May tc), 1906,1 
reported, for one vessel, 84 per cent, of femajes. In 1894 
eighteen American vessels had a percentage of 73 fe- 
males, Avhile in i8g6 thirteen vessels showed 75 per cent, 
females. 
If it could be so arranged that only males were taken 
by the pelagic sealers the destruction which"' they work 
would not be important; they could not injure the seal 
herds. There would always be so great a preponderance 
of male seal Hfe that the United State could fill its quota 
and the herd could be kept intact. Such discrimination 
is of course impossible. 
It is not only the loss of the females killed in pelagic 
sealing that works injury to the herd, but loss of their un- 
born young, or of their new-born young, which, until 
December, are dependent for life on their mothers' milk. 
Soon after the pup is born its mother begins to go to 
sea for food, and makes journeys to the fishing grounds 
of from sixty to eighty miles for food. Returning to the 
island, she lands near the herd of pups, and calls for her 
young one. To this call a dozen pups may respond, but 
she snaps and snarls at them, driving them away until 
her own comes, which she at once recognizes. As soon 
as it has joined her she sets out to find a resting place, 
the pup keeping close to her until she has reached a 
place that suits her, when she stops and the pup nurses. 
The pup whose mother has been killed during the late 
summer or autumn inevitably starves to death. The num- 
bers that have thus perished are very great. In 1896 
there were found in October more than 21,000 dead pups 
on the islands. This number probably does not include 
.all tkat died, for the bodies of many of the earlier dead 
had disappeared by October, and besides that, the gulls 
and foxes destroyed manjr. The total number of dead for 
1896 on both islands was 21,228, of which more than 
FORfi^T AN13 StnEAM. 
On the Map of Texas. 
Some time in the night thfe woods boss came into my 
roam and shook the dreams out of my cranium long 
enough for me to realize that it was time to get up. 
Perhaps you have been through the same experience — 
you wake up suddenly and hear a healthy voice in the 
darkness above and 3 feet to the northwest of your 
head, The voice says things and after a time you realize 
that it will be morning in a little while whether you 
get up or not; then the idea follows that it you are to 
shoot a big turkey gobbler you have no time to lose, said 
gobbler being eleven miles away at a point marked X 
on the map of Texas, and on or near a certain 160 acres 
of bottom timber at the forks of an unnamed creek that 
meanders around to suit its own convenience and the 
growth of the piny woods until it eventually reaches the 
Trinits-- River. 
The immediate connection between your present situa- 
tion and the gobbler aforesaid consists of a log train 
drawn by a very fussy, dirty and noisy locomotive with a 
highly cultivated habit of cutting across the curves in the 
serpentine piece of track that enters the banked up. mesh- 
work horizon of Tupelo gum timber visible in daylight 
from any point in the little sawmill town. 
I had to dress and catch that engine if I expected to 
shoot that gobbler, so I dreamily hunted my clothes, and 
in time got into them. 
"Hurry up," said the woods boss. 
Then the fussj^ engine bellowed a couple of times and 
I hurried. When I had curled up on the fireman's side 
of the cab, Lou, the engineer, started the old kettle and 
we rolled away into the darkness. 
ag8 
When the train had gone and peace came back and took 
the echoes out of the woods, old Jim smiled in his childish 
way and said: "Reckon weall buttah go ovah thisaway 
tuoards whah th' crick done foaks— they's shoah a heap o' 
turkeys ovah thah mostly alius, an' dreckly hits gwine tu 
be lite 'nuff foah 'em to fly down an' begin yelpin'. Weall 
doan want tu be fur away when theyall starts yelpin', foah 
th' closter we kin git tu 'em foah theyall knows hit th' 
easier hits gwine tu be tu yelp 'era up tu whah we all 
kin chute — shoah." 
"Alright, Jim; you go ahead; you know the birds and 
the country, and I'm here to stay with you." 
"Yes, suh, alright suh ; come this away then tull weall 
gits away frum th' railroad a piece an' tu whah weall 
kin yelp 'em up some." 
