FOREST ANE) stream. 
445 
secured. There remains still on the pond one goose with 
the power of flight, but the authorities are not without 
hope that this one also rriay be captured. Even if it 
should not be taken, it is quite within the bounds of possi- 
bility that it may spend the winter here with its relations. 
In the last few months a good many interesting 
changes have taken place at the Zoo. The buffalo calf 
which was injured soon after its birth last summer is 
still more or less crippled, and has been separated from 
Its fellows. The other one seems in admirable condition 
and coat. The elk calf is strong and sturdy. Two mule 
deer fawns appear to be in good condition, and the 
seven beautiful and graceful antelope also look healthy. 
It is to be hoped that better success may be had with 
.these than with the previous herd. 
The bears arc interesting to old and young alike, and 
the collection here is active and amusing. The two 
polar bt ars, by reason of the small water tank in the 
den which they inhabited through the summer, have 
worn most of their coats off, and their backs arc partly 
bare. Now, however, they have been transferred to the 
ne\v and much larger den, where the tank is perhaps 
„2U feet across, and it may be hoped that here they will 
soon regain the beautiful fur that they had a year ago. 
It i_s most interesting to watch these bears diving and 
fishing for food thrown into their tank, which has sunk 
to the bottom. They seem as much at home in the 
water as a seal. 
The tw'o little Alaska bears, which were variouslv 
ealled grizzlies and Richardson's bears when they were 
very small, haA^e developed now into fine and very large 
specimens of one of the Alaska brown bears. They are 
about eighteen months old, large and heavy coated, and 
are likely to be among the most interesting brutes in the 
collection. 
The reptile house is as interesting as ever, and con- 
tains a vast number of remarkable and beautiful speci- 
mens. Its attractiveness has been added to bv an in- 
crease in the number of tropical plants within it. 
On the other hand, the garden has suiTered serious 
losses in the death of all its moose, some caribou, a 
male and female mule deer, all its original herd of an- 
telope, and practically all the young carnivores and birds 
born last summer, of which so much was hoped for iu 
the way of increase. Such discouragements of course 
must be expected, and only experience extended over 
many years can serve to keep in health and good con- 
dition the many animals gathered here, far from the 
surroundmgs to which they are accustomed in their 
native haunts. 
What Is a Fawn? 
'Editor Forest and Stream: 
The New York papers recently told of the killing in 
the suburbs of New York of a fawn, but I have seen no 
reference to the subject since then. Now fawns are pro- 
tected by the present New York game law, and if a fawn 
Avas killed, the slayer should have been arrested by the 
proper authorities and dealt with according to law. " 
^ On the other hand, the question at once arises, what 
is a fawn? In other words, when does a fawn cease to 
bear that name and become something else, as, for ex- 
ample, a yearling, a spike buck, or simply a buck or doe. 
It is clear that so long as the fawn carries its spots it is 
a fawn and nothing else. I believe there are people who 
claim that when its spots have been lost it ceases to be a 
fawn, but if this is true it must have some name, and I 
do not know of anj^ term applied to deer between the 
time when they lose their spots and the time when they 
..become, yearlings. 
■•' The spotted coat of the young deer appears to be 
..analogous to the first plumage of many birds, as, to use 
,a very familiar example, the common robin, which, as we 
all know, for a short period after leaving the nest has 
black spots upon its russet breast. These spots, how- 
ever, are soon lost. 
I take it that the term fawn is similar to other words 
■applifi.di -tQ young animals, as calf, colt, pup, and so on. 
[These aniirials continue to bear these names until they 
iare about one year old, when for another year they are 
^called yearlings, the term often being qualified, some 
•being short yearlings and others long yearlings, until the 
second year, when they are two-years-olds, 
In the West, where large game was formerly found in 
: great variety, the calves of buffalo and elk were calves 
-ali through the year in which they were bora. The fawns 
of deer continue to be fawns until the spring after their 
birth, while the young of antelope and of moimtain sheep 
were kids and lambs respectively until after the winter 
following their birth. 
