterpillar from a post, tree trunk or other object and 
then afterward ate it on the ground. 
Since the first day of her outing, when, as we have 
mentioned she flitted from our third-story window to the 
branch of the maple in front, next from that to the mul- 
berry, we have not seen her alight in any tree nor rest 
at any point at a height of more than 7 feet above the 
ground. 
The tussock moth caterpillars had begun to weave their 
eocoons some little time before the first day of her out- 
ing, and consequently day by day their numbers dimin- 
ished quite rapidly. And in as much as was their decrease 
in numbers, so also did her activity and effort increase 
the more in her search for them. 
Then as her prey became quite scarce — which was very 
soon — she began to look first in wistfulness and next 
with eagerness for the viands we offered to her of morn- 
ings. She now partook of them with such avidity as to 
show that she was in quite good appetite. 
Among the number of her feline foes, that with more 
or less frequency prowled through her territory, there 
were three that seemed to have marked her down as a 
prize for capture, particularly precious. These enemies 
were never observed to hunt in company, but any one of 
them in the absence of the others would lie in wait for 
or stalk her whenever chance offered. So great indeed 
was the persecution she suffered from this source that it 
was painful to us, and most pitiful, too, to witness it, we 
were so helpless to prevent. It interfered very much, of 
course, with her habits of feeding. In the morning, when 
we brought out her food, we had to stand on guard 
nearby until she had partaken of a good substantial 
breakfast. 
It was singularly curious, however, to observe with 
what unvarying dignity of manner and placidity of ex- 
pression she was possessed when in the presence of her 
enemies. Often, as she rested on a spray, when one of 
them came prowling within sight and near, and she was 
hardly, as it seemed to us, above his reach, she betrayed 
not the slightese emotion, nor even showed signs of con- 
sciousness of his presence. It may be because she had 
knowledge that she was safe from an upward spring 
from one of these ground prowlers. 
In two instances that we witnessed one of these 
marauders approached and passed under a projecting 
spray of a loose shrub of scant branches and foliage on 
which the nightingale sat conspicuously in sight not more 
than 4 feet above her enemy's back, and neither of these 
creatures — at such deadly enmity — showed the slightest 
sign of consciousness of the presence of the other. But 
then also at other times as well, when she was busily 
feeding on the ground she showed no sign or knowledge 
of approaching danger from afar until it became so peril- 
ously hear as to make the human onlooker tremble, and 
then, apparently with the greatest unconcern, as if it were 
her merest whim to do thus, she would flit away to alight 
at a safer distance. 
In quite a number of instances some one or more of 
these foes of hers came within range of the watcher's rifle, 
and although it might be sighted upon the enemy he did 
not dare to pull the trigger for fear of a glancing bullet 
and consequent danger to some neighbor, passerby or 
other person that might chance to be within range. His 
vigils, however, as the shades of evening fell were still 
kept, and the hope that had sprouted in his breast, though 
not thrifty, had as yet not withered. And as our little 
heroine had thus far — wonderful as it seemed to us — 
escaped the many perils that encompassed her, we had 
hope-^ — yes, even expectation — that she would in two or 
three days more return of her own free will to the shelter 
of her home — and ours. 
The evenitigs wei'E gfowitig chilly 5 £ot' hef supply of 
food she was now depending mainly— almost wholly, in 
fact — upon the viands furnished each morning. 
Verily, verily, it came to pass, as had been foreshad- 
owed by the prophet, that the tussock moth crop was 
entirely exhausted. The search of the searcher was ex- 
tended throughout the length and breadth of the principal- 
ity, but none was found. Gaunt famine's hideous form 
ranged the domain of the princess and breathed upon the 
land his blighting breath. Marauders infesting the ter- 
ritory from hour to hour waxed fiercer and fiercer still. 
And the heart of King Pandion"s loveliest daughter was 
sorely troubled, though in pride of her blood royal she 
permitted no shade of sadness to dim the luster of her 
radiant countenance. The duties o[ her ever faithftil ser- 
vitor became thrice multiplied, and the burden of them 
was heavy to bear. He lil<ewise was a descendant 
through a long line — ancient and fusty — of heroes, and 
he bore the platter valiantly in these hours of trial. The 
zeal for spoils for which his ancient line was distinguished 
still survived in him, and gratitude for royal favors in ex- 
pectancy stirred within him. In the book "L'Oiseau," 
as written by the great Gaelic historian, he had read, he 
now remembers that "blood and dreams" afforded the 
most fitting pabulum for a princess of her royal line, but 
in the bareness of the land he would ask himself, where 
was now the blood? And next, as he meditated, it came 
to his mind that some great writer had recorded that 
he had fed a princes of Philomela's kindred on "blood 
and the seed of the poppy"; but it likewise came to his 
mind that that prince did thereupon quickly languish 
and die. 
The life of that prince would have clung longer to him, 
meditated the sage servitor, if he'd had nothing given him 
but fresh air and a perch. 
