Dec, '39,: I goo.] 
more generally known along the coast, eel grass, is not 
confined to the Chesapeake Bay or to the sea coast. It 
is found in the Brandywine Creek, growing in slow- 
running water, and in many other interior waters. The 
.scientific name of the plant is I 'allisnem spiralis 
(,Linn.), the generic name being given in honor of An- 
tonio Vallisneri, an Italian botanist. . It is a dicecious 
herbaceous plant remarkable on account of its mode of 
fertilization. It grows entirely under water, has long 
radical grass-like Idg-yes from one to three feet long 
and from one-quarter to three-quarters of an inch wide. 
The female .flower floats at the surface at the end of 
long thread-iike spiral scapes^ which- curiously contract 
and lengthen with the rise and fall of the water. The 
male flower has very short stems or scapes, from which 
the flowers break ofl: and rise to the surface to fertilize 
the pollen of the attached floating female flowers. 
The canvasback is one of the swiftest of all our 
ducks. It is commonly said tliat they fly at the rate of' 
ninety miles an hour, but, of course, this is a mere 
guess, since no accurate observations have ever been 
made on, their flight. It is certain that they proceed at 
great speed, and the novice at canvasback shooting is 
very certain to shoot behind ihem until he has had a 
great deal of practice, . 
The canvasbacks start from their sotithera home to- 
ward the north early, in March and follow the coast and 
the interior northward, often reaching northern waters 
before they arc gejicsrally'. ipperi. On the breeding^^ 
grounds they ^i^^;pi;aetic3lly gjncl^^ 
Rocky Mountain' Deer. 
Editor Forest W(d Stream: - : , 
I was very much interested in a letter in a late, issue 
of Forest and Stream, teUing of a deer hunt, qn the 
White River, in Colorado, and of the tameness of, the 
deer. Owdng to the fact that one of the puppies .has 
eaten that particular page, I cannot give the. name pf 
the writer, but as the country he desGribes was my . 
.stamping ground for years, I always like to hear frojri. 
there. If the sportsman who wrote the letter ..t-binks 
that deer are plentiful and tame there -now, 1: woiider 
what he would have thought in the old days, . when I 
have seen 15.000 deer by actual count pas^ in., two ^eeks 
on one trail from their summer to their wanter jrange,.,, Ajid 
this trail- w^its only one of ten or twelve, of , the great 
main trails which led from the headwaters of tiie. White, 
the Bear and the Little Snake rivers, dpwn to the vast 
tracts of juniper and ccdar-c«vere<l , cidges^ sage , brush 
deserts, and the broken Bad Land; country, where, the 
"mule deer wintered. And other game, was ,as plentiful in 
proportion, for northwestern Colorado was .one pf the 
great hunting gronnds of the old. West, both. in number 
and variety of game. L remember guiding one party 
from the Grand River north to the Bear's Ears Peaks, 
near the Wyoming line, and far twenty -foiu" days w.e were 
never ntit of.si.ght of either dk, deer or antelope. But 
those days are gone. ne.ver tu eome again, and ranches 
;jre crowdirtg the game fitrther and further ba,ck. into the 
mountains. - .■ . ., , . 
If the Colorado detr are tana©,;. lap here, in. northwestern 
Wj^oming they are decidedly not. The. Colorado deer 
nearly ruined me as a hunter, for it was a lotig time 
■ j'.fter I came up here before I could, get over the habit 
»;f vvai<^ing for a started deer to stop and. look around. 
In Colorado, when one jumped, a buck, it almost always 
stopped mside of 50 yards to see what the trouble was, 
giving plenty of time for a Standing-shot. Up here, when 
a deer gets up, there is no nonsense of that sort, .and i-f a- 
fellow wants buckskin he hfts to shoot quick and 
straight. - I have'only three buck heads to show for my 
four years here, and two of them , I got this fall. Both 
'Were big bucks, with fine heads, but both fell victims to 
their own - foolishness. I was coming home along a 
quaking asp hillside one evening, after missing an elk 
at 100 yards and otherwise disgracing myself, wdien buck 
No. T got up about TOO yards ahead and lit out straight- 
away through the trees. I could not get a bead on 
him betw--een the trv3nk-3|.-^nd thought i he was going to 
get clear away, when the blamed fool 'stopf)ed on a little 
knoll and turned around broadside on. The next second 
•he got a .30-40 full jacket- through the heart, and when 
I saw the jump and kick, which with mtile'deer means 
a vital shot, I felt pretty good, for I could see that the 
old fellow's head was away no in the front rank. 
