106 
The islanders eat them both- raw and cooked, esteeming 
'them a' particular delicacy in the living state. In fact, as 
soon .as. one can accustom himself to recognize that the 
oyster, has not taken out. a- patent on being eaten alive, 
{here is no reason why that condition of the smaller 
crustaceans should not prove- equally satisfactory to the 
. civilized palate. The flesh of the living crayfish is much 
more tender than when it is cooked, and the only draw- 
"hack is the gummy nature of the vital juices. When 
cooked the crayfish are either baked on hot stones, 
steamed in leaves, or boiled, which is not a common nor a 
convenient method in island cookery. A very satisfactory 
preparation is with the succulent leaves of the taro, the 
crayfish being wrapped in the leaf, the whole package 
tied up with several others in a green banana leaf and 
covered up in the native oven to cook slowly in the com- 
bined juices of the animal and the plant, the oven being a 
.pile of hot stones muffled with leaves and sand. The 
shell of the crayfish is more easily removed than that of a 
shrimp. The islanders husk the Avhole animal and eat 
even the head, which the taste of white men rejects. 
On civilized tables they make a good mayonnaise with 
chopped alligator pears. 
Llewella Pierce Churchill. 
Notes. ffom the Yellowstone Park. 
Yellowstone National Park, July 29. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: I have been back a few days from Alaska. 
I have not been in the Park since I took the elk and 
deer from here for Washington, D. C, last November. 
In the spring I passed through Livingston on my way 
to Seattle. They were having no hard winter here. I 
since learn that no game of any kind died from starvation. 
Last winter and this spring a few animals were captured 
and placed in the inclosure in front of the hotel; among 
them one beaver. A new bridge is being built in 
Golden Gate to replace the old one; for a few days teams 
and stages will have to go over the old road built by 
Col. Norris in 1878, and the drivers will get a taste of 
mountain climbing by anj^thing but easy gradations; the 
distance to Norris Basin will be about an h^ur longer. 
A road is being surveyed from the outlet of Yellow- 
stone Lake east to the head of one of the branches of 
Sfinkingwater River, possibly Middle Creek, and on 
down that river to Coday in Wyoming. This will admit 
travel and a stage line from the Burlington road. The 
scenery Vv'ill be fine, but not so interesting nor so grand 
as a road up Clark's Fork of the Yellowstone through 
Cook's City and down Soda Butte Creek. Travel now 
comes in by wagons from west, south and north. When 
the new road is completed there will be an entrance on 
all sides. 
There has been a very long continued dry month or 
more. The roads are fearfully dusty and the season un- 
usually hot. Fortunately the Park has escaped any seri- 
ous fires so far, and we hope none will get out to destroy 
the grass and timber. We all look for a severe winter, 
and as the feed for game is short none ought to be de- 
stroyed by fire; neither should any be cut for hay. A 
few showers on July 25 cleared the atmosphere of smoke 
and laid the dust for a day or two. 
Capt. Oscar Brown, with Troop M, of the First Cav- 
alry, left here on the 24th for China. They have been 
replaced by Troop G, Capt. Goode. 
The bears are as numerous as usual around the hQtels, 
and quite troublesome to camping parties. H. 
Red Squirrels as Pets. 
Upper Dam,, Rangeley Lakes, Me. — Editor Forest 
and Stream: I have read with interest Mr. Corsan's 
artick in your issue of July 28 on "Squirrels as Pets." 
For several summers I have kept the red squirrels in 
boxes covered with wire netting, and have sometimes 
had as many as twelve at a time. I had several large 
packing boxes filled up with limbs of trees, etc., and all 
connecting with each other. They seemed to thrive on 
a diet of green corn, bread and milk, and when liberated 
at the end of the summer would return for several 
months afterward, and go through the boxes looking 
for food and running the wheels. 
I am anxious to know whether I could tame them 
sufficiently to have them remain in front of and camp 
among a clump of poplar and fir trees in the manner that 
Mr. Cor.san suggests. I do not know that his sugges- 
tion would apply to the red squirrel. We have four dogs 
and a cat, and as the nearest woods are only 50 yards 
away I am afraid they might be tempted to wander and 
return no more. 