And so it came to pass that he pinned not a shred of 
his faith upon that great writer, so true it is; also that 
the air that royalty doth breathe is tainted with suspicion. 
High from the wall standing upon the boundary of 
Philomela's domain hangs Virginia's vine in graceful fes- 
toons, swaying with the breeze. Its five-leafed sprays 
have already responded in crimson glory to the magic 
touch of autumn's fingers. Its fruit in deeply purpling 
clusters droops, conspicuous by contrast, among the 
leaves. These clusters of fruit, fair to look upon, hang 
tauntingly before the wistful gaze of the gentle Philo- 
mela. But the princess knows that they would be as 
apples of Sodom — noxious in her mouth— for they are 
not yet ripe. 
Rain must fall and frost must come to dye this fruit to 
a yet deeper purple before it is fitting meat for the feast 
of a king's daughter. 
An enthusiastic pen is especially prone to be unruly 
betimes, and for the nonce, regardless of time and space, 
run away with itself before it can be checked and turned 
into the straight and narrow path of the story. But nev- 
ertheless and in spite of such detours this story has pro- 
gressed to the morning of the eleventh day of our her- 
oine's outing. 
And this was of a Saturday, as it came to pass. This 
he well remembers, for he had previously agreed to a 
rendezvous on that day with a band of fierce-eyed my- 
cophagists, who had nefariously planned for an incursion 
upon outlying jungles. Well, Philomela duly appeared 
in her accustomed haunts that morning; was breakfasted 
in the usual spot by the spirea bush, and then the chron- 
icler departed to attend to other affairs. On returning 
home just before noon his eye in the sweep of its glance 
took in, as he entered the gate, first the dusky form of 
poor Philomela's most persistent enemy as he lurked be- 
neath the wygelia, and next the form, trim and graceful, 
of our heroine herself, as she rested on an uppermost 
spray of the viburnum. 
Comprehending the situation instantly, the chronicler 
quietly but quickly entered the house, and snatching up 
a rifle from its nook near the door, as he passed through 
the hall, he descended the stairs to the dining room. 
Having entered, he stepped quickly to the screened win- 
dow, in front of which the wygelia. was. Sliding the 
screen a little to one side so as to leave an open space, 
he sighted the weapon upon the lurker; he paused with 
finger upon the trigger and he did not shoot. He took 
aim again at another point of the lurker's anatomy, but 
did not pull the trigger. Again he shifted his aim to 
another point, the left, say. but he did not pull, nor dared 
not, though he fiercely desired to do so. The foe lay too 
flat to the brow of the terrace to make it safe to shoot, be- 
cause of risk to some person or other in an opposite 
basement window, from any point of sight he could get 
on that cat. He then took a seat on a chair before the 
window and waited. 
There was a trio of watchers now, and the minutes 
drew together into quarter hours. The man with the 
rifle whispered "pussy, pussy," in his most enticing fal- 
setto, but it was of no avail; he imitated the faint squeak- 
ing of a mouse and gently scratched at the same time 
with a pin upon the woodwork by the side of the win- 
dow, but that black imp in fur merely turned the least 
bit of the corner of a yellow orb toward the place from 
whence the sound issued. This feline seemed possessed 
of the philosophy of the stoics, except that there was 
surely a quizzical expression in the corner of that near 
yellow eye. The quarter hours drew on to- half hours 
and the time to start for the incursionists' rendezvous 
was drawing very near. 
Suddenly there fell upon the rifleman's ear the quick 
clatter of a pair of feet upon the pavement; then there 
was a bang-bang of the gate ; next there was a glimpse of 
a russet'Shod foot as it shot under the wygelia and the 
jump of a cat to escape a kick; then there w^as a glimpse 
of a grocer's boy with a basket as he sw^ung around the 
side of the porch and down the basement steps; there was 
next a stumble and a dull sprawling thud — compounded 
of _ boy and basket — against the basement door; then 
quickly followed a loud half inarticulate shouting of "Oh! 
Golly! Gee-e!" 
It took scarcely a moment for the chronicler to conceal 
his weapon; he made no' stop for equipment, but started 
at once for the mycophagists' rendezvous, where he ar- 
rived fifteen minutes too late. 
An engagement elsewhere prevented the keeping of 
the usual.watcher's vigil that evening. The next morning 
— Philomela's second Sunday out — she failed to come for 
our gteeting.. Forebodings that some, eri! fflbhap had 
befallen hef eiltered our hearts, The day ran its course 
withSut her appearance and our heafts grew sad. Our 
eyes have never since rested upon her and we mourn 
her as lost. 
If the faithful chronicler had been romancing he might 
have penned a happier ending, and if he had been a bet- 
ter shot, then in fact there would have been two endings, 
and the last end in that case better than the first. 
It gives me pleasure to say that while I am penning 
it now, on Thanksgiving Day, the melodious strains of a 
-nightingale have been and are at this moment filling ni}' 
ears. These are the strains of our Phil, so nicknamed to 
distinguish him from Philomela, whose companion he 
was. 
