Sept. 21, 1901.J 
tOHEST AND STREAM. 
to the quadrupeds of America, on which the naturalist 
was then engaged : 
New York, June 26th. 1841. 
My Dear Friend : 
I received your kind letter of the 26th of April, in due 
course, but have not answered to it, positively because of 
my having been constantly engaged in the drawing of 
quadrupeds (viviparous) for my contemplated Work of 
the animals of that Family which are to be found in 
North America, and I have made 25 Drawings, containing 
40 iigures, all the size of nature, within the last Two 
Months. 
In answer about the Horns, Johnny wished to know 
the price because of their being wanted for an English 
Gentleman who is a friend of ours; and / also am very 
desirous to see these horns that I may make drawings of 
them. I wish for the horns of the Wapati Deer (Elk), 
those the Moose, and also those of the Rein Deer, and 
should like them as fine and as large as can be procured ; 
let the price be no impediment. 
I regret the loss of "the Bird, and trust that vou will 
procure others next Spring or Winter. Wc will send you 
Nos. of the Work by the next Boston Steamer, 'and I 
am glad to know that you will escape the tedious Customs. 
You speak often of coming here, but when zvill yoti come? 
Our house must be yours while in New York, and I wish 
:you to remember that! 
And now. My -Dear Friend, that I am not only engaged 
:in a Work upon the quadrupeds of our country, but de- 
termined to go through it, in a masterly manner, I want 
you to assist me as much as is in your pOAver in the way 
>of procuring specimens for me and paying for them wh-at- 
<ever you may think proper, and for which I will refund 
you with great pleasure. I send you now a list of such 
.animals as I think you can get for me, and memorandums 
of such others as your may see chance to procure : The 
Wolverine, Pine Marten, Pekan or Fisher, Common Sable 
Mi nx. Weasels and Stoats, Ermine in Summer and Win- 
ter pelage, shrews of every kind, and even the common 
•inole, as it is called in this countrj--, although no true mole 
has been found in America; Hudson's Bay Skunk, Arctic 
Fox. Kit Fox, Canada Lynx, Bay Lynx, Banded Lynx, 
Mice and rats of all sorts. Squirrels of all sorts. Lem- 
mings, Quebec Marmot, the Whistler Marmot. Canada 
Pouched Rat, Canada Porcupine, the changeable Hare 
in summer plumage, Polar Hare from New Fotmdland. 
I should like Avhenever it can be the case to have 2 spcci- 
niens of- the same animals. One saved in Rum, the other 
in the Skin, after the measurements and the color of 
the eyes are noted, as well as the date, part of the coun- 
try, etc. Now is the season for the procuring of Hares 
above named in the summer pelage, and they are abun- 
■dant with you. If you have Bats about you, do procure 
:some of every sort you can, and save these, as well as all 
Ihe small rats. Mice, etc., in rum. Send me extra heads 
of everything you can in Rum, even that of a Moose and 
E'lk and Rein Deer. In fact, do not mind the expense, and 
have good casks and strong, common Rum. The Horns 
of the Deer must be sawed off about 2 Inches from the 
skull and the horns put with the stuffed skins. 
If j'ou are acquainted with any one residing in the 
Islands of your famed Gulph, do write to them and ask of 
them their assistance in the promotion of a science almost 
in its infancy, and yet of Immense interest when looked - 
upon as one of the Inimitable portions of Nature's God. 
I should like you not to wait too long to accumulate a 
large cargo, but to forward to me by good Vessels as soon 
as you have some half dozen specimens — recollect that a 
few hundreds of Dollars may have to be spent upon this, 
but' in my opinion Money cannot be laid out in a better 
■cause. I think that you may be source of bringing forth 
to the World of Science animals as yet quite unknown. 
With the Hope of hearing soon from you, or of seeing 
you, which would be greatly more agreeable, I will now 
close my letter with the most dismal portion of it. This 
is no less than the loss of our own beloved Daugliter-in- 
Law, the Wife of our Son Victor, who died 5 weeks ago 
of that insidious disease — -Consumption. Thus, in 8 
months, both our Sons have lost their partners and best 
of friends. 
God help you and yours. 
Your Friend, 
John J. Audubon. 
