April t-2, igo±\ 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
286 
No doubt all wild animals know when they cross the 
fresh trail of a man, but few of them seem to fear it, 
and many will walk along it. I remember, though, an 
exeeption, and that was in the case of a mountain goat, 
generally conceded to be the most stupid of all game ani- 
mals. We had traversed a high, steep ridge, my friend 
and I, and arriving at the end of it sat down to rest. 
In a few moments we saw an old billygoat slowly making 
his way up from below, stopping for a bite of some tempt- 
ing vegetation hu e and there, never once looking about 
or sniffing the air to detect the presence of some enemy, 
is the habit of the bighorn and deer. But when he 
struck our trail he bent his head, smelled of it, and then 
bounded ponderously straight up in the air, a most 
amusing, ungainly looking beast. When he came down 
he sniffed the trail once more, and then lumbered away 
as fast as he could to the opposite end of the ridge and 
up the steep mountain. I doubt if that goat had ever 
seen a man, or heard a rifle shot, for we were in an ex- 
ceedingly wild country, yet he showed more fear of the 
mere trail of man than any other animal I ever saw. 
The night closed in, the bitterly cold north wind 
shrieked through the tree tops, and occasional flurries of 
hard snow rattled down upon the tent roof. Old Cold- 
maker had at last succeeded in beating back the warm 
Chinook winds. We feared that winter had come, and 
retired, expecting, and dreading, to find the river frozen 
over in the morning. Appekunny. 
Sportsman's Correspondence. 
r. 
Dear — : 
I want to tell you a little of my hunting last fall, and 
my wonderful dog. Rex No. 2, a dark liver and white 
pointer pup, also of his first season with the birds. 
At the end of the first week out, Dr. , my hunting 
mate, shot a grouse that fell across a stream of water. 
Well, knowing that his dog would not retrieve it, he asked 
me if Rex would swim across and get the bird. Told him 
I thought he would. Calling Rex in and going down 
stream to the leeward of the bird, so that he would get 
the scent. I asked him to fetch dead bird, and motioned 
across. He readily swam, reaching the opposite bank. 
He soon had wind of the bird and pointed, I urging him 
on to fetch it, which he soon did without wetting a 
feather. 
A week or so later we were hunting out a small swamp. 
1 got hastily to the upper end with Rex well to heel, ex- 
pecting the birds would fly my way, and two of them 
did, the third turning back over Dr. 's head, and he 
was obliged to use both barrels on the bird. When he 
got through to me, Rex had my two birds on the grass 
beside me. 
After two weeks of training I did not feel as though i 
was handicapped with a pup ; in fact, he was an old dog 
in bird ways. 
Probably you have not forgotten old Rex, and the 
many trips that he took with us. The Doctor asked me 
why Hastings was not up this fall, and why he stopped 
writing for Forest and Stream. I told him of your 
sickness with neuritis, which accounted for your absence 
and possibly for the absence of correspondence. The 
Doctor says it is the worst thing that can happen to the 
man. There is nothing that causes so much agony, and 
nothing so difficult to cure. 
Yours truly, 
II. 
My Dear Friend: 
I have yours of recent date in relation to your hunt- 
ing trip last fall. Was very much pleased to receive it, 
and could almost imagine that I were with you. You 
certainly have an intelligent dog, and his intelligence 
reminds me of old Rex. You say that I have probably 
not forgotten him. How can I forget him? I could 
forget him when I forget all else in the past. While I 
can look back and remember, my love for that old dog 
will ever be strong. I remember the noon that we 
rested in the angle of the stone wall, where the wind 
had swept together masses of autumn leaves, and how 
we ate our lunch and shared it with Rex, and all three 
took our siesta almost buried in the leaves, and I remem- 
ber with sorrow the day that old age closed his eyes 
forever. ' I remember how he died in your arms, and the 
last loving look that he gave you, and I remember how 
we dug his grave under the chestnut tree, and how care- 
fully you wrapped him in your old leather hunting coat 
and covered him with the green sod. 
