404 
[May 26, agOdu 
in I7S0. In the foreground are fragments of the columns 
where' the holes made by certain mollusks common to 
the Mediterranean may be plainly seen, while portions of 
the restored temple occupy the background and the middle 
of the tank. The view is particularly pleasing, heightened 
as usual by the lights, the perspective and the slowly 
circulating "fishes which swim al)out where formerly tiie 
friends of Serapis took their melancholy walks. 
I'his Aquarium is not a temporary venture. Paris has 
given a concession for nine years after igoo, and at the 
end of that period the Aquarium becomes the property of 
the city. But before that time it is the intention of the 
brothers Guillaume to arrange laboratories, hatcheries 
and provide all modern inventions for the study of the 
natural history of fishes as well as of plants and all 
marine life, thus bringing the ocean ^d the beach to 
the very door of the naturalist. 
While the wish of the fair lady who loved the seaside, 
but wanted to have it on the boulevards opposite the 
Grand Hotel, is not fully complied with, it is realized 
to an extraordinary degree. In this cool and agreeable 
retreat we maj-^ casUy imagine so much that regret and 
discomfort will pursue us in our homeward walk through 
the hot and dusty streets, from which an escape will 
have been a temporary and refreshing relief. 
Thorndike Nourse. 
Paris, April. 1900. 
The Great Middle Northwest. 
It was just forty-five years ago that I was situated on 
the south shore oi Lake Superior, then a wilderness ex- 
tending south to the niiddie of Wisconsin. The cen- 
ter ■ of this vast region was a sylvan tract, cov- 
ered by enormous forests of pine and other timber, and 
not very far from the noted 'thousand Lake region, of 
which an old trapper with whom I used to hunt and 
fish once said to me that the name was not right, for tliere 
w^s more, and he knew it; there were jusl a thousand 
and one, for he had counted them and fished and trapped 
fur on every one of them for several years, and was 
acquainted with them like a book. But his acquamtance 
must have been somewhat slender, jf he knew no more 
of them than that, for, curiously for a Yankee from 
Connecticut, the man could neither read nor write. And 
in the whirligig of events it happens that after forty-seven 
years, here i am back again quite near that wet spot of 
land, which is the head waters of the stream.-; that run 
north into Lake Superior, and south into the streams 
which feed the Mississippi. 
Where this vast tract of forest and stream, and 
lakes thrown in, was in those years, the country is now 
denuded of its timber, all of which has been cut and rafted 
down the streams into Lake Michigan or into the Mis- 
sissippi. Some of it has gone east, but all to the big 
lumber mills, which, after satiating their greedy maws for 
forty years, are now licking the bones and feeding on 
the remnants left of their prey. The fire always follows 
the lumbermen, and here there is little left but blackened, 
half-rotten logs, and the big stumps which will last for a 
half-century to come unless the farmers and, what are 
better far, the sheepmen come in and occupy these 
denuded lands in which there is a vast wealth of fertility 
untouched as yet by the plow or the hoof. Here i.s an 
almost inexhaustible range for the shepherds, just now 
on the tip top of a boom which promises to stay, for the 
sheep is but only now being duly recognized as "the most 
profitablest animal a man can have," as was said three 
centuries ago by an old writer of the name of Fitzgerald. 
And just here is the most profitablest place to brmg 
them to. The gently rolling surface is more like the Wilt- 
shire downs of old England, where all those fine breeds— 
the Downs breeds, as they have been called— were first kept 
and have since been bred by the most skillful breeders on 
the face of the earth. But I did not intend to get off 
among the sheep — my favorite animal as it is — but to 
talk of old-time fishing and hunting up in this country. 