The New York game law, notwithstandirig the codifi- 
cations and supposed improvements to which it has so 
often been subjected, is not yet a model of lucidity, and 
among the points of obscurity in it which may have to 
be changed either by a decision* of some court 
or by an act of legislature is the question what is 
a fawn? No one appears to be able to answer the ques- 
tion, and I am told that even the chief game protector, 
who may be supposed to know all that there is to be 
known with regard to the enforcement of the law, seems 
to be as much in the dark as to the definition of this word 
of four letters as the most ignorant or the most learned 
of his fellow citizens. 
Tu certain portions of this State the term fawn is quali- 
fied by prefixing the Avord spotted, thus implying that 
among the natives of the deer coimtry where it is used 
the belief is held that there are other fawns that are not 
spotted. I personally feel that these individuals are 
entirely right, for I believe that a faAvn continues to be 
a fawn until he is a yearling — that is to say. during the 
first year of his life. ' M. M. 
Oneonta, N. Y„ Nov, 24. 
[There is no doubt about what a fawn is. The defini- 
tion set forth plainly in any good dictionary is: "A young 
deer; a buck or doe of the first year." In other words, as 
stated by our correspondent, a young deer is a fawn until 
it is a 3'ear old. W e do not know what steps, if any, have 
licen taken looking to the prosecution of the alleged 
slayer of the Mt. Vernon fawn.] 
The 'Forest and Stream is put to press each week on Tuesday. 
Correspondence intended tor publication should reach us at the 
Uilcst by Vivndsy »nd «i much earlier m practicable. 
Obscure Instincts. 
Editor Forest and Stream. 
Some two years ago I had the pleasure of exchanging 
letters in your columns with the delightful and always 
interesting correspondent Coahoma. It was a question 
between us whether or not the instincts of animals are 
merely the iiiherited experiences of a majority of their 
ancestors. This is the accepted idea in the popular 
science of the day. I think I recognize something like 
it, as almost accepted, even by Ernest Seton Thomp- 
son in his recent wonderful and charming animal stories. 
But to me this theory seems narrow, cheap, mean, blind 
and illogical to the last degree, and in direct conflict 
with the every-day fact that the experiences of animals 
or acquired .characteristics arc very rarely even if ever 
transmitted to their posterity. All of our own ancestors, 
for instance, for a thousand generations, perhaps, have 
known that fire burns. But each child has still to learn 
it for himself. Again, the Jews and the Chinese and 
the Flathead Indians for many generations have practiced 
certain mutilations of the body. But none of these are 
ever inherited. In my letter to Coahoma I pointed out 
that the strongest instincts and passions, and those 
of most universal possession and life long activity, seem 
to gain no increase of strength in a thousand generations, 
while many^ very obscure and subtle instincts, often 
entirely dormant through inany generations, still persist 
in unabated vigor. 
Now in a recent issue I see that Coahoma has found a 
case of this persistence of a dormant instinct, and it 
lias puzzled him, and finally brotight him to the very 
same solution of all the questions about iiistinct which I 
urged upon him nearly two years ago. 
The case is this: The red-shouldered hawk usually 
rears but one brood of young each summer. But if 
accident destroys the nest they will persist and raise a 
second or, even a third brood if necessary to bring one 
brood to maturity., . 
.When we reflect upon the re-arousement of the pro- 
, creative instincts in both parents and the functional 
activities necessary in the female to devolp additional 
ova, the phenoTnenon is indeed a marvelous one. It 
does not even help the mystery to ascribe reasoning 
power to the hawk, because, those activities do not re- 
spond to the individual will any more than the beating 
of the heart -.-does. , ,, ; - :-, • , 
So, aftenibjut'ting .hi8.i^teiaiiiin:-ya^ 'ar.otaid. against the 
difficulties which beset-? his theory, and half-way ad- 
mitting the exijstence of hundreds of other difficulties as 
serious for- it, as this behavdpriOf the hawks, he prac- 
tically gives the wliole case-' away and comes over to 
my side of it, as follows: ^ • 
"Charles Darwin, in his industrious and untiring 
researches, discovered that the roots of plants are pro- 
vided at their terminals with a highly specialized 'tip/ 
possessing a degree of sensitiveness and powers of dis- 
crimination akin to consciotisness. with the 'tip' cut off, 
the root has lost its eyes as it were, and proceeds blindly 
in a straight line in any direction that it happens to 
lie in. When a new tip has been restored it proceeds 
with seeming intelligence — if a tap-root, it becomes 
again geocentric, pursuing its waj' downward, but turn- 
ing aside from obstacles before actually encountering 
them, etc. If a lateral root, through the guidance of the 
tip, moist regions are sought and selections made from 
the soil of those particular ingredients that are needed 
for the growth of the plant and the perfecting of its 
specific generative germs. 