Why does a man outlive four or five, or six, generations 
of dogs? The man lives too long or the dogs don't live 
long enough. One becomes attached to them, and in the 
course of a lifetime of pleasure in the fields they must 
part with several. 
As to the Doctor, I have to say that he seems to still 
retain his proclivity to be jocular. You may tell him 
that I am better in health, and hope to tramp the fields 
with him and yourself many times in the future. Tell 
him that I regard him as an old hand-loaded shell, 
chraged with powder of his own make, and with pills 
for shot he goes around among his friends spilling both 
because his top wadding is loose. 
Yours truly, 
W. W. Hastings. 
JC Take inventory of the good things in this issue jf 
If of Forest and Stream. Recall what a fund was 
^ given last week. Count on what is to come next 
*f week. Was there ever in all the world a more „<» 
jf abundant weekly store of sportsmen's reading? £ 
tl X 
"Uncle Lisha's Shop." 
"Uncle Lisha's Shop" is temporarily out of print. A new 
edition is in press, to be ready soon. It will have as frontispiece 
an excellent portrait of Mr. Robinson. The price will be $1.25. 
Intelligence of Wild Things* 
BY HERMIT. 
The Crow. 
The intelligence of the crow is admitted by those who 
deny reason to the lower animals. This bird is so large 
and is so meddlesome in human affairs that he has forced 
mankind to acknowledge his intelligence. 
While I admire his ability to look out for number one, 
I do not believe that he is in any way beneficial to the 
farmer. In my opinion, he is a great deal blacker than 
he is painted by our wise men at Washington. After 
a lifetime knowledge of the crow, with ten years' close 
observation of his habits, I have nothing to say in his 
favor. 
While farming in Maine I was a sworn enemy of the 
crow. Not because he pulled up my corn, thinned out my 
barley and carried off my chickens; these things I could 
provide against, I was his enemy because he robbed bird 
nests by the wholesale. It did not take me long to find 
out that this black imp prevented the increase of song 
birds in cultivated fields and the adjoining woodlands. 
I brought with me my hatred of the crow when I 
dropped into the woods of Cape Ann,, and for several 
years I made life miserable for his kind with trap and 
shotgun. 
Ten years ago, influenced by the articles in Forest 
and Stream on game protection, I laid aside my gun 
and devoted more time to the study of the wild things. 
The crows got the benefit of this change. I should have 
continued my warfare if the crows had plundered the 
bird nests in my vicinity. King birds nested near my 
cabin, and during the nesting season crows and hawks 
were very careful to give the locality a wide berth. At 
other times the king birds did not go far from home to 
attack the crows, and the latter made themselves at home 
in my dooryard, after I had' ceased to persecute them. 
Crows possess a language which enables them to com- 
municate to each other anything that relates to crow life. 
They can hold long confabs and then act intelligently 
from evident conclusions. 
In the years when I lived happily with my shotgun, 
before a divorce was decreed, I planted a bushel of pota- 
toes in the woods on the west side of Magnolia Swamp. 
Fire had cleared the side hill and the prospect of a crop 
was good. 
The crows gathered in some dead trees, out of gunshot, 
to criticise my work, and seemed to be highly elated. 
Raw potatoes are not down on the crow bill of fare, so 
I thought there would be a great disappointment when 
they investigated my work. The second day after I had 
finished planting I visited the spot and found that the 
crows had dug up every hill on the south half of the 
field. There were three pieces of potato beside each hill, 
so the crows did not dig them up for food. Why they did 
so much hard work for nothing was beyond my know- 
ledge of crow life. I nearly surrounded the other half of 
the field with white cotton string and retired to the swamp 
to await the crows. Twenty minutes later a sentinel crow 
winged his way to a dead tree on the hill, and after look- 
ing for enemies called out, "Caw, caw, caw." Immediately 
eight crows appeared. They held a consultation, and it 
seems they decided that it was a good time to dig up the 
rest of my potatoes, for they started for the spot where 
they had left off. As this part of the field was under a 
high ledge, the crows could not see the string until they 
had passed the brow of the hill. The first crow oyer 
saw the string, and nearly turned a somersault in trying 
to stop his speed. He called out, "Cur-cur-cur. Cur- 
cur-cur," and instantly every crow returned to the tree. 
