190 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[March 7, 1903. 
hatchery, it shows what sound business men think 
about it. 
Asking your pardon for making this letter so long, I 
will bring it to a close by saying that there is hardly 
an intelligent and well informed man in the country 
that is not convinced that the artificial hatching of 
salmon is contributing immensely toward keeping up 
the supply of salmon m the United States. 
Very truly yours, 
LmNGSTON Stone. 
Reminiscences of an Octogenarian. 
Part IX. 
' BY THE OLD ANGLER. 
{Coniinutd from fagc 172.) 
What is that wonderful faculty of Memory which we 
share with lower animals? Some of these would seem to 
possess it in a higher degree than many races of men, or, 
indeed, than some individuals of the most advanced races. 
This faculty of Memory, according to the most advanced 
Science of this Twentieth Century, is a function of the 
gray matter of the brain. How it acts, or what sets it in 
motion, science saith not; but every man, educated or 
ignorant, who has paid the least attention to the vagaries 
of his Memory, knows that it depends not on the Will, 
which it often defies and generally in proportion to the 
strength of the efforts made to coerce it. Everyone ac- 
customed to introspection knows how many and how 
various are the strings to the harp of Memory, and how 
powerless is the will alone to make any one of them 
vibrate. These strings are generally more responsive to a 
scent or a sound than to sight, which, it might be sup- 
posed, would link us more closely to the past. But, as a 
matter of fact, blind men have generally better memories 
than those whose sight often disturbs, even while it sup- 
plies thought. A sound or a scent causes some string of 
this marvelous instrument to vibrate, and immediately the 
whole harp is in full diapason. Scenes and faces long for- 
gotten or overlaid start up before us, as the association 
of ideas brings out layer after layer of that wonderful 
palimpsest on which is recorded the whole of our past 
life, and which, as a sounding board, responds to the 
vibrations of the various strings with which, in some 
mysterious way, it seems to be connected. The strangest 
and most wonderful thing in connection with Memory is 
the fact that after the grand climacteric is passed, the im- 
pressions made by recent events are soon forgotten; fail- 
ing memory is one of the most annoying accompaniments 
of old age. The impressions made on the palimpsest of 
boyhood, youth and early manhood, though overlaid by 
those of after life, come out much more clearly and in 
more vivid colors when the proper harp-string is made to 
vibrate. For the practical purposes of life, old age re- 
quires the memory of recent years much more than that 
of boyhood and youth, which, whether pleasant or pain- 
ful, can be of no practical assistance when we are striving 
to remember where we laid our glasses, or put that paper 
on which important results are pending. 
This train of thought came unbidden; hoW suggested 
I know not. Perhaps by the taste or smell of the very in- 
ferior tobacco in my pipe, which, thanks to the "Tobacco 
Trust" engineered by the Multi-Millionaires, is more and 
more adulterating our cigars and usurping the place of the 
pleasant perique with which we solaced the cares of mid- 
dle hfe. 
But by what mysterious association of ideas this train of 
thought was connected with good old Doctor Benson, of 
Chatham, who, with his guns and dogs, brought from 
England the traditions of generations of Sportsmen, \yho 
can say? The "sub-conscious mind" — that psychological 
assumption by which Messieurs les Savants think they ex- 
plain all the mysteries of psychomachy — must have been 
active and the palimpsest of Memory restores to the Con- 
scious Mind some terms with which the gbod Doctor 
graced his stories of youthful sport in the English 
Shires. How careful he was to impress on his admiring 
listeners the great importance of using the proper terms 
when talking of Shooting and Hunting and Sport! 
Whether these terms are yet in use in England the writer 
cannot say; but he knows he never heard them in the 
United States, nor indeed in Canada, except when used by 
Englishmen or Irishmen who were old men when he was 
a youth. A nide of pheasants ; a covey of partridges ; a 
brood of grouse; a stand of plover: a whisp of snipe; a 
bevy of quail ; a flight of pigeons ; .-s plump of ducks ; a 
flock of geese ; a siege of herons ; a drove of turkeys ; a 
muster of peacocks; a building of rooks; a skulk of 
foxes; a skurry of hares; a clutch of rabbits; a bunch ot 
deer; a gang of elks, are some of the terms Memory re- 
calls, coupled with a mental vision of the stout old Doc- 
tor in shooting-coat and gaiters, v/ith his pointers at his 
heel. 