Blacfc Vwltttfe in Maine* 
KoKAD-jo Camp, Me., Sept. 6. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: It may interest your readers to learn that a 
black vulture was caught alive at Dover, Me., last week. 
It was feeding at a slaughter house there, and, after be- 
ing caught, was sent to a taxidermist, and was alive when 
my informant left Dover. I particularly asked about its 
head, and found it was black and bald. These birds are 
commonly called turkey buzzards, but are, as is well 
known, a different bird. How this bird strayed so far 
north seems rather remarkable, as there is no record, so 
far as I know, of such a capture so far awa3^ Dover 
is about the same latitude as Bangor. So far as my ob- 
servation goes this vulture does not soar as high as the 
ncommon buzzard, which at times is lost in the sky. and. 
OTight get caught in a strong gale. The vulture seems 
obliged to flap his wings to rise, while the buzzard can 
;Tise in curves with hardly any movement of the wings. 
Charles A. Dean. 
[The black vulture has occasionally been taken as an 
-irregular straggler in Maine, but its occurrence there is 
\ ery unusual, and always worth recording. The charac- 
teristics of its flight are well described by our corre- 
s.pondent.] 
Wellingfton Acclimatization Society* 
The Sixteenth Annual Report of the Wellington (New 
Zealand) Acclimatization Society carries it through the 
year ending March 31, 1901. 
The financial condition of the Society is most satisfac- 
tory, and in all respects the work that it is doing is good. 
It not only strives to perform what is implied by its 
name, that is to introduce and acchmatize useful animals, 
birds, fishes and so on, but it also strives to protect the 
native and introduced game, and to cause proper game 
laws to be enacted and enforced. 
A considerable portion of its work is the introduction 
Of exotic game birds and fish. It has imported and turned 
out red deer in various places in considerable numbers, 
and these have usually done remarkably well, so that in 
many sections there is now good deer stalking, and it is 
even said that "a large illicit trade in stags' heads is being 
earned" — to be stopped if possible. Two fallow deer have 
been turned out, and four moose, imported by the Gov- 
ernment, were set free and are said to be doing well. 
Sambur deer were liberated many years ago on the 
Carnarvon estate, and have become reasonably numerous. 
Virginia quail and California quail are said to have done 
well and increased, but many of them are destroyed by 
eatmg poisoned wheat laid out to kill rabbits, and natural 
enemies introduced to reduce the rabbit pest prey also on 
the birds. 
The good Work ddile by the Society in stocking streams 
with fish, especially salmonidce, is well known. 
Opossums in Greater New York* 
George E. Nash, who lives at No. 615 East Twenty- 
ninth street, Vanderveer Park, Brooklyn, on Wednesday 
night found an opossum tying on his dining room window 
sill. He secured a club and gave the animal a couple of 
blows on the head which killed it. It is said that quite a 
number of opossums have been seen in the Paerdegat 
woods at various times. 
mtie §^ md §nm 
Proprietors of shooting resorts will find it profitable to adverttw 
letn tn Forest and Stream. 
The Tale of the Baggage Man. 
I LISTENED to a tale of woe from a sportsman who, a 
year ago, after a successful gathering in of fifty-eight 
prairie chickens, handed them .in a gunny sack to the 
baggage man at a station far up north. When my friend 
claimed his gunny sack at the end of the journey, it was 
vei-3% very light— in fact, contained only fifteen chickens. 
Who took them, of course, the baggage man who handed 
out the bag could not tell. But they certainly were gone." 
Now, nothing will convince this' sportsman but that it is 
unsafe to trust a bunch of mallards or chickens or grouse 
to the care of the baggage master. 
On my return from Dalton. Minn., on the Great North- 
ern Railroad. I noticed in the morning, as the train reached 
St. Paul, several gunners take from the porter's closet of 
the car and from under the seats, bunches of chickens. 
To carry prairie chickens on board a warm sleeping car 
all night would be to subject them to quick disintegration, 
yet the OAvners of the birds, so they said, were willing to 
take their chances of their game souring and putrefying 
rather than risk theft in the baggage car. 
I am told that the gunner accepts the situation as simply 
unavoidable, and when he counts his birds after removal 
from the baggage car he simply considers himself lucky 
if the tax' has been a light enough one to yet enable him 
to make a fair showing to his friends. 