'Terhaps these hawks are provided with one of 
nature's mysterious 'tips'! Who can tell?" 
There is here no difference of idea from my sugges- 
tion of two years ago, but only a difference in the 
name to be applied to an innate intelligence resident in 
everj' animal organism. I suggested it as a more reason- 
able theory than the one that instinct is but a hodg«:- 
podgc of the experiences of a majority of ancestors— 
"the three crippled grand-parent theory," as I called it. 
Coahoma now admits that this theory can never ac- 
count for such phenomena as the above, and that there 
are a great many stich phenomena. 
And he meets the difficulty with the suggestion of some 
interior discriminating or intelligent power which can 
control even those fitnctions of an animal's body which 
are entirely independent of its will. He feels the need 
of a name for this power and calls it a "tip." 
I suggested exactly the same power, that which makes 
the heart beat and the bodily organs perform all their 
functions, and for a name I sttggested "sub-ego." I 
have since thought that perhaps "alter-ego" might be 
better; and "ante-ego" too, might have claims, as this 
power precedes the ego in manifesting its presence in 
every organism. 
But the name cuts little figure, so that we recognize 
that here is something which renders the three grand- 
parent theory entirely superfluous, and which is well- 
worth study and iuA'estigation. 
Some things about it have long stared us in the face. 
It is nature's own centrifugal force — the source of all 
of nature's A-arietj'; just as heredity is her centripetal 
force, and the source of all her unity. Its methods are 
those of intelligent experiment — Avhat I before called 
'"blue-print methods" — as far removed from those of 
chance as light is from darkness. • 
In other words, the variations between species, even 
those the most nearly related, have none of the ear- 
marks of chance happenings or experiences, but all of 
those which indicate intelligent supervision and control, 
occurring as they do in endless number, but in such 
harmonious adjustment in each species that they coiil- 
pare with each other like stories of the same event told 
by the same author at different times. There Avould be 
entire agreement in the facts and endless differences in 
the Avords and letters, but all of these differences Avould 
be so related and adjusted as to tnake a harmonious 
Av^hole in each case. And is not the "tip" to the root 
of a plant tJie exact counterpart in the vegetable king- 
dom of the sub-ego in the animal kingdom? Each sup- 
plies to its organization that strange and wonderful in- 
telligence necessarj^ for success in its struggle to live and 
to perpetuate its race. No more and no less. And is it 
after all any more wonderful that organisms should be 
thus endowe(J than that inorganic matter should have 
its mysterioias chemical affinities? Is there not a certain 
analogy between the functions we see . performed by 
afiinities, tips or sub-egos, each in its respective king- 
dom? — affi nities in the inorganic, tips in the vegetable, and 
sub-egos in the animal. 
Each is the very law of existence in its own domain, a;:, 
if it were one section in the great constitution of nature, 
each made for the control of one particular kingdom. 
And that there is a certain unity and interdependence 
among them all is evident from the existence of a still 
higher and more universal law supreme over all matter 
and tending to draw all things together into one — the 
inscrutable attraction of gravitation. This, the one 
catholic bond, which we might call the esprit de corps 
of creation, is the mystery of all mysteries. But it would 
be no more illogical to ascribe its origin to the inherited 
e.xperiences of matter than to ascribe the origin of animal 
instincts to the inherited experiences of ancestors. 
E. P. A, 
Woodworkers in the Cellar. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
For two years I have had m ray cellar a small quantiity 
of red oak wood cut in short lengths, for use in an open 
fireplace. 
