ASKIU 20, 1901.3 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
SOS 
been patched up by the animals, as the photos show. No 
doubt there are others. As the ice was thoroughly soft 
and rotten and no boat covild be brought near, it was dan- 
gerous work to get into position for a picture. I had to 
jump from partly frozen tussock to tussock, while a 
lo-foot pole could be put out of sight between them. 
I also discovered the remnants of two beaver dams 
across the inlet brook. They, however, were made during 
the low state of water. One or both, I understand, were 
partly opened by a native, and the rush of w'ater from 
recent rains has flooded and partly destroyed them. 
Whether these beaver are any old* original stock or 
where they came from I do not know, but they have evi- 
dently been here several seasons and are doing well, and I 
learn upon further inquiry that there are other places 
within a few miles in this same region where beaver are 
at home. 
These highlands of northern New Jersey are easily 
reached by the Lackawanna and Susquehanna railroads and 
are about as good a natural upland game country as can be 
found anywhere in this part of the country. Ruffed grouse 
are quite numerous in many places. No better woodcock 
covers can be found, and while some of this country, much 
of which is between 1,000 and 2,000 feet above tide water, 
is rather rough and severe in winter for quail, these can 
be made to do better with a little artificial care. Sussex 
county holds the health record for the State, and it alone 
has nearly fifty lakes, and most of them teem with fish. 
The time will come when with proper game laws and 
their enforcement, and more preservation and propagation, 
this whole region will again be a paradise for the sports- 
man. Justus von Lengerke, 
Experience with Wild Animals. 
Scotch Lake, N. B., March 29. — Editor Forest and 
Stream : In Forest and Stream of Feb. g is an article on 
dangerous wild animals, by Wm, Wells, that is very in- 
teresting to me. I had always supposed that there were 
sonie dangerous wild animals in the West, but not dan- 
gerous to any great extent : but it seems by this article by 
Mr. VVelfs that there are none, and 1 don't doubt it in the 
least, as it is just my experience with big game in the 
East. The greater part of my time is spent in the wnldcst 
and most remote parts of the New Brunswick forest, and 
right in the home of the moose, caribou and black bear, 
and I. have yet to .see the first dangerous animal. If a 
little caution" is used in approaching wounded animals, if 
they are not very badly W'ounded, they will, as in every 
case that I have "seen, use all their strength to get away. 
We hear a .great many stories about dangerous bull 
moose, and are told of many hairbreadth escapes from 
them by getting up a 'tree in the nick of time, and being 
kept there for hotirs until nearly frozen ; but I believe 
it to be ''all rot." I have seen, hundreds of bull moose at 
all times of the year and in all kinds of places, and never 
yet saw one that wanted to put up a fight. 
About twenty-five years ago I was working in the lum- 
ber woods, and one of our party came in to camp on 
Saturday night with a wonderful story about a narrow 
escape from a bull moose that afternoon. He had been 
away alone cruising for lumber and had come on a bUnch 
of moose — a bull, two cows and a calf. The bull had 
charged him ori sight, and to escape he had cravi^led under 
BE^VVEU HUT NO. I. 
Plioto March 24, 1901. 
a big windfall that lay up some two feet from the ground, 
.md by doing a lot of dodging from one side to the other 
he had managed to escape with his life, after being kept 
in there for hours. This happened in December, and there 
was a good tracking snow. The next day. Sunday. I 
took my gun and started to investigate. I found where 
he had started the moose all right, and where he had 
cr'awled under the windfall, but I failed to find any tracks 
near the windfall to show that the moose had tried to 
get at him. The fact was that the tracks all pointed in 
the opposite direction, and that the bull was not the last 
one to go, also that they had lost no time in going. 
Now this man was a good, reliable fellow, with more in- 
telligence than the ordinary woodsman, and every man in 
the crew believed him, and I have no doubt that he be- 
lieved himself that the moose ^yas after him when he 
went under -the log. But the snow the next day told the 
whole story and told the truth. I was alone that day, and 
what I saw I kept to myself, and there was not a man 
in that crew but believed it was a narrow escape, and 
that a btill moose was a dangerous animal to meet. 
Again last December I stayed all night at a lumber 
camp far up on the headwaters of the Tobique River. 