I followed the shuflling, yellow-faced old man, so quaint 
m his dress and speech, so childish in his ways, .so much 
a part of this great belt of timber that just to be with him 
Avas an enjoyable and new experience. 
As we journeyed that morning— a perfect morning too. 
by the way— old Jim pointed out certain spots (not marked 
X) where m time agone a bronzed and bearded gobbler 
had fallen to the crack of a certain rifle because of the 
cunning that old Jim used when he voiced a turkey call 
made from three points of cane telescoped one into the 
other until just the right tone belled out into the silent 
timber while the light grew strong. 
Ah! old Jim knows the ways of the wilds here, and in 
his quaint and childish way he loves his chosen wilderness. 
Be a gobbler ever so cunning and long of beard, old Jini 
is a shade better, and in time will stroke the bronze 
plumes if he chooses, for patience is part of old Jim's 
life, part of his creed of the woods, and his old eye, so 
kindly under the shock of hair and tattered straw 'hat 
S Photo by E. S. Curtis. 
16,000 had perished from starvation, besides which there 
were more than 1,500 starving at the time the count 
was made. The total losses to the fur seal herds of the 
North Pacific by pelagic sealing would include, besides 
the million seals actually taken and skinned, and making 
no account of the animals killed but lost, unborn pups 
destroyed with the female, 750,000; nursing pups starved, 
180,000; making a total of 1,930,000 seals known to have 
been destroyed by pelagic sealing. 
When the Harriman expedition visited the seal islands 
in 1899 the number of seals found there was estimated by 
the experts to be about 100,000. In other words, the 
herd is declining more rapidly than ever, and unless some 
steps are taken without delay its extermination is at 
hand. There is but one remedy for this decline, and that 
is the total prohibition of pelagic sealing. Even should 
this take place the increase in the herd will be slow, and 
it must be long before it can attain anything like its old 
])roportions. It should be made impossible for any one 
to possess a skin of the female seal. The sands in which 
the parasitic worm Uncinaria breeds should be removed 
from the rookery, the herd should be placed in charge 
of a naturalist, who should control it and have every au- 
thority to determine how many seals shall be killed each 
year and what measures shall be taken for the best inter- 
ests of the herd. In all these matters Great Britain has 
a direct interest, and in some of them it is in her power 
to act with the United States to bring the herd up to its 
old condition. It is probable that to-day the fur seal 
herd is only about one-tenth as large as it was when 
the United 'States took possession of these islands, and 
it rests with the two great English-speaking nations of 
the world to say whether this herd shall increase or 
whether it shall be exterminated. 
The Russian seal rookeries on the Commander Islands 
and Robben's Island have suffered, like the American 
islands, from the pelagic sealing, and their condition is 
worse than that of ours, because they have not been so 
well managed. Too great a proportion of males have 
been left, resulting in great fighting and in much injury 
to the females and great destruction of pups during the 
fighting. It is believed that not more than 5,000 seals 
are takien annually on these islands. ' G. B. G. 
J. Wesley Otis, watcher for the Adirondack Mountain 
Reserve, recently found a dead buck deer on the carry 
between the Ausable Lakes. The a^iimal evidently died of 
starvation during the heavy March snow storms. — 
Elizabethtown, N, Y., Post, 
A SEAL HAREM ON ST. PAUL ISL.'VND. 
That was a weird ride. The red maw of the fire box. 
gave the only light save the pale beams of the stars, for 
these log engine men don't seem to care for headlights, 
and there were enough noises originated by that old engine 
to furnish a first-class thunder scene for a border drama. 
Lou sat up on his seat just across the cab, but he was 
only a dim, dark shape against the lighter darkness of the 
window as we rolled away over the heaving, billowy track. 
Anon the fireman opened the fire box door and hove a 
few more pine knots into the lurid vitals of the old rattle- 
box of an engine, and the flare of red shone out into the 
cab for a moment, turning it into a nook that would have 
fitted into Hades nicelj' as far as reputed color scheme 
goes. The woods boss said never a word, for he knew 
that a man with leather lungs could not make himself 
heard against the roar of the heaving engine and its fol- 
lowing train. 