Mr. Corsan omitted to mention the ground squirrel 
of California in his list. It may be the cat squirrel he 
speaks of, only that their color is a dark gray, with white 
belly. Otherwise the description fits them. They became 
such a pest on the ranch in the Sacramento Valley ten 
years ago that we were compelled to resort to poisoning 
them off with wheat saturated with strychnine. Since 
then they have never entirely recovered their former 
numbers, but are still far from scarce . These squirrels 
never take to the trees, but live among the rocks. Their 
tails are quite short and sparsely covered with hair. 
They never wander far from their holes, which they run 
to on the slightest danger. They are considered good 
eating, but I cannot speak from experience. 
Parke 1 WttiT-NEY. 
Wild Ducks in Doinesti'cat'i n. 
Mr. Andrew Boyd writes from Washing on county, 
New York, where he is spending his vacation, an ac- 
count of his success with young wild ducks. We have 
referred him to Fred Mather's paper on "Wildfowl m 
Domestication" in our issue of March 18, 1899. Mr. Boyd 
says: For my amusement I brought (in the car with 
me) ten young wild ducks, which I hatched out under a 
buff Plymouth rock hen about two months ago. A j'oung 
friend of mine has had a pair of old ones for over a 
year, atid gave me the eggs. These old ones are quite tame, 
can fly. of cour.se, and will come to his kitchen door 
whenever he calls them. 
Mine are growing more domestic every day. I have 
them inclosed within a wire mesh fence, but open over- 
head. I let them out two or three tim.es daily to run 
upon the grass ; they come at my call and will lie down on 
' FOREST_AN£)_ STREAM. 
the grass beside me. I dig worms for them and then 
they seem wild with delight. I have to use watchful care 
else they would get their heads cut ofiE, so excitedly do 
they gather and scramble at every bit of dirt I turn 
over. They make no attempt at flymg — indeed, their 
wings are insignificantly small, feathers only just begin- 
ning to appear, At night I shut them up in a coop to keep 
them secure from a stray skunk or weasel. 
They will eat a good large cabbage in a day; they 
eat the refuse from the kitchen, and I feed them on 
rolled oats, cracked corn and screenings. I give them 
water in a large dish pan, which they use a great deal, but 
almost constantly when they are eating, to wash their 
food down, I suppose. 
Do you know of any good article on their habits and 
culture? I know nothing about how to care for them, 
but I give them great attention because they give me so 
much amusement and pleasure. I would like to get a 
little information as to how to- feed and keep them. 
-Andrew Boyd. 
Crows Eating Sparrows. 
A WELL-KNOWN Supreme Court official was busy at his 
desk the other day when his attention was attracted by 
the cawing of crows near the roof of the Capitol. The 
cries were so frequent and loud that he concluded there 
must be something unusual going on. Lookmg out of 
the window he saw two big black fellows alight on the 
roof near by and begin to claw in a rainspoul. They 
soon had a nest full of young sparrows exposed, and it 
took only a few moments to dispose of the whole sparrow 
brood. Evidently crows are not thoroughly useless, he 
thought. — Washington Star. 
$port$ttten'$ fina$. 
Some o£ the Queer Discoveries Made by Those Who Are 
Looking lor Game or Fish, 
10. 
Linwood Witham, of Washington, Me., while fishing 
in Medomac Pond, saw the form of a boat embedded in 
the mud, the water in the pond being unusually low. The 
attention of others was called, and after considerable 
labor by a large crew of men the boat, which was filled 
witli stones, was raised. It proved to be a canoe, dug 
out of a pine log. It is 12 feet long and 3^2 feet wide. 
The part that was embedded in the mud is well preserved. 
The oldest residents in that locality have no recollection 
of any such craft ever being seen about the pond, and it 
is probable that it is a relic of those primeval days when 
the untutored red men roamed the forests. 
n, 
A party of fishermen, driven ofl' Nelson Lake, near 
Peekskill, N. Y., by a storm, saw a distance a tumble- 
down hut. To escape from the rain they hastened thither, 
and, supposing it unoccupied, burst in. To their surprise 
they found its only room occivjied by an old man. He 
was apparently nearly ninety .. ears of age. A great mass 
of matted beard and hair tumg about him. He was 
crouching over a smoky wood fire stirring a pot which 
contained nothing but shelled corn and a piece of pork. 