Those thousand-and-one lakes may well make the stab- 
ject of a thousand-and-one hunting and fishing stories 
surpassing in disbelief even those amazing tales of the 
famed "Arabian Nights." For in every stream and lake 
the fish crowd in. much as they did in some place in \yhich 
your versatile— but truthful— correhpondent in this village 
of Chicago once told us of, and I think the locale of it was 
up this way. I have been up on the tip-top watershed of 
that lake region, and have taken trout on both sides of 
the watershed without changing my stand, and have taken 
trout from the waters of Lake Superior and of the head 
of me Mississippi, which were close by me within a cast 
each way. First, before I noted this, I noted the difference 
in the color of the trout— one kind was dark with bright 
yellow bellies and crimson spots and white edges on the 
fins; the others vi/ere pale and dull and quite dif¥erent m 
flavor when cooked. This difJerence first drew my atten- 
tion to the fact that it was due to the clearer and 
brighter waters of the Lake Superior side of the ridge, 
and the dull color showed the effect of the warmer and less 
clear water flowing to the south into the Mississippi. But 
right here the Central Wisconsin road runs right through 
this old hunting ground of mine, where the trout and 
perch and muskalonge and the countless ducks and wild 
geese swarm in and on the waters. Deer too are as 
plentiful as rabbits in an English warren, although ours 
are hares, brown at this time of the year, but Avhite m the 
winter, when I used to think it a poor hour's work to get 
less than a dozen along their runs, worn down m the snow 
in the cedar thickets. 
But the railroad has come in, and soon this place will 
be the home of thousands of sheepmen and dairj'men and 
farmers, whose business it is to follow the lumbermen 
and reap the fruits of his labors of clearing the land for 
them to come in and possess it. But I was forgetting to 
mention the deer still left, and increased m number since I 
used to go home by noon with three fine bucks to worry 
along through the trails. In the fifties I once saw the In- 
dians bring into our mining village over a hundred deer 
the gang had shot in a fence tran, which was their way of 
hunting them in the fall when they were on their annual 
idurney to the South. One fine buck, the biggest I ever 
saw, that weighed a little over 300 nounds with his coat 
on, and which had three fingers of fat on his, loin=;, I 
remember buying from a red-kin for a dollar and_ a half. 
It was slow work selling deer like that in a mining vil- 
lage of 300 souls, ranging from a. week old to three 
score and ten. But they got off their deer at last for the 
price of a pint of whisky, and then they spent every 
dollar in a drunk until, when they got sober, they went 
back to their reservation at L'Anse, fifty miles away, 
I have not read in the Forest and Stream to my recol- 
lection anything of this region, and so in my generosity to 
'all fellow sportsmen I invite them to come this way and 
count the thousand and one lakes, and fish through the 
whole cluster of them and live on wild duck and trout 
and the accustomed hard tack and flapjack. The Wis- 
consin Central Railroad runs right through it from 
Chicago to the head of Lake Superior. By and by these 
lands, now swarming with game and fish, will be covered 
by sheep pastures and farms, and the dairymaid's call to 
her cows will be heard in place of the halloo of the hunter 
and the reverberations of the breechloader. Bring some 
shoo-fly by all means, for there are a few flies left here 
since I saw two-year-olds swarming on the snow banks on 
an unusually warm, or possibly I should say on a less 
than usually cold, day in February. 
Fi FIELD, Wis. H. Stewart. 
Elijah Simonds. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I was greatly interested in Mr. Burnham's article about 
Elijah Simonds. He and I often went out hunting and 
protpecting for game together, one time for a week, at 
nightfall stopping at a house or camping out, without pro- 
tecaon for the night, near the summit of Fox Peak — a 
cold, windy experience. 
We always carried my rifle only, a Ballard .44 cal., as he 
said "there was no need of loading ourselves down with 
an extra weapon." 
Another time when out inspecting his bear traps, the 
rain came down very steadily, when he said, "I don't care 
how hard it rains now, but I hate to start from home 
in a rain." 
The first trap we visited was apparently undisturbed, 
the rain having flattened out the ground where it had 
been set, immediately under an old bear footprint, but on 
closer inspection we found the trap gone. I was aston- 
ished at the way he followed the direction the bear_ had 
taken. He walked as fast as a man going to his business 
in Broadway, his quick eye discerning every broken 
twig, or mark on the ground the clog had made, and 
after walking a mile or so we came to the trap, empty, 
a fallen tree trunk having aided the bear in his escape.. 
We then went to a second trap a long way off, and there 
at the base of a spruce tree sat a she bear, trapped; her 
two cubs immediately scampered up the tree in a regular 
gallop. 
