FOREST AND STREAM, 
[J A3?, lyiv 
less their hill-climbing feats made the poles serve as 
measuring rods by which the vastness of the country could 
be scaled. 
The pike led through gaps, over ridges, along side- 
hills, sometimes close to woods of pine and oak, but usu- 
ally far from them. I stopped at one place to take a 
photograph — it was an odd streak of luck, for that pic- 
ture, I learned later, was from Tull's Hill, at the foot of 
which a family of ten or eleven persons were massacred in 
1778 by the Indians. 
I had gone only four or five miles when a man in a 
carriage came along, and for the first time since I started 
from Northwood was I reluctant to take a ride. It was a 
fine walking day, and if I had followed my feelings I 
would have walked clear into Bedford. It seemed best, 
however, to make haste, so I rode. 
My route from Bedford south was down the road to 
the Bedford Springs, the summer resort. The old mill 
where John Brown held his meeting before starting south 
to disaster at Harper's Ferry was the first place of in- 
terest to me. The location, at the bottom of a wooded 
valley beside a rippling stream, was fit for historic asso- 
ciations. The long hillside hotel a few rods further on 
was not obtrusive. Only one person was there. He 
was the caretaker. I asked him if the mill I had seen 
was the one where John Brown had been. He said he 
didn't know, but nothing of that sort had occurred in his 
time. It seemed that old John Brown and James 
Buchanan, the most notable visitors at Bedford Springs, 
must have lived in vain if they depended on summer re- 
sorts to preserve the memory of their deeds. 
The road forked at the upper end of the hotel grounds 
and I turned to the left there, and for miles went up 
Shover's Valley. This was once a runway of escaped 
slaves. They came to "Virginia," a freed slave settlement 
up on the side of Evitt's Mountain, then over to Fisher- 
town, the Quaker settlement, and on to Old Benny 
Walker's. In the valley many slaves were recaptured 
and carried back, shackled in wagons. The stories of 
those days may still be heard from the old gray-bearded 
men, but the younger generations know little of them — 
"it was before their time," and usually they don't care 
what happened then. 
Many of the freed negroes have moved away. More 
than 350 are buried on Evitt's Mountain in two ceme- 
teries. But their old log cabins, put up without a plumb 
line, and merely guided by a sense of the square, still 
stand, some with white occupants, some vacant. At one 
of the former there was a man stretching a raccoon's skin 
on a board. He said he "treed it the night before." 
Apple growers are covering the farms there with 
orchards which give the valley a wilder appearance than 
its reality warrants. Some of the farms are posted against 
trespassers of the hunter sort. At intervals along the 
road there are openings through which one sees the 
valley, beautiful as nature and suggestive of its romantic 
history — suggestive of the old-time fugitives from in- 
justice—and, from justice as well, for counterfeiters, 
highwaymen and horse thieves once dwelt there at inter- 
vals during their extraordinary careers. 
At 3 P. M. I was past the head of Shover's Run. The 
road ran up grade a little steeper than heretofore. Sud- 
denly, as I walked into a patch of woods, the grade 
turned. The next instant I sat down on a log. I was at 
the top of another divide. Behind me was the Juniata 
and Susquehanna watershed ; before me was the Potomac. 
The thought made me breathe as fast as if I had been run- 
ning a race — and the sensation was very much as if I 
had won it. Nevertheless, as I went on for a mile 
further, the down grade was not so steep as that my spirit 
followed. The change was due to the reaction, I suppose. 
Five miles further on I came to Centerville, and re- 
mained there all night. Some bad men lived there once, 
but "they are dead now J let by-gones be forgotten," as I 
was told. I left there on the following day, wondering 
how much of local history has been written here and there 
on the same principle. 
The weather had been- growing colder, and as I started 
away from Centerville, gray clouds were driving over 
from the northeast. Occasionally a dash of sleety ram 
fell, but it was not at all a hard day to travel, the roads be- 
ing hard. At 10 o'clock it began to snow quite hard. By 
noon I was wet from the hips down, while the ground was 
covered and white. I stopped at a farmhouse about noon. 