About one year after this wood was put in curious 
sounds were occasionally heard by people who were in 
the cellar, but the wood had been there eighteen months 
before this noise attracted marked attention. Then, how- 
ever, it was noticed by every one in the house or who 
came there, and the noise was continuous, being made 
by day and night alike. Different people compare the 
sounds to different things; some people think that it 
sounds like the noise made by running a sewing ma-^ 
chine in the house, others compare it to the sound of 
sawing wood in the celler, while to me the noise seems 
to closely resemble the crackling of a fire. 
Some time ago it was discovered that this noise Avas 
made by certain worms or larvae in the firewood in the 
cellar. The wood is in lengths of i6 inches, and fre- 
quently _ there will be fifteen or twenty worms in one 
piece of the wood. They appear to confine themselves 
chiefly to the layer of the wood immediately under the 
bark, but sometimes they seem to enter more deeply into 
the wood _ itself. After the Avorm has burrowed under 
the bark in all directions, so that the bark will readily 
come off in a single piece, the worms disappear from that 
stick of wood, not a sign of them being left. 
Although the Ayorms are constantly at work, they will 
stop if the wood is disturbed or any noise made, but 
when it is quiet again the sound of their gnawing soon 
recommences. 
I haA^e been unable to find any other stage o£ this 
worm, and where they come from to me is as much a 
mystery as where they go to, for they apparently leave 
nothing behind save quantities of red dust. Old farmers 
in the neighborhood say that these worms are always to 
be found in oak wood, but not in any other, and declare 
that they will not do any harm in the cellar. The worms 
are evidently common here, and it is generally taken for 
granted that they Avill be found in wood. 
Is there any danger of their burrowing into the frame 
Avork of the house or doing any other harm? G. C. H. 
Providence, R. I., Nov. 19. 
[The insects sent are the larvae of a cerambycid, or 
long-horned, beetle, but just what the species is could only 
be determined after long, careful and laborious compari- 
son. It is quite possible that the specimens sent belong to 
the beetle known as Urographis fasciatus, which is a com- 
mon form found under oak bark and having habits such 
as are attributed to these larvae. The insect is not a par- 
ticularly destructive one. but lives almost exclusively un- 
der the bark of dead or dying trees. As the larvae have no 
legs, it is not possible for them to burrow into the frame 
work of the house or do any harm when they have 
dropped out of the firewood.] 
A Revolution in Nature Photography 
Boston, Nov. io. — Editor Forest and Stream: I have 
an announcement to make to the brethren of something 
which has proved a first-class sensation in my case, and 
Avhich I hope will have interest for naturalists in general 
and the great and ever increasing host of bird lovers 
and bird students in particular. 
It is one over Avhich I have been "hugging myself" for 
some months, but wasn't at liberty to mention. 
It is a brand new discovery by a friend of mine, and 
nothing less than a veritably new method of bird study 
and bird photography, the results of which are aston- 
ishing. 
By it one can, under certain conditions, observe and 
• photograph, the wild bird at any distance one pleases, 
even up to the point of contact, and without alarm or 
disturbance on the part of the bird! 
t -A great deal of conscientious effort has been by many 
persons devoted to bird photography, with interesting 
and valuable results, and some persons have here and 
■there ^ by accident stumbled on to some parts of my 
friend's method, but not recognizing the relation of what 
they have done to a method, no essentially new method 
has resulted. That my friend has succeeded on this 
point there is no doubt. 
I can't tell the secret just yet. His book will be out 
the coming Avinter, I hope, and will be a revelation. It 
will be profusely illustrated with the choicest of his 
hundreds and hundreds of photographs, and within a 
fcAV months after its publication I predict that all over 
the country his method will be in successful use by de- 
lighted people, both amateur and professional. Mean- 
while I'm going to let you "sizzle" over it a little. It 
tnay make life seem a bit more worth living. But it's a 
"true bill," and no mistake. 
My friend is a biologist of eminence, and his discovery 
is one of the prettiest pieces of scientific induction I 
ever saAV or heard of. He has caught his subject^ in 
every possible attitude and act, and has thrown such light 
on "bird psychology" as I am sure has not been done be- 
fore. 
^ In short, "here's richness" for you a little later on 
What do you think of it? C. H. Ames 