About dark the foreman came in with his rifle and re- 
lated some wonderful yarns about a big bull moose that 
chased every one who went out on a certain ridge, and had 
treed several men, but all had so far escaped with their 
lives. That day he had been out cruising in that locality, 
but had not dared to go without a rifle to protect himself. 
But I came to the conclusion that he had no license to 
htmt, as the law requires, but that there were some big 
moose tracks out there, and that he carried his rifle in 
hope of meeting the moose, and told these stories to 
justify himself in kiUing the moose without a license if he 
got a chance. All the men in that crew believed him, and 
so d:d a young fellow who was with me. I didn't con- 
tradict the story,- why should I? Let them believe it if 
they wanted to, but the foreman never got the moose and 
it is not likely that he ever will. 
These are two of the reasons why such stories are 
told — one from imagination and fear, the other from 
TREE 14 INCHES IN DIAMETER IN PROCESS OF CUTTING BY 
BEAVER. 
Photo March 24, 1901. 
mercenary motives. I know of a great many such stories 
as told by others, but these two cases cover the ground 
pretty well. 
On June 20, 1898, I was paddling through a shoal lake 
with one of my men 'in the bow of the canoe, and we saw 
a two-year-old cow moose feeding right ahead of us. I 
paddled directly toward it, facing the wind. It saw us 
when about eighty yards distant and stood still, facing 
us. while 1 paddled slowly directly, toward it, until 
witliin about five yards, when the man m the bow seized a 
pole and .shoved the canoe back, as he didn't want to 
get any closer. W^e did that three different times, and the 
imoose never flinched. The last time the canoe was within 
ten feet. Then we went round it and left it standing 
there, and it was there w^hen Ave went out of sight 
around a bend. Three different times since I have paddled 
up to a young moose till the bow of the canoe struck it. 
but it didn't want to fight, nor was it in the least dan- 
gerous ; it was simply the curiosity of a young animal 
that had never seen a man before. 
T see every summer. many cow moose with their calves; 
they generally have two. and I have passed the calves 
with a canoe close enough to touch them w'ith a canoe 
pole, and the cow;- always run _away and leave them. I 
never even saw i.ue make 'a blutt at showing fight, but as 
they n,in, away they nearly always call their calves after 
them. 
Last spring- 1 was crossing a lake in a canoe with two 
friends h nr days after the ice went out. W^e saw a cow 
moose and calf swimming the lake, and when they got 
to the shore the calf was so chilled with the cold w^ater 
that it could not get out on the bank. We helped it out, 
rubbed it dry and left- it on a 'mossy knoll after taking 
some photographs of it. It could nnt have been more than 
one day old: its mother went slowly into the bushes when 
we were working with the calf, but returned as soon as 
we left it. and took it with her. yet she showed no signs 
whatever of being dangerous. 
An old moose in the rutting season wants to know 
what he is running from before he starts, and his curiosity 
often gels him into trouble, but when he finds out that 
it is a man he does not wait to do any fighting. Caribou 
have a whole lot of curiosity, bttt it takes a lively im,agina- 
tion to consider them dangerous if a reasonable amount of 
care is taken in approaching a badly wounded animal. 
My experience with the black bear is that he is the 
.greatest coward of theni all. Even when caught in a 
steel trap he will rarely show as much fight as a musk- 
rat. I have killed a good many and son^e big ones, but 
have not met a dangerous one yet. I make a business of 
hunting and trapping bears, and I go into the wildest and 
most remote wilderness after them, right into the home 
and breeding ground of all kinds of Eastern big game, and 
I have never yet seen the need of carrying firearms for 
protection against dangerous wild animals. 
Two years ago Charlie Cremin and I were trapping 
bears on the headwaters of Nepisiquit River, We went 
part way over our line of traps with a canoe, and walked 
part of it. We started Monday, May 29, by canoe down 
the river; we took five bears going down, and on 
Wednesday, as we were coming back up, we found a 
big one that had just got into a light but powerful trap. 