•= The next deer was even a bigger fool, for he came 
-along one morning close to the house right after a fresh 
fall of snow. When I struck his. track it was heading 
into a thick patch of spruce full of wet bogs and willow 
patches, and I, was sure he had gone in to' bed dow-n 
for the day. So I spent an hour or more fooling around 
before I found, out that he had gone on through. The 
trail now led on through open lodge pole pines, and 
was heading for another patch of thick cover a mile or 
so ahead, so I struck out on a high trot, as the trail led 
up wind. All at once, I saw the old fellow lying down 
in the snow 30Q yards or so ahead, but at first thought 
it was a rock, nevfr thinking; that a Wyoming deer 
would be guilty of such a stupid trick. The old fellow 
had his head down jn the snow, and was fast asleep, and 
it was not until I had worked around until I cotdd make 
out his horns that I was sure it was a deer. I was now 
about 200 yards away, When the buck raised his head 
1 and I dropped. I could just see about a foot of him 
I between the tree trunks, but I did not want to sit there 
in the snow all day, and a move would have been good-by 
deer. So I brought the heavy .30-40 single shot. 
Winchester slowly up, held the Lyman square in the 
middle of the patch of blue hide, and let go Instantly 
rh.e indistinct object tiirned into a great buck, which 
went off through the trees and out of sight like a flash. 
I But I noticed a stagger as he got to his feet, which was 
not natural, and on going to the place could see from 
the bullet mark in the snow that it must have gone 
through the deer. .\ few steps on the trail and there was 
a spatter of fine blood drops, and a couple of hundred 
yards further was the buck down in the snow. His head 
^vas still up, so I .shot him again, but it was needless, the 
first bullet having hit him in the neck jlist in front of the 
shoulder and passed out through his cheek on the other 
side, cutting the jugul.ar and breaking the Jaw. Tbe 
Ivet not entirely-'-gon^ f^^TO his hoj=ns, -^hfch a* 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
that date (Nov! 20) was rather unusual. This made two 
fine heads for this fall, which, as I have given away all 
my Colorado heads, and am getting a new lot, was very 
satisfactory. • , • ' 
By the way, I aha having- very good luck using full 
jacket bullets in my .30-40. Only one-animal hit has got 
away, the exception being a buck antelope, which was 
facing me when shot, and I have an idea that I hit him 
in the side of the neck. 
The beauty of full jackets when- you are hunting to 
get meat is that you do not tear an animal all to pieces, 
and if you do happen to give one a flesli wound and it 
gets away, the wound in nine cases out of ten heals 
quickly, Wm. Wells. 
Wells, Wyoming. .- 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST. 
Proposed Changes in Game Law. 
Chicago, 111., Dec. 15.— The time is on hand when we 
may expect the usual amount of tinkering with our game 
laws. Attention has already been called to the fact that 
a certain element— happily, it is to be beUgyedj; a, minor* 
element — is trying to put back on tlie, Wisconshi 
statutes the old clause permitting .spring §}ioQting. Th,is 
attempt bids fair to be, defeated, The wliol.e tendency in 
Wisconsin seems to be toward better legislation, and 
there seems to be either a sportsman's element or a broad- 
minded and thinking non- sporting ■ el fement in that State 
which recognizes the great value of this gaine as a popular 
possession. Straws from difterent parts of the State show 
which way tile wind is blowitig. An instailce of this is a 
letter just at hand fi^om Mr; George Briggs, President 
of • the « Ash-land Gun Club, of Ashland, Wis., who has 
the following to say regarding what he coniilders to be a 
desirable improvement in the law.; ■ , 
"There are quite a number of sportsmeii in this vicifiity 
who are doihg their utmost to. protect game, and we think' 
by changing the game law on game birds from Sept. i to 
Oct. I would just do it. At Sept,-, i the partridges and 
grouse are only half-grown and, wealc. , Partridges in 
September will all tree , without a dog, and the conse- 
qitence is, ariy boy or man gets .every, one he sees. Grouse 
iil'this month fly only a few - yards.' and alight, and the 
whole brood is killed. Hunters will all agree to this, espe- 
cially in Wisconsin. Now :let us. advocate this and have 
thiiS change. In October the birds; are strong, full grown, 
and what are killed then are on the wing, and they fly a 
long ways. jLet the deer law remain as it is, urge that no 
game shall be sold, 'if possible, and there you have it." 