This is the ninth yearly recurrence of Thanksgiving 
Day he has spent with us. His extra feasts for the holi- 
day comprise a double allowance of meal worm — for tur- 
key — and the berries of the Virginia creeper, now plucked 
ripe, from the vine that hangs upon our front wall — for 
cranberry sauce. 
His strains are expressive of health and of the happi- 
ness he feels. 
This Phil, I may further mention, was the nightingale 
that the poet naturalist of Riverby, who writes like an 
angel and talks like an archangel, heard sing on a bleak 
November morning three or four years ago. 
And it was just after our friend had failed to hear a 
nightingale's song in his quest for it, as he has told, while 
on his visit to the country of good old Gilbert White, of 
Selbourne, our friend's prototype, w-ho knew how to ob- 
serve and then write accurately of what he had seen, and 
who never therefore could have been guilty of writing 
such nonsense as to say that "blood and dreams" or blood 
and poppy seed would form a mixture fit to nourish 
nightingales. Thomas Proctor. 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
The Panther's Cry. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Over the nom de plume Juvenal a writer in your issue 
of Dec, 16 speaks of the animal known in the Eastern, 
Middle and Valley States as the panther, and beyond the 
Rockies as the mountain lion, not as a howling success, 
but a "sc!-eaming terror." I infer from his article that 
the editor also holds to the idea of "screaming and man- 
hunting panthers." 
I have been hunting in the wilds of the Indian Terri- 
tory and further west for twenty years, in the haunts 
of the cat or felids family. I am tolerably well ac- 
quainted with the great big yellow coward, and have 
heard many times his "lonesome and deceptive cry." I 
have no more respect for him than I have for his human 
counterpart, the Digger Indian. There is no question 
but he makes a noise, and that to the imagination of those 
who have been fed "upon the traditions of the past and the 
lullaby stories of childhood" his dismal cry, especially at 
night, when alone in the woods, sounds human. Sur- 
roundings sometimes change a sound as well as a view. 
In the first place, the panther, or mountain lion, as it is 
called further west, is only a larger cousin of the com- 
mon house cat. Any yellow tomcat is a miniature 
panther, even to vocal ability, which is abridged only by 
his smaller anatomy and the mellowing influences of his 
naturally ferocious nature by the domesticity of his an- 
cestry. 
Your purring pet Tabbie, if turned adrift in the wilder- 
ness to "root kittie or die," will naturally take to tlie ways 
and mode of life of his overgrown relative, the panther or 
mountain lion. Then his caterwaul, which, when he was 
prowling around at "the ghostly midnight hour" when 
living a pastoral and quiet life, produced profanity, boot- 
jack bombardments and insomnia, would cause the ice 
to form along the spinal column of the timid and belated 
hunter and convince him that the cry was like that of a 
"woman in distress." 
From my experience "distance lends enchantment to 
the view" that Juvenal and the editor hold and causes 
them to adopt the theories of those who said "the pan- 
ther screamed and attacked man." I have heard the pan- 
ther at the distance, supposably, of a mile, and when he 
was but a few yards away, and his cry is a perfect dupli- 
cate of the sound Tommie makes when he starts out 
to "make a night of it." 
It is simply a loud caterwaul, and it is the only sound 
I ever heard one make, except the mewing that is com- 
mon and often heard to emanate from the fireside pet. 
Had Juvenal and the editor been with me three weeks 
ago they would quickly agree with me that there is no 
scream in the panther's cry, when all of the cry is heard. 
I had journeyed further away from camp than I antici- 
pated I would go when I started, and when I had found 
and killed a good-sized buck I concluded that as night was 
upon me I would camp and carry my game in in day- 
light. 1 hung the carcass up, and in the ravine near it I 
built a fire, "jerked" some of the juicy meat and made 
my supper. After having satisfied my appetite, I made a 
bed of leaves and branches and prepared for a nap. While 
lying there watching the flames and thinking away up 
the mountain I heard a "scream," I knew what it was in- 
stantly, and knowing the nature and habits of the animal 
began speculating on mj' chance of securing his pelt. 
Possibly every three minutes he would do that scream, 
all the time approaching my position. As he came nearer 
the "scream" vanished, and there was the pure tomcat, 
sleep-destroying sound that every denizen of our cities 
and villages has of times heard. 
The fine treble of the caterwaul at a distance is not 
heard, only the coarser tones at the end of the "Avaul" 
when the distance is too great. As he approaches all the 
notes of his song are heard and there is not a semblance of 
the "scream" in it. This cat came up near enough for me 
to hear him crunching the leaves with his velvet-shot 
feet, but he was careful not to expose himself to view. He 
had no business to transact with me, but had come solely 
for the purpose of dining off the choice venison that his 
acute sense of smell informed him was there. 
He is a great big, cowardly brute, with all the charac- 
teristics of the human bully. Like his counterpart, the 
house cat, he will climb a leaning tree and watch all day 
for an unwary deer to pass, when he will pounce upon and 
kill it. Possibly, were a hunter to pass where he was 