I proposed shooting him at once, but Charlie said, "No ; 
let us see how much fight is in him." and as we were 
feeling pretty good over our success in taking six bears 
on one run, we agreed to see what this big fellow would 
do. So we cleared away the brush from round him to 
give him a chance to fight if he wanted to ; but he didn't 
want to and didn't. The only thing he would do to try 
and defend himself was to catch the blows on the pad of 
muscle on top of his head. Trapping bears will seem 
cruel to most sportsmen, and it certainly is, but if they 
have seen caribou and moose torn by bears as I have and 
consider how very hard it is to get a chance to shoot 
the cowardly brutes, they will say there is some excuse 
for it. 
We have no wolves in New Brunswick and_ no panthers, 
but we have the Canada lynx and the bay lynx, or bobcat. 
They kill deer and caribou and young moose, and some- 
times they act very independent about getting out of a 
man's way; but they can't be called dangerous, though 
they are large enough to be so if they wanted to be. 
There are comparatively few readers who will believe 
this, as their information has generally been got from the 
Sunday papers and from story tellers such as I have writ- 
ten about, and not from actual experience. Occasionally 
a writer for the daily papers will strike us old hunters 
for a story, but when it comes out in the paper we 
would scarcely know it for what we had told them, and 
if any experienced sportsman should happen to see it he 
would say, "That man is an awful liar," and they would 
be right if we had told the story as it is generally printed. 
Adam Moore. 
Heredity and Telegony. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Permit me a few words in reply to Mr. W, Wade in 
your last number. I quote Mr. Wade as follows : "Teleg- 
ony is dead in the face of heredity, as pestiferous rot as 
the idea is of its being an invariable result of mesalli- 
ances, that it does occur in rare cases seems well estab- 
lished," 
The above sentence is somewhat obscure as to the 
meaning intended to be conveyed, but Mr. Wade makes 
his po-sition clearer in his subsequent remarks, from which 
I gather that he sets up "rare cases" of "abnormalities" 
as grounds for overthrowing the palpable and all-prevail- 
ing course of normal transmission by heredity. Indeed, he 
overshoots his mark, and disproves his allegations by the 
examples cited, as, for instance, the potency for hereditary 
transmission of his "born tailless dog." 
The interruption of the regular course of heredity by 
occasional but rare departures from the normal type of the 
parents, together with "freaks of nature" and deformities, 
may be attributed in many cases to atavism or "telegony," 
as Mr. Wade prefers to call it, which is in itself very 
strong proof of the persistence of heredity. Parents hav- 
ing light hair and bltte eyes as a rule bear children of 
the same type, and when there is an occasional departtire 
to black eyes and hair the persistent influence of a former 
ancestor asserts itself. Many of the more radical ab- 
normalities may perhaps be attributable to "twists from 
embryolog5V' as Mr, Wade suggests, which expression I 
interpret to mean the results of certain abnormal agencies, 
physical or psychological, exerted upon the sensitive em- 
bryo which may in their tiirn become sources of hered- 
itary characteristics. 
As to the Mexican hairless dog, I used him for the pur- 
pose of a general illustration, with very little specific 
knowledge of the creature. Having seen quite a number 
of them, however, and heard or read something more 
of them, I have the impression that the hairless dog of 
Mexico constitutes a type in which hairless parents usu- 
ally give birth to hairless progeny by hereditary trans- 
mission, and that the type developed in response to the 
do'-nands of environment. Certain it is that no thin 
BEAVER HUT NO, 2. 
Photo March 24, 1901. 
haired dogs are to be found in the Arctic regions, and 
none with thick fur in the tropics. It is equally certain 
that Arctic furry animals produce furry offspring, and 
that the proximate cause of the furry characteristic of the 
offspring is its existence in the parents. The same prin- 
ciple controls in tropical types, and this we call heredity. 
Coahoma. 
An Albmo Ha-wk. 
Editor Forest and Stream: — ;^ 
I recently saw a discussion in Forest and Stream 
relating to albino hawks, Mr. Samuel Nixon, whose ad- 
dress is Eldora. W. Va., has now a very fine specimen of 
albino haw-k in his possession, it is of the redtail species, 
and save for a few feathers is pure white. Its plumage is 
in good condition and would make any naturalist a fine 
specimen. I have no doubt that it could be pro- 
cured of Mr. Nixon for a vety reasonable sum. The bird 
was caught uninjured in a trap, and I should guess- it ta 
measure 4 feet from tip to tip of wings. 
C. L. Shaves, • 