It proved to be the post office of Hale. A marriage near 
by was the leading topic of conversation. A girl had 
advertised for a lover, got one and agreed to marry him 
before she saw him. Three days after he appeared she 
wedded him. That was something for the region to 
remember and to discuss. v T 
When I started on again the snow was still falling, but 1 
enjoyed the experience in spite of the physical discomfort 
due to wet and wind, comparing myself somewhat con- 
ceitedly to the wandering winds and the driven clouds. 
At 1 :3s o'clock P. M. I crosed the Maryland-Pennsyl- 
vania line. Somehow the notion had taken root in my 
mind that Maryland would be warm and balmy when I 
got to it. As a matter of fact, there was an inch and a 
half of snow on the ground, and whenever I stopped to 
rest I shivered with the<;wind — blown cold in less than a 
minute' In this fashion did dreams of Dixie's Land fail in 
the realization. I stopped about two miles from Cumber- 
land under a ledge of rocks beside the. road, buried my 
feet in the dry leaves there and wrote in my notebook: 
"I am far from home. Wet, cold, with catarrh coming 
on Stiff-fingered. A northeast rain and snowstorm. I 
walk with rubber blanket over my head— keeps me partly 
dry at least. I am pretty tired and a bit homesick. With 
such feelings as these words indicate I entered the South- 
ern States. Raymond S. Spears. 
New Jersey Export Fines, 
Two New Jersey sportsmen. August Reinhold and 
Joseoh G. Walling, of Keyport, went shooting on Christ- 
mas* and bagged fourteen quail and three rabbits. On Fri- 
day of last week they set out for New York with the game 
to present to friends iri the city. Game Warden C. M. 
Hawkins arrested them as they were boarding the ferry 
boat and before a Jersey City justice of the peace pre- 
ferred against them a charge of violating the non-export 
law. They were fined $20 each. 
All communications -intended for Fomst akd Stmam should 
always be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., and 
not to any individual connected with the paper. 
A Squirrel Friend of Mine. 
Traps and guns, swords, sticks, darts and rocks, 
things innumerable, are employed in the hunting, bring- 
ing down and catching of game, big and little, but the 
average hunter does not go after squirrels with nothing 
but his rapid feet to pursue and his bare hands to 
secure them. 
In the spring of '99, while driving in Kansas with my 
husband, we had reached a stretch of prairie road, skirted 
on either side by rows of cottonwoods, planted in early 
days, for the Kansas upland is by nature unwooded. As 
we drove on, a little fox squirrel darted across the road. 
"Hold the horses," said my husband, "that is a 
young fellow. I can catch him." 
And he did. He got the little frightened creature 
cornered in a pile of leaves, down branches and other 
rubbish, and soon brought him to the carriage. He gave 
him to me, with instructions to cuddle him in my lap 
under the robe, and assured me that he would soon 
grow quiet. 
After a few moments of nervous energy, expended in 
trying to get away, he went to sleep and did not awake 
until we reached home. He was so young that it re- 
quired but a few days of petting and feeding to make 
a bold, saucy chap of him. He was not only one of the 
family, but the one of the family. We gave him the 
ten-roomed house for a cage, and he proceeded to keep 
up a game of hide and seek with us. He slept in the 
folds of the portieres, rolled himself up in towels, aprons 
or any scattered garment that he happened to find. At 
night we placed him in a box, but he never took kindly 
to it, trying always to hide away. One night we hunted 
him unsuccessfully, nor did we see more of him until 
breakfast, when, hearing the clatter of dishes, he bounded 
down the front stairs and up in some one's lap, for his 
share of food. The next night we watched him go to the 
sewing room upstairs, and followed him. For some 
time we could not find him. Then he was "brought 
to earth" in a box of silk and velvet pieces, snugly 
rolled up in a round ball, with one wicked little black 
eye turned up to us. The next night we found him in 
a hanging bag of scrap pieces. Each night we found 
him in a new hiding place, for he never slept in one of 
his retreats after he had been discovered in it. 
In the summer, when we went to New England, we 
took Bunny with us, and he became a traveler, both 
by land and sea. for he went from Boston to Portland, 
Me., by boat 
There is no space to tell of Bunny's constantly chang- 
ing saucy capers and adventures, but one noticeably 
funny incident happened before he himself became one 
of the chief factors in the squirrel hunt. He was very 
fond of cocoanut taffy, and one day, while he was feast- 
ing on it, he was given a little sliver of tobacco. He 
was in a large bird cage at the time. He ate the tobacco, 
and inside of five minutes his eyes grew glazed and he 
slowly crept to a bed of grass that he had made and 
stretched himself out at full length on his stomach, the 
most forlorn, abject looking little wretch one ever saw. 