There was scarcely any furniture in the room and in the 
corner were a few rags and heap of straw, from which 
his niece, only a few days before, had been removed to 
the county house to die of consumption. The hut is sit- 
uated in the heart of what is known as Conklin's Wil- 
derness, about two miles from Shrub Oak and seven 
from Peekskill. The old man would talk but little and 
evidently wished his visitors away. The storm slacking 
the fishermen withdrew. Subsequent inquiry showed that 
the man was well known thereabouts as Ransom Barger, 
the miser hermit. He has many thousand dollars' worth 
of Government bonds and owns a fine farm in Putnam 
county. For a long time he has lived in this hut and has 
subsisted on boiled corn and pork. He was once a jus- 
tice of the peace in Putnam Valley, Putnam county, and 
is still proud of his title of "Squire." 
12. 
A party of Alton, 111., sportsmen were cruising up the 
Illinois River last spring on a hunting trip, when one 
dropped a deer's foot horn handle Bowie knife overboard 
in 20 feet of water. The loser visiting Grafton, a local 
fisherman's headquarters, in the early summer, was sur- 
prised to see a resident complacently whittling a stick 
with his knife. He proceeded to claim it, and identified it 
as his property by the initials graven on the handle. 
"Well, pardner," responded the present holder. "I s'pose 
you may be telling the truth, but I cut this here carver 
oiten the ponch of a 40-pound channel catfish that I took 
in my net in May. and I reckon it ought to be worth a 
reward." The reward was paid, and the Alton man car- 
ries his knife again, claiming that ever since its recovery 
it has added virtues as a mascot. — F. C. Riehl. 
Miniature Books. 
Miniature volumes on sport are always an interesting 
study. They are truly much in little. The diminutive 
edition of Walton's "Compleat Angler," 2 inches long 
and 1 34 inches in width, recently published at the Oxford 
University Press, is not the first of its kind. So long ago 
as 1662 there appeared a pocket volume (32mo.) equal- 
ing it in width and only % inch longer, with the follow- 
ing title: "The Young Sportsman's Instructor; or. An- 
gling, Fov/ling, Hawking, Hunting, Ordering Singing 
Birds, Hawks, Poultry, Coneys, Hares and Dogs and 
How to Cure Them. By G. M. Sold at the Gold Ring, 
in l^ittle Britain." It was reprinted in 1820 for T. Gos- 
den by J. Johnson, at the Apollo Press, Brook street, 
Holborn. This curious and truly diminutive volume, of 
which a copy is \n the British Museum, measures 2% 
inches by i34 inches and contains pp. vi., 136 and one 
leaf, as follows: "The Young Angler's Instructor," pp. 
I — 76: "The Art of Fowling," pp. 77 — 112; "Instructions 
for the Huntsman," pp. 113 — 122; "Directions for Hawk- 
ing/' J>p. — 136. — London Field. 
'^^^ ^nd 0nn. 
A Day in the Marsk 
Raleigh, N. C. — Ten years ago rural gunners, who are 
what is known as dead shots at the partridges, used to 
bring to Raleigh for sale not a few woodcock. They 
called them "snipes," and considering them, by reason of 
the length of their bills, to be in some way inferior to the 
partridge, they pulled off their heads, put them on the 
"string, ' and thought they had done a neat bit of work 
in passing them off as partridges. The usual price of the 
partridges thus brought in is 8 1-3 cents a piece, and not 
infrequently the epicure would get half a dozen woodcock 
at that figure. But some city man has let out the secret 
that the woodcock is choice, and now the price is 15 
cents. The snipe the country sportsman never kills. 
A little south of Raleigh is a long line of marsh, in 
which in the last days of winter and in the tender first 
days of spring excellent snipe shooting is to be had, and 
this in to be a story of a day in the marsh. Our winter 
does not really begin until Jan. i, and ends, one may say, 
early in March. There is a small fall flight of snipe, but 
it is the shooting which begins about Feb. 20 which is the 
best. The marsh is burned early in the year. Snipe 
dearly love the burned ground, and their favorite boring 
places are where the cattails have been rankest. 
At the edge of the marsh is a darky, who is only too 
glad to act as helper in a hunt, who will go anywhere 
after game which he sees killed, and for whom briars and 
the deepest marsh have no terrors. As we enter the 
marsh the "Chunk ! Chunk 1 Chunk 1" of a king rail is 
heard. The darky stops instantly and says, with head 
half-turned, "Lissen at him a-drivin' stobs in de ma'sh. 
He's a bird. Some uns thinks dey's frogs, but dey's rale 
shore 'nuff birds. I'se seed um. Dey has dey nes'es in 
dere. I seen de young uns onct." 