Imagine the feelings of the gunner who, when opening 
up his sack of birds after the arrival of the train, finds 
the half-dozen fine, greenhead mallards gone from his 
bunch. The baggageman shrugs his shoulders and knows 
not who took them. 
No receipt or check is given for game, it being handed 
to the baggageman and then identified and claimed by 
the owner at the end of the journey. Who knows as to 
the count of the bunch of chickens or the number of ducks 
in the gunny sack ? You have no receipt to show whether 
your string contained twenty or thirty birds. There may 
be a bunch of chickens hanging in the car, but a prairie 
chicken is a prairie chicken, a case, in fact, of "all coons 
look alike to me." You may think these birds hanging in 
the car were your missing birds — but prove it. When re- 
turning from Dalton I put my ducks into a sack and 
handed it to the baggageman on the train. My friend 
used diplomacy. Leaving out a pair of redhead ducks he 
tied up his sack securely, then stringing the pair of ducks, 
he attached his card, marking it "For the baggage master. 
with compliments of ." But when I counted my 
birds on rny arrival at my house. I found the full number, 
and so I did not pay toll voluntarily or involuntarily. So, 
personally, I cannot allege that the custom of helping one's 
self is in vogue among the baggagemen, although, if I 
believed the tales of others, I would be led to so th'nk. 
It may be that all baggagemen on the Great Northern 
Railroad are above game pilfering, and certainly my ex- 
perience is not against that theory. Now, if there is' any- 
thing at all in the hue and cry of the hunters who claim 
to get back from the baggage car but 75 per cent, of what 
they handed in when they boarded the train at the up- 
country station, then some enterprising railroad running 
through a game country can make capital out of a few 
such lines in their advertisement as these : 
"Patrons of our line can rest assured of a full count of 
their game being delivered to them at the end of the jour- 
ney. Any shortage reported will be investigated and loss 
made good, and baggage master discharged." 
When men will stuff their birds under the hot seat of a 
sleeper for fear of trusting them to a baggageman with a 
taste for game, they must have some reason for so doing. 
And yet. after a man has earned his ducks by the hard- 
est kind of a day's work, risking rheumatism and even 
life almost to secure them, he does feel chagrined on his 
arrival home to find his count woefully short. 
Imagine the moose hunter returning from Maine with 
head and saddle, to have the saddle handed out to him 
and the baggage master to know nothing about the head ! 
In such a case some roaring would be done, and perhaps 
the head would turn up. but a matter of ten or a dozen 
birds missiiTg out of fift}' Avould not be quite so serious. 
Personally, it has been my good fortune to find 
baggage masters honest in the matter of handing one a 
full count of game entrusted to them, but if I relied en- 
tirely on hearsay evidence. I would say that toll was ex- 
acted. Whether the train boys make free with the bunches 
of game piled upon the floor of the car or who it is I do 
not know, but raise the question of baggage toll on game 
among ^oy gathering of sportsmen and you are sure to 
hear a tale of woe, with more or less profanity sand* 
wiched in, for cussing seems to be the only relief in the 
premises, provided what they tell you is so. 
Charles Cristadoro. 
Carrying on Portages. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I agree with Col. Cecil Clay when, in speaking of the 
man who, after throwing away "some provisions and 
camp articles," still had ten heavy loads for an eight-day 
trip in August. He says : "What in the name of con- 
science do you suppose the man had with him?" What 
makes the matter still more mysterious, is that on his 
whole trip there was no time, except when he was on 
the Allegash above the Chamberlain, when he could not 
easily have got to new supplies in a day, and in most 
cases in half a day. It also beats me entirely as to where 
he could have kept himself in all the time he says he did 
not see any one. I can only conclude that he must have 
spent his time asleep on the back side of some island in 
Grand Lake, for it is very seldom that one can go half a 
day on the route which he traveled without meeting one 
or more parties. I traveled it some ten years ago, and 
there was but one day when we did not see men, and 
often several parties in a day, and now there are ten men 
in our A'Iaine woods where there was one then. 