It will be. noticed that the wish is not for a more 
lenient law, but for a stricter one. As regards non-resi- 
dent shooters, Wisconsin is getting to be pretty near an 
air-tight' proposition. The clause in her law which per- 
mits a non-resident to take out of the State only fifty 
birds in any biie '.season seems at"first sight a pretty hard 
one, especially hard for those who own shares in the duck 
clubs of that State. A great many men would not think 
it worth while to pay $300 for a share in a duck club witli 
$25 dues annually for the privilege of bringing home fifty 
bird.s ■ in a seasetn. The time- will come when they- \y'\\ 
think that privilege cheap at 'the 'ipricer biit that time has 
not yet arrived. Meantime, this clause of the Wisconsin 
law. as it stands, is an instance of a too. common tendency 
in Aiiierican game legislation. We have abundance of 
good-laws, but no means of enforcing them. It.is.hftrdly' 
necessary to . sasy- that the above c.LaLU.'^' Is' jaractically a 
dead letter,-;bee<^S!g^j g||tg,is iw^^aM&m enforcement. Mean- 
timrC"'I''-kiit)w of " mfP'fiirifiei- who shipped from Merrill. 
Wis., last fall and winter over 900 ruffed grouse. The 
stream of game continues to come, from that State just the 
same. It is much to be wished that the men who hunt 
for the money in it could be separated from those who 
shoot for the spoil of it. The law is unduly oppressive 
upon men who would like to go for a short time into a 
neighboring State tokill a jnoderdte amount of game and 
bring it home for their own" use. These are the sportsmen, 
and they are the on^s wdio from their position or from 
their conscientious scruples are-the opes, who can be got 
at by the law. The non-export clau.se, or the limited 
export clause, catches these men, but it Jets through the • 
persons who supply the Chicago game markets' 
I was talking yesterday with a game dealer of South 
Water street, who did not know I was a newspaper man. 
He said that there was much less game in the market this 
year than used to be the case* but laughed at the idea that 
this fact was to be attributed to State laws or to the Lacey 
act. He said it was simply due to the fact that there were 
so many shooters. "Too manj^ pot-hunters." said he, 
"who never know when to stop." Indeed yes, too many 
pot-hunters who never w^ill stop, so long as some one will 
buy their game. 
Down in Indiana there is more interest in game legisla- 
tion than was ever before .known. That State was never 
noted for its respect for game laws, but it seems now to 
be awakening and to have a sincere desire to save its 
game. Talks with several sportsmen of prominence in 
that State, who w^ere this week in -town, lead me to be- 
lieve that there Avill be efforts made to establish a non-resi- 
dent license, and to limit the bag per day to twenty-four 
birds to each gun, the latter applying more especially to 
quail. The great abundance of the latter bird has this 
fall led to an influx of shooters into the State of Indiana. 
With Indiana establishing a shotgun license, -Wisconsin 
already having such a license, Minnesota all the time on 
the ragged edge of passing such a law, and with Illinois 
already haA^ing such a license, it surely seems that it is 
pretty soon going to be a case of hunt at home or pay 
to hunt abroad. When this state of affairs comes to pas's 
we shall see the local game laws better enforced in every 
one of these States, because we shall see the beginning of 
the end of the old and foolish American cry that there 
is "just as good shooting a little further West," that the 
birds cannot be shot out," that "the flight has only gone a 
little further West," that "there are just as many birds as 
there ever was." The man who happens on a Minnesota 
lake when there is a heavy flight in may think, because he 
sees more dncks thart he ever saw before, that there are 
just as inany birds as there ever were. His opinion is of 
little value, since it is local and imperfect Go to the 
^arne dealers w^iQ btjy over the -West, They are th^ 
B07 
ones who can tell you whether or not there are just as 
inany birds as there ever were. . . 
Mr. Edwin G. Daniels, President of the Tolleston Club, 
whose grounds are just over the Indiana line, says that he 
hopes Indiana will establish a tion-resident license law and 
that every Tolleston member will be glad to pay it. He 
thinks it would cut off much of the flood of shooters who 
go down into that State and shoot without regard to sea- 
son or anything else. Mr. Daniels says that there will 
always be ducks at Tolleston Club so long, as there is 
water in Lake Michigan, though the days of great bags 
frtay perhaps be past. The club membejrs killed 2,000 
ducks this fall, though the heaviest bags' were thirty or 
thiriy-five birds. The marsh was good for a dozen birds 
almost any day. The sentiment against this game pre- 
serve is rapidly dying out. Really the sentiment against 
any preserve or any posted farm is, a false one. Each 
such preserve is a source of supply for the surrounding 
country. If it were not for the Tolleston Marsh the mem- 
bers of the Calumet Heights Club would never get a 
shot at a duck in their country, where the flight crosses 
over the big lake to the preserved marsh. 
Summing up, it may be said that the sentiment in this 
part of the West seems to be for stricter game laws. The 
non-resident license clause is apt to be present in many 
bills and many enacted laws in the West this coming year . 