"Give me the rifle," I said, when he replied, "No; make 
a sketch of her first." So in my eagerness, I scratched 
off a few lines. When he handed me the weapon I put 
a ball in her breast, and she was soon beyond all thought 
of her young ones. Simonds regretted we had no axe to 
cut down the tree and capture them alive — we were miles 
from any house. But as he said, "Six dollars" (the 
bounty) "didn't grow upon every bush," their doom was 
decided. Seeing a black spot up the tree, I shot at it and 
a cub fell, shot through the head. As I could not see the 
other cub on account Of the dense foliage, I fired a randop 
shot, when the cub moved, and seeing another black 
spot, I fired at it, and the second cub fell at my feet, the 
first shot having gone through its wrist and the second 
through its head. I was surprised that the random shot 
had struck it, for one might have fiired up the tree till 
doomsday with rifle and ball without effect. 
While Mr. Simonds was skinning the body I attended to 
the feet, as I wished to have the claws on the pelt. As I 
laid the cubs on a log I could but exclaim, "the murder of 
the innocents," they had such a human look, like two 
little darkies. The "old mother's teeth were worn to the 
gums, so I did not preserve the skull, as I had intended. 
I am registered on the Essex county records as having 
killed the "varmints" and received the bounty, which I 
handed over to Mr. Simonds, as well as the value of the 
pelts, which were long a momento of the day's ex- 
perience. , . TIT 
The prettiest rifle shot I ever saw made was by Mr. 
Simonds on the West Branch of the Ausable River, put- 
ting a ball through a young wild duck while attempting to 
escape by flying and paddling, which we enjoyed cooking 
over our camp-fire and eating its tender flesh. 
All this was years ago, and it's long since I have seen 
or heard of him, so you can imagine the pleasure your 
article gave me, though attended with the painful notice 
of his death at a ripe old age, his gun forever laid aside— 
but I will ever hold him in pleasant remembrance. 
Geo. B. Wood. 
Staten Island, N. 
Trout And Watersnake. 
I write this morning for a little information. I claim 
to be pretty well posted in regard to the waters of this 
State, but am frank to admit that I draw the line on 
snakes, and I therefore want the editor of your "snake 
column" to give me a little information. _ 
I have a large pond on a farm in my charge m which 
are a good many large trout, and I am sorry to say some 
snakes. A year ago last summer a person in the neigh- 
borhood noticed a commotion in the water and stopped to 
see what caused it. Presently he saw that a large water 
snake had captured a large trout, too large to take out of 
the water on the bank in the ordinary way, head first, and 
presently the snake backed out on the bank, tail first, 
dragging the trout after him in his mouth. 
This person killed the snake, which was a very large 
one. took the trout out of its mouth and brought it up to 
our' farm house, where it was weighed and found to be 
iy4 pounds in weight. 
I asked the farmer whether he ate the trout, and he 
said no. that he did not eat trout when they had been 
caught by a snake. . >> 
I have not seen a statement to the effect that snakes are 
in the habit of backing out of the water in this way when 
they have seized a large fish, and if this is something 
new then I will authenticate this story more fully, as I 
do not wish to have any doubt raised as to my veracity 
in case T tell the storv. although I know that it i? 
gubstantially as I have told it J. S- Van Cleef. 
Eagles and Infants, 
Setoral months since an article appeared in the Forest 
AND Stream under the foregoing head. When I read 
it I purposed to write you something on the same sub- 
ject, but neglected to do so till the present moment. The 
incident I am about to relate i have only on hearsay, but 
I believe it true, nevertheless. Several accounts concern- 
ing it appeared in the Territorial newspapers at the time, 
and the statement was generally accepted as true. 
For 200 miles southwest of Tucson is a great belt of 
country remarkable for its aridity. It is a great plain, 
practically treeless, ribbed with an occasional mountain 
range and thickly dotted with black volcanic hills. In the 
mountains a few good mines have been found, and on the 
plains a few stockmen have made their homes, but the 
principal residents of the country are Papago Indians. 
They live in villages, widely scattered, raise a few ponies 
of their own and many cattle of their neighbors. The 
little water found near the surface, or impounded in 
depressions on the plain, is a sure excuse for a straggling 
village, presided over by a capitan with limited authority 
over a given area. 