He was sick for several hours, and he would never again 
touch taffy, which he evidently thought was the cause 
of his sorrow. 
It was on our return to the West that Bunny made 
his record in the capture of a squirrel, We were in the 
park in Atchison, and I had been left to guard the squir- 
rel, while the rest of the party wandered about. He was 
in a covered lunch basket. Hearing a singing noise, un- 
like anything I had ever heard, I looked up and saw 
what I supposed to be Bunny dancing about on a bench 
near by. I sprang to the lunch basket, to find my squir- 
rel safe, and then noticed that the stranger on the 
bench, though a fox squirrel, was much larger than mine. 
I walked a few feet from the basket, which the strange 
squirrel soon approached and smelled. I went to it, 
when he scampered down the hill and disappeared around 
the foot of a hickory, I took Bunny out of the basket, 
walked up to the tree, and stood peering about. Soon 
the singing noise that I had heard before again at- 
tracted my attention, and I looked up to see the squir- 
rel coming slowly down the tree. With fast-beating 
heart and the fierce expectant joy of the huntsman, I 
held Bunny close to the tree for a decoy. Would the 
other one be decoyed? Yes. Slowly he descended, came 
close to Bunny and they smelled and rubbed noses with 
a curiosity and satisfaction so absorbing that I cautiously 
raised my right hand and grabbed the stranger, not by 
the back of the neck, but around the back and stomach. 
Undoubtedly he was surprised, but no more so than I 
was, when he immediately turned and buried his cruel 
little white fangs in my forefinger to the bone. I held 
to him, screaming for my party to come. 
With a squirrel in each hand and an' imprisoned finger 
I could do nothing alone, but with help he was placed in 
the lunch basket, while one of us carried Bunny, who 
we were afraid to leave with the wild one, who was old, 
large-sized and fat. We took him home , with us, but 
as he cut the fringe off of a new couch and whipped the 
little squirrel inside of ten minutes after we had turned 
him loose, we gave him his freedom. 
In the fall Bunny got in the habit of standing on 
his hind feet, and .with his front feet against the screen, 
of looking wistfully out of doors for many minutes at a 
time. We loved him, but we could not see him pining 
for freedom, so we opened the door and let him out. He 
played in the trees for hours, but finally came back, to 
be let into the house. After this. he went out every day 
for a play in the trees. 
As the fall days advanced, he developed a trait that 
showed the inborn instinct, for it was not taught him 
by any squirrel mother. We noticed, one day, after giv- 
ing him a nut, that, after pretending to gnaw it a while, 
he watched his opportunity, and sneaked off, soon re- 
turning for another nut. He did the same with apples, 
corn and other food. Upon investigation we found the 
folds of a tent that had been laid in a back room, full 
of corn, nuts, pieces of apples, cracker, cake, etc.; and 
we found similar things in all kinds of out of the way 
places. A prune that was given him was slightly nibbled 
and hidden in the stocking basket. 
Though he was born in the spring and had no squirrel- 
mother-love-instruction on the subject of winter, his ani- 
mal instinct told him of the approach of cold weather, 
and he was preparing for it. 
One day he was in my up -stairs bed room with me, 
and was playing on the sill of an open window, when he 
jumped to the roof of a bay window, from thence to the 
small limb of a tree, near by, down the tree and to the 
ground. He did not return, as was his wont, although 
we searched out of doors and called. When the children 
retired for the night. Bunny was in their bed, under the 
covers, peacefully sleeping. He had, doubtless, run up 
the tree, leaped to the roof, into the window, across my 
room, the hall, and the children's room, and had put 
himself to bed. We had him for more than a year. 
Then, in one of his out of door rambles, he wandered 
too far away and never returned. 
The true sportsman, although he loves to shoot, must, 
of necessity, love nature, and understand the habits of 
the game he seeks. 
Though something of a shot myself, and fairly well ac- 
quainted with the birds, cotton-tails, Jack rabbits, occa- 
sional praririe chickens and quail of our Kansas prairies, 
I was little familiar with the shy and timid squirrel of the 
West; and I was delighted to study the specimen we had. 