This picture of the Doctor, the first gunner the Octo-- 
genarian ever saw in field with trained dogs, recalls his 
mode of shooting, which was that also of Governor Sir 
Edmund Head, whom the writer saw years after shooting 
Snipe on the Gagetown Marshes. In the open, after snipe 
or plover, they both fired always from the hip. In covert 
of course the gun went to the shoulder to avoid bushes 
and branches ; but what is called taking aim — shutting one 
eye and running the other along the barrels until the 
breech, sight and bird are in line — they ignored entirely. 
When old Grouse drew in, and young Ponto, her pup, was 
backing her staunchly, he followed the bitch's heels. 
With gun resting on his hip he advanced with the dog 
until the birds rose, when, with eyes of faith on the 
nearest, he fired, and turning the muzzle to the next, 
with the finger of hope, he pulled tlie second trigger. Of 
course he often missed killing both birds, but very sel- 
dom did he miss the first. The dogs dropped and the 
Doctor reloaded before stirring from his tracks, when a 
•wave of the hand was all the dogs needed to seek dead 
and retrieve the dying. 
The writer is informed that neither in England nor in 
the States are Pointers or Setters now broken to retrieve ; 
that various strains of half-bred dogs called Retrievers 
are considered the "proper caper" by up-to-date sports- 
men. What the raison d'etre of this may be, the Octo- 
genarian humbly confesses he is too much behind the age 
to understand, and poMibly he is too stupid to cotapr<^ 
hend if it were explained. In his old-fashioned ignorance 
he thinks that the most essential part of the education of 
Pointers, Setters and Spaniels is teaching them thor- 
oughly to seek dead, retrieve the wounded and bring both 
unbroken to hand. Why a third dog should be employed 
for this the writer has never heard explained, and he 
searches his past experience in vain for a sensible reason. 
He has seen both Pointers and Setters to whom retrieving 
dead or wounded birds came as natural as ranging and 
pointing. He has owned Spaniels that, as Retrievers, 
could not be beaten, not even by the best retriever he ever 
saw, which was a cross between a Scotch Collie bitch and 
an Irish water-spaniel, On land or water this dog was 
perfect in retrieving, but for other field-work he was only 
a makeshift. While the Octogenarian is a stickler for 
pure breeding, he has seen things about dogs that knock 
all orthodox theories higher'n a kite. The best part- 
ridge (grouse) dOg he ever saw was a full-blooded 
Mongrel, a thorouglibred cur of no strain at all — or rather 
of all strains. He was simply a country cur, with no 
points either in shape or color to attract notice; but his 
intelligence was phenomenal. That he could reason from 
cause to effect and from means to the end sought, I am 
as firmly convinced as I am of my own reasoning power. 
This dog seemed to understand much of ordinary con- 
versation, and often laid plans to evade what he over- 
heard. If he heard anyone say, "It is time the cows were 
in," he would set off for the pasture adjoining a wood, in 
which they were often scattered; collect and bring home 
every cow in the herd, leaving the calves, yearlings and 
steers. He really seemed to understand the ways and 
habits of grouse better than his master who was shoot- 
ing them. He rarely failed to find the tree into which the 
flushed birds took refuge, and he "gave tongue" until his 
master joined him. He would infallibly retrieve a dead 
bird, and a wounded one seldom escaped him; yet he had 
never been taught more than to bring a stick thrown into 
water. The rest was the result of his own reasoning — in- 
herited instinct had nothing to do with it — for there was 
not a strain of sporting dog in his pedigree for genera- 
tions back. Messieurs les Savants tell us that animals, 
no matter how intelligent, do not reason. The writer 
knows of nothing that can be more distinctive of the dif- 
ference between instinct and reason than the power of 
adopting means to a desired end. There was, for some 
years, on this farm, an old mare, "Maud A," who had a 
record on the Canadian Turf Register of 2:28. She has 
been dead two years; but when living neither fence, bars 
nor gate could confine her to a field she wished to leave. 
If there were bars, she would slip them with her teeth as 
readily as a man. If they were tied, as they often were to 
outwit her, she would, after trying them, walk leisurely 
along the fence and select, with great judgment, the panel 
with the lightest rails. Taking the top rail in her teeth 
she would throw it to the off side as cleverly as a man 
could do it; the next rail she would lift up and drop at 
her feet ; the next on the off side ; when three were down 
she would jump the remaining ones and go where she 
wished ; but always brought up in the best meadow. This 
was not an unusual thing, but a daily practice when she 
chose to change her pasture. I think she had a sense of 
humor, for she would lay back her ears, show her teeth 
and run at the person who sought to catch her; but she 
never bit nor kicked, and would always yield quietly when 
seized either by tail or mane. The doctrine of "innate 
ideas" in human psychology was exploded by Locke and 
Reid in the early part of the eighteenth century, and I 
suppose if the genus homo has them not, they can scarcely 
belong to the genus equiis or the genus canis. But where 
the Savants are concerned you "can't always just exactly 
tell," for they are seldom consistent and never logical. 