About four years ago while some Indian women were 
working in a corn patch near the village of Quijotoa, one 
of them placed her young baby in the shade of a neighbor- 
ing bush. An eagle soared above, but as no danger was 
apprehended, little notice was given to its ever lowering 
circles, when, with a noise like the violent rushing of 
wind, it shot down and struck the child. Instantly there 
was an uproar among the women, and with screams 
they ran to save it. For about 100 feet the bird flew low 
and laboriously, still holding to the struggling child, but 
slowly it rose, and despite the screams of the fran ic 
women, it disappeared with its victim over the top of the 
Quijotoa range. The child was said to be between three 
and four months old. There can be no doubt of the truth 
of this story. It was told to some prospectors who hap- 
pened through the country shortly afterward. They re- 
ported the Indians of the village as being much excited 
over the occurrence. 
The only eagle in southern Arizona is the ring-tailed 
(A, chryscetus). They are a bold, strong bird, and many 
are the "tales I have heard of their streng h and daring. 
All told, I have seen some six or eight killed, and I 
measured most of them. The average stretch of wing 
was 7 feet. The largest one I ever saw was 
7 feet 3 inches. I once saw one so gorged with 
food as to be unable to rise high in the air. It was killed 
with a load of No. 4 shot. Pima. 
YoMA, Ariz., May 9. 
Zigzag Experiences. 
v.— An Unexpected Encounter with Fiber Zifcethicus. 
Youth and early manhood have long since left our 
schoolboy days in the distant past, but the lapse of years 
only ten.ds to' renew and confirm the lessons learned in 
the little old weather-beaten school house beside the 
country road. 
We turn a retrospective glance and behold the plain, 
everyday, common-sense system and methods of the past 
have been blotted out by the transmuting evolution or 
the present with its lengthening curriculum of frills and 
flounces— with its "swing of Pleiades," isms, psychology 
and other iridescent bubbles. 
New investigations, new light and deeper study may 
have overturned some of the old teachings, but our early 
lessons were so -thoroughly inculcated, so thoroughly- 
mastered, and so thoroughly assimilated, that we find it 
difficult to dethrone the old and fall down and worship 
the new — and in unguarded moments the mind reverts 
to the accepted teachings of early years. 
"You may break, yoa may shatter the vase if you will. 
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still." 
From, our old leather-bound and well-thumbed text- 
book on natural history we learned that our interesting 
American friend, the muskrat, with whom we oftentimes 
sought closer acquaintance beside the brooks and rivers, 
in early spring with shotgun in hand, is in the matter o£ 
diet exclusively a vegetarian, and so cleanly in his habits 
that he thoroughly washes the roots of the water platits, 
fruits and vegetables upon which he feeds before eating 
them. * 
Spending a sunny winter's day not long since upon .a 
pond fishing through the ice for pickerel, jitdge of my 
astonishment and chagrin when answering the summons 
of the red flag at the masthead of a tilt to find a whole 
menagerie, including the clown, on the end of ray hne! — 
astonishment when I landed a quadruped with fur instead. 
" of a fish with scales, and chagrin because of the rude 
sundering of the ties which bound me to the teachings 
of the past! 
Shades of Izaak Walton and all his disciples! didn't he 
cavort around, pull, and do all the trapeze and acrobatic 
acts of the circus man! For a time it seemed as if I had 
the whole Chinese Empire on my line and every Mon-' 
golian was doing his tttmost to remain in his own 
country. But being securely hooked, all remonstrance 
was in vain, landing was effected, and he was my— 
muskrat! 
My first impulse was to conclude that since his ap- 
pearance in the Devonion age in the Paleozoic era he 
had been ascending in the scale by evolution from a 
vegetarian to the higher forms of feeders upon a mixed 
diet, and so furnishing new matter for speculative thought 
and making a revision of text-books necessary. 
But a little reflection convinced me that such conclu- 
sion was based upon insufficient data. While not ques- 
tioning the changes wrought by evolution, or that the 
present experience might be a demonstration thereof, 
tihere are many of^T ni^^qible explanations which shoiilil 
be given due consideration. • , • 
Was it a case of mistaken identity? Did he mistake 
the minnow for a floating piece of yellow lily root or _a 
piece of parsnin from a neiehboring scullery? Was it 
an accident? Was Mr, Muskrat out on a love adventure^ 