He was as cunning and playful as a kitten, as mis- 
chievous as a monkey, and as interesting as any of our 
denizens of wood or plain. 
Adelaide Schmidt Wayland. 
KANSAS, 
The Pumas. 
Among a number of interesting papers recently pub- 
lished in the Proceedings of the Washington Academy of 
Sciences by Df, C. Hart Merriam, is one on the pumas, 
which has especial interest for all hunters and naturalists 
as being the most recent and fullest contribution to our 
knowledge of these great cats, which, as the country be- 
comes more and more full of people, are gradually dis- 
appearing before the advancing waves of civilization. 
The pumas, or cougars — as is well known—form a 
strongly marked group readily distinguished from the 
other cats by their large size, slender build, long tail, un- 
marked body and the relatively small head. They are con- 
fined to America, where they range from Southern Pata- 
gonia northward over nearly the whole of South and Cen- 
tral America, Mexico and the United States, reaching 
their northern limit in southern Canada— in Ontario on 
the east and British Columbia on the west. During the 
last hundred years the range of these animals in the 
United States has become greatly restricted, and they 
have been exterminated over large areas. With the 
possible exception of the Green Mountains of Vermont, 
they are not now known to inhabit New England, though 
formerly occurring in several of the States there. A 
few are probably still found in New York, and they 
occur in Florida and in the lowlands of Louisiana and in 
the mountains of the West. 
The puma is an animal of many names, of which puma, 
cougar, panther, painter and mountain lion are some of 
the best known. Mention of them occurs in all early 
works on exploration and natural history, and in 
1771 Linnaeus named the Brazilian species Felis concolor. 
This has been the term commonly used for all pumas of 
whatever region up to withim a few years, but in 1890 
Mr. Chas. B. Cory recognized the Florida puma as a 
distinct species, and in 1897 Dr. Merriam himself de- 
scribed two new forms from the West, one from the 
northern Rocky Mountains, and the other from the north- 
west coast region. Still later, it came to be believed that 
there were other forms of cougar which had never been 
described. 
When recently, Hon. Theodore Roosevelt, President 
of the United States, presented to the U. S. Biological 
Survey the series of twelve skulls of the Rocky Mountain 
cougar or mountain lion, taken from animals killed by 
him in January and February of the present year, Dr. 
Merriam was led to compare these skulls with others from 
different localities, and gradually to a study of such 
specimens from various parts of North and South Amer- 
ica as could easily be brought together. . The present 
paper is the result of this study. 
The skulls collected by the President form a series of 
unusual value, not only because each is accompanied by 
precise notes of the color, measurement and weight 
of the animal from which it was taken, but also because 
the examination of so large a series from a single locality 
shows the nature of the differences resulting from sex and 
age, enables the student to judge as to the kind and 
quantity of individual variations, and sets a standard 
for comparison with other members of the group, thus 
furnishing a means of estimating the probable value of 
particular cranial or dental pecularities observed in single 
skulls from remote 1 regions. A discussion of the varia- 
tions presented by the Roosevelt series of skulls shows 
surprisingly little individual variation with the sexes. 
In the cats it is generally the case that the male is 
the larger and more highly developed. This is true of 
the pumas, and Dr. Merriam declares that in these animals 
the male alone attains a complete specific differentiation. 
By this is meant that the distinctive characters of the 
skull of the various forms of the puma are fully de- 
veloped only in the males; the skulls of females of 
different forms resemble each other so closely that they 
are distinguished with difficulty. 
Among the peculiarly noticeable charactersof the skulls 
in the several members of the puma group is the degree 
of elevation and depression of the face and frontal region. 
The extremes of such differences are shown by the 
Patagonian puma of the Southern Andes, and the puma 
found in the Puget Sound region. In the South American 
species the skull is long and low, and the face slopes 
strongly backward, while in the northwest coast form the 
face rises abruptly, the frontal region is highly elevated 
and swollen, giving to the animal a face very different in 
appearance from its South American relatives. Again, 
in the Western form — from the Rocky Mountains and the 
Pacific coast — the skulls are massive, with heavy under 
jaws, and contrast strongly with the same parts in the 
Brazilian puma, while the animal of the Andes has huge 
teeth, strikingly different from those of the Central Amer- 
ican region. 
Most of the cougars present two color phases, and 