If the facts do not dovetail into their theories, so much 
the worse for the facts ! But these refuse to "down," and 
if the adaptation of means to an end in a new emergency 
is a proper test of reasoning power, sooner or later les 
Sai'ants must revise their conclusions. 
The late Col. Otty, of the Old Guard of old-fashioned 
Sportsmen, related to the writer the following incident 
illustrative of his Setter Nell's discriminating intelligence 
and readiness of apprehension. In stalking a plump of 
ducks he threw off his hat in his endeavor to steal a shot. 
After making a wide circuit he found the birds hopelessly 
out of range. Wishing to avoid the difficulties ex- 
perienced in his advance, he sent Nell back for his hat, 
simply pointing to his bare head and waving her hack. 
.She understood perfectly and returned with the hat in 
which was a dying rail he had shot at sometime pre- 
viously and, as he thought, missed. Now, Nell must have 
winded this bird on her way back, retrieved it, and failing 
to get both it and the hat in her mouth, must have placed 
the bird in the hat and thus brought both to her master. 
With all deference to the Savants, instinct will not e.K- 
jilain this. It is as clear an act of reasoning out a new 
problem as is the well-authenticated feat of the Lurcher 
that was unable to leap a stone wall handicapped as he 
was with a wounded hare. After several failures to reach 
the top, he ran along the wall until he found a drain 
opening at the foot which would suit his purpose. Hav- 
ing found one, he thrust the hare in with his nose until it 
was so tightly wedged in the opening that it could not 
escape; the dog then jumped the wall, pulled the hare 
through and carried it home. Another equally well- 
authenticated occurrence is related in the "Notes of a 
Naturalist," lately published in England. Tavo brothers 
were duck shooting. A plump was feeding along the 
sedgy shores of a small pond. At one end of this the 
gunners separated, each following opposite shores. They 
left their hats at the parting spot, the better to stalk their 
g,ame. They did not get within range until the lower end 
of the pond was reached, when both fired and shot several 
birds. Their Spaniel retrieved these and was then sent 
b?ck for the hats. The brothers watched Leo attempting 
to get hold of both hats; in seizing the second he always 
dropped the first. He stood as if considering the problem ; 
then placing one hat on the other he thrust it down with 
his nose and carried both hats to his master. If the 
reasoning faculty was not displayed in thus adapting 
means to the end sought, perhaps les Savants, who deny 
that animals reason, can give some rational explana- 
tion of the thousand and one well-authenticated cases in 
which horses and dogs, and even goats and pigs, adapt 
means to ends. All general readers will recall many of 
these which the writer does not cite lest the readers of 
Forest anti Stheam should ring th^ chestnut hell; its 
columns for years past have teemed with instances of 
animal intelligence which instinct alone will not explain. 
****** 
How many readers of Forest and Stream ever owned 
or ever saw a genuine old "Joe Manton," with its flint 
cock, steel-faced hammer covering the pan, and gold- 
bushed touch-hole? Those who have will recall its highly 
finished locks; its beautifully engraved plates and trigger- 
guard ; the fine finish of its stock and damaskened barrels, 
and will readily admit that no better workmanship is pro- 
duced to-day either in Europe or America. The Octo- 
genarian never saw but four of these famous guns, and 
these were all owned by gunners on the Miramichi. Doc- 
tor Benson had two; James Matheson, a Scotchman, and 
Thomas Vanstone, an Englishman, each had one, which 
were prized as the apples of their eyes. The grandchildren 
and great-grandchildren of all these pioneer sportsmen of 
New Brunswick are living, and perhaps some of them may 
have these very guns preserved as curiosities. The writer 
ixmembers distinctly when the first percussion guns were 
imported from England; not even the advent of the 
breechloader created such interest among sportsmen. The 
conversion of a flint gun into a percussion was easily and 
cheaply done by the local blacksmiths, who, in those days, 
were gunsmiths and locksmiths as well; percussion cocks 
being for sale in the stores. With the percussion gun 
came Ely's wire cartridges, long since displaced by loaded 
shells containing powder, shot and cap, which the advent 
of the breechloader made possible, and greatly enhanced 
the pleasure of gunning. This has been followed by the 
magazine rifle and shotgun with hammerless locks; but 
whether these last are improvements the writer cannot 
say, never having used either. But those who have used 
both complain that something goes wrong with each of 
them at the very time when their best action is most re- 
quired—the cartridges jam or the ejector won't work! 