So we went until a bit of a fire gleamed red against the 
coming light of morning and Lou .shut her off, threw 
her over and gave her a bit of sand so she would cling 
of the dew-wet rails a little better. 
Lou is a railroad man and knows his business, for the 
old engine stopped beside the bit of a fire and I swung 
down out of the cab to meet my turkey hunting com- 
panion that was to be. 
"Good-bv," said the woods boss. "Hope you git yer 
gobbler." 
"'Bj'; luck to you," from Lou as he pulled the anti- 
quated throttle and Avent sizzling and roaring away into 
the darkness, leaving old Jim and I standing on a spot 
marked X on the map of Texas and surrounded by thick 
"bottom" timber and fresh woods air, to stay until the 
stars should fade and light enough to shoot should fill 
the interval between darkness and sunrise. 
You never saw Jim, did you? You should meet him. 
Tall, rawboned, clad in blue overalls, a dilapidated straw 
hat and a glad, contented smile, old Jim stood by his bit 
of a fire with the guns waiting for me, because the woods 
boss had bridged the distance between town and "the 
front" after dark last night by telephone. So it came to 
pass that old Jim got up at 2 o'clock that morning and 
silently wended his way through the black woods all the 
distance from camp at "the front" clear back to the spot 
marked X on the map of Texas, and waited there for the 
fussy engine, because the woods boss said over the 'phone 
that Comanch wanted to go turkey hunting, and old Jim 
was never known to miss a chance to hunt turkeys in all 
the twenty-eight- y^^OTat he has lived near that spot 
marked K in -TexasC sb'-w^ two "met up" there in the first 
gray of the morning. 
Copyright, 1899, by E. H. Harriman. 
rim. is as true and keen as yours, and when it glints 
down the sights there is a dead gobbler due on the spot 
marked X on the map of Texas. 
All that morning we stealthily traveled or waited beside 
a gum trunk or fallen log while old Jim called and 
clucked and filled the echo halls of the timber with the 
A'oices of departed turkeys— a veritable old siren of the 
w;oods. But no answering voices came back. Old Jim 
did his best, and the three joints of cane deftly counter- 
feited turkey language until the sun was high and only 
one more ridge lay between us and camp, then the old man 
gave it up and acknowledged that "Sumthin' bed done 
gone wrong." 
It was not Jim's fault, as we found out later, for only 
the day before there had been six or eight negroes up and 
down across the length and breadth of this patch of turkey 
ground, so what could old Jim's cunning avail? Seven 
turkeys had come- out of the woods with the black men, 
and the ones that escaped had flown far, so that there was 
in all likelihood not a single turkejf within sound of old 
Jim's "yelpin' " all through that quiet morning when we 
paced the forest ways. 
It was no fault of old Jim's that I got no gobbler at the 
spot marked X on the map of Texas. 
El Comancho. 
Pickerel Neat New York. 
Glenmere Lake, Florida, Orange County, New York, 
Fifty-five Miles from New York on Line of Erie R. R., 
Station Chester. — Pickerel fishing opened May i. Abotlt 
twenty boats were fishing, and catches were made by 
trolling and casting. The best catches were sixty-three, 
casting with No. 4^4 silver skimmer spoon, feathered, and 
104 trolling with No. 3 silver and brass skimmer spoons, 
single hook and piece of pickerel belly on hook as bait. 
Fish ran from ^ to about 4^^ pounds. Probably 15 per 
cent, ran over 2 pounds. The fishing will improve as the 
weather warms up, and will be exceptionally good all 
through this month and next. Stop at Glenmere Lake 
Hotel, on bank of the water owned by H. R. Cable. Con- 
veyance will meet one at Chester Station if requested by 
wire or letter. J. C. 
Game Laws in Brief* 
The new number of the Game Laws in Brief and Woodcraft 
Magazine contains an attractive list of contents and several boura 
o{ good, reading. 