For ten minutes a great confab took place. The crow 
that had discovered the string was eagerly questioned by 
the others and replied in a hasty and excited manner. 
After talking it over a crow flew to the south end of the 
field, where he could look to the north and see the string. 
He returned and reported. Another crow flew to the 
north end of the field and stationed himself in a tall pine 
tree. This crow soon discovered that the string did not 
surround the whole field, there was a wide gap in front 
of the pine tree. He called "Caw-caw-caw-caw-caw," and 
the crows flew down to the tree. They were told about 
the gap and one crow boldly flew through and acted as 
sentinel from a tree in the potato field. The other crows 
soon followed and began digging up the seed potatoes. 
I think they tasted of every piece, with the idea that 
somewhere I had planted something good to eat. I shot 
two of the crows and hung them in the potato field, but 
a week later I found the seeds dug up with the exception 
of a few hills beneath the string. 
The few hills left made quite a store two years later. 
They had produced a crop each year without being dis- 
covered by hunters. But when the weeds and shrubs 
made a rabbit cover, "wild potatoes" were discovered on 
that side hill and I was soon informed of the fact that 
the potato was growing in a wild state "away back 
in the woods." 
I believe that crows destroy fully one-half the quail and 
grouse on Cape Ann. A woods' fire south of my cabin 
burned the nest of a ruffed grouse late in the season. The 
grouse made a new nest north of my cabin, and one day 
I found four eggs in it. The next morning I heard a 
strange cry in the direction of the nest and started to 
investigate. I took to the path at the rear of my cabin 
and when I had reached the top of the hill I saw the 
grouse running toward me. She held one wing close 
to her side, but with the other she was striking savagely 
at two crows that hazed her as they flew above and around 
her. Just as I came in sight of the trio, the grouse 
dropped an egg from under the closed wing and one of 
the crows seized it and flew so near me that I could see 
the egg in his bill. The thing that impressed me most 
was the silence of the crows. Not a sound did they utter. 
The scamps knew that I was near by and would be 
warned of crow mischief if I heard their cries. The cry 
made by the grouse was new to me. It was a wild cry 
in every sense of the word. The grouse when she fled 
with her eggs took the path to the cabin, and I think she 
did it for protection. 
Last spring I saw something that added to my know- 
ledge of crow intelligence. 
Fuller Brook runs past my cabin, and after losing itself 
in a swamp, takes up its course again between high gran- 
ite hills, until it falls into the sea at Fresh Water Cave. 
In the valley along the brook tall pine and hemlock trees 
make an ideal nesting site for crows and hawks. Last 
spring I was much interested in a red-shouldered hawk's 
nest which was in this valley. There were two crow 
nests some twenty rods further down the valley. One of 
my visits found the male hawk at home and when he dis- 
covered me he flew in circles above the trees uttering the 
loud scream that can be heard for a mile or more. Soon 
two crows came sneaking through the tree tops to find 
out what was disturbing the hawk. The hawk flew to 
a tall pine, but continued his cries after he had alighted. 
The crows flew to the same pine and taking a position 
near the hawk began to talk to him in a low tone. It 
was evident that they were telling him that his loud 
screams would bring all the hunters of Cape Ann to the 
spot. The hawk continued to scream, and one crow in a 
loud tone called out "Caw-caw-caw-caw-caw." Imme- 
diately five other crows appeared, and all attacked the 
hawk, striking at him with their wings until he ceased 
to scream. 
The crafty crows did not care about the hawk's nest, 
but they did not intend to have the hawk publish the 
fact. Well they knew that a search would expose the 
two nests down the valley. 
The red-shouldered hawk seems to be too slow and 
clumsy to wage war on crows, and the birds nest near 
each other, without trouble, only as I have related. 
The crows in my locality have named me in the crow 
language. Two caws is the way the sentinel announces 
my approach to his mates. 