Our people seem to be valuing their game more than they 
ever did. Slowly and almost unconsciously at first, but 
now with more rapidity and certainty, the idea is gaining 
ground that the game of a State is not a mere valueless 
commodity to be heedlessly slaughtered by any one withr 
out let or hindrance. The day of free open shooting is 
passing away, not by virtue of unwise legislation, but 
by virtue of the growth of railroads and of population. 
There is no use kicking against that. 
Quail. 
The quail crop is holding out well, and hunters for, some 
singular reason bring in a strangely similar set of , stories 
regarding the apparently changed habits of the quail. Dick 
Merrill, who has been shooting around Lafayette, Ind., 
says that he never saw birds so hard to get. They would 
fly a long ways and then run clear off the face of the earth. 
Mr. J. H. Amberg, who had a very good hunt not long, 
ago, says, "There are quail everywhere in Illinois where 
there is timber. The birds are all in the timber." Mr.. 
Warren Powell and myself might verify this latter state- 
ment. We found all our birds in the timber; they were 
big and strong, and I never saw quail fly so far or dis- 
appear so completely. No doubt it is getting to be the sur- 
vival of the fittest with the quail family, and it would be 
a matter of small wonder if Bob White did become even 
more wily than he already is. 
Clay county, in this State, has been very good quail 
coimtry this fall. Messrs. Al Hoffmann, Game Commis- 
sioner "Loveday and C. B. Dicks, of this city; Hon. James 
R. B. Van Cleave, of Springfield, and two other gentle 
men by the name of Donnelly and Garve}--, made a three 
days' hunt not long since in Clay county, and they bagged 
300, birds. Nearly everybody who has gone out this fall 
had good luck if he had a good dog and could shoot a 
little. 
The Ducks. 
Mr. A. G. Holmes, of Green Bay, Wis., writes en 
tertainingly of his recent experiences in the neighborhood 
of tiTat city. It is likely that he saw the great flight of 
birds which he mentions at about the same time the lake 
flight was observed at Charlevoix. It may be seen that 
the ducks are not yet all gone, but that they have attained 
a preternatural cunning of their own, Mr. Holmes. writes 
regarding his trip as follows, under date of Nov. iir : ' 
"I have just returned from a trip to the Point Au 
Sauble, ten miles below this city, on a- four-day duck 
hunt. We have had a snow storm each of the four 
days, and from the looses I am led to believe that the 
greater part of our ducks have left for the south this past 
week. Saturday morning four of us bagged twenty-six 
ducks — eight canvasbacks and the rest broadbills, blue- 
bills and whistlers, and about fifteen fish ducks (the last 
being killed for their feathers in a snow storm before we 
left for home). The snow storms did not bring in the 
birds, and neither did the rough weather 'bring theih over 
,'the point into the pond nor the inner bay. The only , good 
shooting that I have been able to hear of in the last week 
was at what is known here as the Little Bunch. (This is 
two small bunches of rushes growing out in the open 
wafer on one of the bars oft' from Grass Island, about 
two and a half miles from the main land and right in the 
natural feeding grounds^ flyway.) A market-hunter by 
the name of Bill Conley has an average of about fifty 
ducks a day for the week just ending. 
"W-^hile a man can always kill a mess of ducks, there 
have been no, very heavy bags on the bay this season, 
which is something very unusual, as this is a natural 
duck ground for fifty miles on the west shore and about 
fifteen miles on the east shore, with large marshes on 
the west shore and miles of shallow bars off from the 
east shore, with fine feed on both sides. 
"A week ago to-day I witnessed one of the finest duck 
flights that has been through here for a good many years. 
I was at Benderville for a week, twelve miles below here 
on the eastern shore, and at Bender's we are several 
hundred feet above the water, and have a good view for 
twenty miles down the bay and up to town, twelve miles 
the other way and nine miles directly across at this 
point, and the flight of ducks going south Avas worth go- 
ing miles to see. The flight was to the south inj the 
mornings, and to the north in the evenings, aad also east 
to Lake Michigan, directly across the peninsula eighteen 
miles east. The day was clear with a light northerly 
breeze, and great flocks of twenty-five to one thousand 
birds or more came from the north high in the air, out 
a half to three and four miles over the open water, and 
went about to the Point Au Sauble Bar, three miles 
south. They would alight and then fly up and circle out 
toward the west shore and Duck Creek Bend and the 
Second Light Island, then back north and meet the con- 
tinual steady flight from the north and join the already 
big flocks and go back toward the bar. When the sun 
would strike on the birds as they would turn on their 
circling flights the effect was truly grati4 if such a term 
m.ay be properly used. 