Whether these latest improvements are not largely 
responsible for the great increase of deadly accidents with 
which the daily press teems, is another question on which 
ihe Octogenarian will not venture to speak ex cathedra — 
they have all come to the front since he was laid on the 
shelf. But having followed the evolution of the gun from 
the flintlock muzzleloader of his youth to the magazine 
revolvers, rifles and hammerless breechloaders of the 
present day, he has noted that a great increase in acci- 
dents has followed every improvement. It may be that 
the.se have fostered recklessness, and that most of the 
accidents are caused by carelessness amounting to stu- 
pidity. What can be done with that large and seemingly 
iiicreasing class of sportsmen who leave loaded guns and 
pistols within the reach of children and fools; or with 
that still larger class of idiots who "didn't know it was 
loaded"? The Octogenarian trusts that he has not grown 
heartless nor cynical; but he must confess that when he 
reads or hears of gunning accidents caused by climbing a* 
fence with the gun cocked; or pulling it forward by the 
nuizzle; or using the cocks as a hook to pull down the 
branches of an apple tree ; or pulling a loaded and cocked 
gun across the thwarts of a boat, he merely asks, "Did it 
kill him?" and he feels a suspicion of regret if it did not. 
Such fools are sure to kill themselves sooner or later; the 
sooner they do it the less chance they will have of shoot- 
ing their companions. In cases of mistaking a man for a 
bear or a deer and shooting him, it should be made a 
capital offense with imprisonment for life. Society has a 
right to protect itself from such idiots, and the only way 
to do this effectually is to put them where their idiocy 
can do no further harm. Cases of "didn't know it was 
loaded" should be punished by flogging— first the idiot who 
left it loaded in the reach of children and grown fools of 
his own caliber, and second the fool who handled it with- 
out ascertaining whether or not it was loaded. This last 
fellow should be flogged every time a gun or pistol was 
seen in his hands. But even with all these precautions 
"the crop that never fails" will always be a large one, and 
some of these fools will "get in their work" in spite of all 
that common sense can do to eliminate them. 
****** 
When wild pigeons were still plentiful in Sussex, 
about 45 years ago, the writer and one of his angling 
friends drove from St. John and put up at the com- 
fortable Inn then kept by the late Hugh McMonagle 
at Sussex Corner. There are many readers of Forest 
AND Stream who will remember "this fine Sportsman 
of the Old School, and one of the Fathers of the Turf 
in Eastern Canada. My friend, though a good angler, 
was a novice with the gun. After a long tramp to the 
Salt Springs, in the course of which we saw some 
flocks and many scattering plumps, within range of 
which we found it impossible to get, we separated ; 
agreeing to meet at the Springs at four o'clock and re- 
turn to the Corner. The writer got but a single shot 
at a passing flight, bringing down only four birds. 
Small, scattering plumps were passing to and fro, often 
alighting on trees, but they had grown "gun-wise" and 
were too wary to allow an approach within shot. After 
many fruitless efforts and several hours' tramping 
through rough clearings on the edge of dense woods, 
I gave up the chase and made a bee-line for the high 
road, which was reached about half a mile from the 
springs, toward which I hastened, being late for the ap- 
pointed meeting. To my surprise my friend met me, 
carrying four pigeons but no gun, and presenting a 
most sorry and woe-begone figure. _He was complete- 
ly wearied out, and told a most piteous tale, which 
elicited only roars of laughter where he looked for 
sympathy. The tale was too ridiculous to hear without 
laughing by any one with the least sense of humor. 
He had shot two birds, and- had stalked quite a large 
plump resting on a withered tree; there were, he said, 
at least a hundred birds, beautifully disposed among 
the leafless branches. Under cover of a clump of 
alders he had got near enough for a long shot and 
fired. He was sure a dozen at least fell to the ground. 
Hastening to recover all he could, he started for the 
tree; to help his speed through the bushes and under- 
wood, he laid down his gun and the two birds he had 
previously shot. In searching for the dead and 
wounded he circled the tree several times, but four 
birds were all he could find out of the dozen he was 
.sure he saw falL Qn returning for his gun, to which 