Several years ago I had occasion to pass every night 
a spot in the woods where dead horses are buried. The 
crows would gather there nightly, but always had a sen- 
tinel out. The sentinel took up a position in a tall oak 
on a hill where he could overlook all the approaches. 
When everything was quiet the sentinel called out: "Caw- 
caw-caw," which means "all is well." If a man ap- 
proaches, the danger signal is, "Cur-cur-cur," sometimes 
repeated, and it means "look out there." It is uttered 
rapidly. 
I noticed one night that the crow in the tree, as soon 
as he saw me, called out "Caw-caw," and in a short time 
repeated the call. He had told his mates that the hermit 
was coming. My path passed within fifty feet of the 
crows, but they did not fly away. They had long ago 
found that I was not to be feared. Sometimes I had 
company, and the sentinel would then give the danger 
call, ".Cur-cur-cur," and the crows would fly away before 
we got in sight. I had this experience throughout the 
summer, so there could be no mistake. 
This fall a young crow became quite familiar. He 
would call to me in the woods, "Caw-caw," and often 
fly near me. The old crows seemed to think he was in 
danger, or they thought he was departing from the ways 
of the fathers, and they always drove him away. They 
would beat him with their wings until he was forced into 
flight to save himself. This young crow had found food 
in my dooryard, and had heard the older crows say that 
"Caw-caw" was harmless, so he wanted to be friendly, 
no doubt with an eye to the food supply. I am experi- 
menting with this fellow, in hopes that I can tame him, 
and learn from him and his mates something of the 
crow language. 
[to be continued.] 
\ 
A New Alaska Caribou. 
In a recent article on. the work in the north of Mr. 
Andrew J. Stone, mention was made of a new caribou 
(Rangifer granti), soon to be described by Dr. Allen. 
This description has just been published and forms Article 
X. of Volume XVI. of the Bulletin of the American Mu- 
seum of Natural History. 
Mr. Stone's investigations of the large game of the far 
north had led him to suspect that a new form of cari- 
bou might be found to inhabit the Alaska Peninsula, and 
at the end of the season of 1901 he determined to visit 
that region in order, if possible, to verify^his anticipations. 
The Alaska Peninsula, as is well known, is the west- 
ern portion of the mainland of Alaska, lying north and 
, west of Cook Inlet and connected with the main land 
only by a narrow neck of land. It extends several hun- 
dred miles beyond the western limit of tree growth, and 
is a true barren land. High rough mountains form a 
continuous range throughout its whole length, and from 
these, brooks or small rivers run down in the sea which 
are frequented by salmon during the spawning season. 
Mr. Stone left Homer on the Kenai Peninsula about 
Oct. 15, and four days later reached Popoff Island. Here 
he was detained by storms for more than a week, but at 
length succeeded in crossing the twelve miles of sea, 
reaching the mainland Oct. 26, and his hunting grounds 
two days later. Here on his first day's hunt he took 
nine caribou, and secured in all fifteen fine specimens. 
All these were very uniform in character, and differ 
frorn any other caribou known from North America in 
certain external as well as certain cranial characters. The 
species is a representative of the barren ground group 
of caribou, whieh includes the caribou of the Arctic coast 
and the Greenland caribou. It need not be compared with 
the various forms of woodland caribou. Mr. Stone tells 
us that Grant's caribou "inhabits the barren land of 
Alaska Peninsula, ranging well up into the mountains in 
summer, but descending to the lower levels in winter, 
generally feeding on the low flat lands near the coast 
and in the foothills. They formerly lived in consider- 
able number on Unga Island, where they are now prac- 
tically extinct. The only other island inhabited by them 
is Unimak 'Island, at the western end of the Alaska 
Peninsula.. They were formerly exceedingly abundant, 
but they have been greatly reduced in numbers through 
the agency of market-hunters." 
The species has been fittingly named after Mr. Madison 
Grant, Secretary of the New York Zoological Society, 
whose services in securing funds for the organization 
and maintenance of the Andrew J. Stone Exhibition are 
well known. 
Grant's caribou, as described by Dr. Allen, is dark 