I can imagine how to a man who dares not go out of 
sight of a camp for fear of being lost, the country he is in 
may really seem to be "unwritten and unsung" till he dis- 
covered it; but the cold facts are that this same country 
was all so accurately mapped out fifty''years ago, that 
any^one could find any pond a quarter of a mile long with- 
out fail if he understood traveling by compass. It was 
hunted all over years ago. I was a late arrival in it, and I 
was all over it. and ten times what he traveled over, forty 
years ago; and for a three inonths' trip did not have 
any ten heavy loads, though our two canoes and traps and 
bear traps would weigh 300 pounds, and we had winter 
clothing, bedding and snowshoes to carry. 
But Maine's a State which will bear lots of discovery.. 
There is scarcely a year when some enterprising person 
does not discover some pond or stream, and give it a new 
name. To be sure, there are usually old lumber camps 
near it, and old, rotting dams made by lumbermen ; but 
as Mr. Dooley says of his joke on Niagara, "It's mine, 
Hinnissy. Others made it before me, but I made it las'. 
Th' las' man that makes a joke owns it." Mr. Steele, 
when John P. Spearen found him and his guides lost near 
Upper Munsongan, and got him out and fed him, very 
promptly discovered the lake as soon as he got his second 
wind, and named it Echo Lake. One man on Mt. Desert 
discovered some old Indian graves, and went to get tools 
to dig in them, when he was informed that they were 
the graves of some of the Higgins' children. Yes, there 
are lots of things in Maine for a city man to discover, 
which the "natives," as this writer calls the inhabitants 
of Maine, never thought of discovering. 
M. Habdy. 
Trespassing on Private Grounds. 
Having had opportunities of studying the subject from 
both sides of the fence, I would like to record in Forest 
AND Stream my deductions. 
Some years ago when living in town it was customary 
for several of us to go upon shooting expeditions into 
the country and the mountains. At that time game was 
much more plentiful than at this, and posted fields were 
seldom found. When we did find them, we often ignored 
the notices and almost unanimously condemned the cus- 
tom, feeling much offended that any individual should 
have wild game within his domain and prohibit the pub- 
lic from climbing his fences to shoot it. The deer we 
had found in the mountains, the ducks or quails we 
flushed on unclaimed ground, or the sqtiirrels our dogs 
treed, might go into anybody's field or pasture. Were 
we to lose it on that account? Not much. We believed 
the wild birds and animals public property, and we as- 
serted the right to kill them anywhere. And this is the 
belief yet in many parts of the country, particularly in 
out-of-the-way districts. 
And it all seems very reasonable to the fellow whO' is 
out for game, and who owns no lands or preserves, and 
who only goes out of his town limits to kill birds and 
other game tir catch fi&h. He seems to consider the 
realms outside of metropolitan boundaries free for all 
and go-as-you-please. It is not his province to con- 
sider that the depredation he is committing is not 
merely an occasional raid, but that the same thing is 
being done day by day by thousands. Neither does he 
consider that all hunters are not necessarily honest or 
thoughtful. 
In later years I have had occasion and opportunity to 
look at the subject from the inside of the fence. Several 
of us obtained possession of a few hundred acres of wild 
mountain land, acquired by the payment of money and the 
rather rigorous compliance with the homestead laws of the 
United States. We could scarcely reach our grounds by 
trail with horses, and it was expensive and laborious to 
construct a road to them, fence and partly clear the 
jungle. It was in a district where none had a legitimate 
reason for intruding without permission of the owners. 
Much of the land was cleared of worthless thickets, 
forest debris and rocks, and many beasts and birds of 
prey were exterminated. All this took years of time and 
considerable money. The principal attractions of tlie place 
were its isolation, the natural beauties, and notabl}' the 
wild birds, the game animals and a diminutive trout stream. 
The game and fish were not plentiful, but by preventing 
indiscriminate shooting and fishing, both would in time 
increase, making the place more attractive and affording 
a small refuge for the game of the locality. 
Ten years' experience has demonstrated to us that most 
sportsmen look alike in the mountains. No sooner was a 
road opened than it was made a public highway by many 
fishers and gunners, their principal object arid goal being 
the lands we had made accessible and owned. We could not 
keep any stock on our premises, for predatory thieves, and 
it was at times dangerotis to be within our own fences, ow- 
ing to bullets fired from long-range rifles, or to reckless 