A suggestion that this rail be hunted delights the darky. 
Rail hunting is a game at which certainly two can plan — 
the rail doing the most of the playing. He is the past- 
master of all skulkers. We beat the reeds for him. They 
can be seen to wave as he runs. He flashes out, and is in 
like a flash, with his queer teetering movement. He gives 
his peculiar cry yards away. There is a ditch near by. It 
is watched. Suddenly what seems like the ghost of some- 
thing appears in the dense reeds along the bank. A 
chance shot bags the rail. Two others are found in a yet 
smaller reed patch. They weave patterns in this, often- 
times coming in behind the man who with much labor is 
striding through the reeds. One suddenly makes a dash 
for a ditch, gets in it and is gone before a gun can be 
raised. The other bird does likewise. As soon as safe 
they cry. Any noises, and particularly shouting, increase 
their desire to cry. As we walk along in the open a rail 
suddenly rises and is knocked down easily, so slow and 
lubberly is its flight. A minute later a sora rises and 
is killed. Put beside the rail and looked at quickly, he 
appears to be a miniature rail, but on closer inspection 
there are seen to be several dififerences. 
A peculiar cry is heard overhead. The bird is fly- 
ing, and the note is three whistles, like those given iii 
railing a colt. "Dat's wun er dem colt birds," says the 
darky. A shot gets the bird. It is the upland plover. 
"Dat's de fus' wun er dem dat ever I had my han' on," 
he adds. "Dey rambles around in de plowed ground, and 
is right sociable like wid de mules and bosses, but don't 
like folks much. We calls um colt birds, 'cause dey 
whistle is same as de way you calls er colt to you." 
Perched on the topmost limb of a sweet-gum tree is a. 
kingbird, or bee martin, as country folk call him. He is 
the Marshal Ney of birds — "the bravest of the brave." 
He flies down, then returns to his perch, or flutters off 
and then back again, always keeping an eye on the general 
situation. Suddenly a buzzard flies up, aroused by some 
person across the creek. As he approaches the bee martin 
the negro, with a grin, says: "Now you jus' watch 
Mister Bee Martin ride dat buzzard. He shorely will git 
er ride off'n him." As he says the words the kingbfrd 
makes a dash at the big black buzzard, and the latter puts 
on his best gait. The kingbird seems to strike at his 
back, between the wings, and sometimes almost to rest 
there. "See dere now, he's er ridin' him," cries the 
darky, and then he shouts at the fleeing buzzard a verse of 
the negro song, 
" Turkey buzzard, turkey buzzard, 
Lend me your whing, 
Carry me 'cross de river 
To see Sallie King." 
It is the old, old story of the elephant and the gnat. The 
daring and impudent little rascal of a bird does not cease 
to worry the buzzard for several hundred yards, and then 
flies back to his resort on the sweet-gum. The negro, 
discourses on the buzzard. "Dat's de Souf Caliny king," 
says he. "Dey whips de rusty buzzards and runs um 
away fum er carkis ev'ry time." The South Carolina buz- 
zard is really a far handsomer bird than his rusty- 
feathered and bald-headed conquerer. His flight is very 
different. He gives three quick wing beats, then skims, 
and repeats this. The other buzzard has a greater spread 
of wing, but his flight is irregular. Both soar to great 
heights, and often disappear from sight. When soaring 
they are grace itself. 
A bird flies up from a shallow of the creek. "Dat's de 
blue hearn," says the negro. "Mos' folks calls dern de 
fly-up-de-crick or de shypoke." The bird alights in a 
tree and gives a raucous call, as if he had a case of croup. 
With a cry as swift as his flight, a snipe flashes out of 
some willows. He climbs into the sky, and out of the 
bosom of a cloud, as it seems, two others join him. The^' 
swing with perfect precision, disappear, reappear, and 
with a last wide sweep, as if cutting figures of 8 in the 
sky, suddenly half-fold their wings and return to earth, 
not 50 yards from where the one rose. One is noticed 
as he alights. He appears to stand on tiptoe with wings 
partially opened, then, closes them and seems to sink into 
the very earth. As we walk toward the snipe, they rise, 
and a single shot happens to kill two. They fall one on 
breast and one on back. The latter, with light-colored 
breast upturned, can be seen yards away, while the other 
has actually to be closely searched for, and is almost 
stepped on several times. The plumage of the back, with 
