6cT. 3, i903.j 
Lewis s woodpecker in that part of Oregon is a sirmmer 
resident. I have seen it breeding on the Clackamas in 
the Willamette Valley, so I know it would not be ari un- 
known bird except in autumn, and Major Bendire once 
sent us a number of their skins taken right at Fort Kla- 
math which answers for the territory Forked Deer is 
describing. However, there is nothing irreconcilable in 
supposing that an isolated apple orchard might make a 
gathering of the clans at the season of fruit harvest and 
thus call attention to a bird which the casual unobserver 
would not know existed till it interfered with his crops. 
But the reason why I dally so long with a topic which 
cannot be definitely settled without more evidence, is be- 
cause that error in description has called up what is to me 
a very interesting query. Working back on that impres- 
sion of a bird with a stripe down the under parts from 
chin to tail, it seems likely that the bird did have some- 
thing which, remembered after the lapse of time, left the 
impression of a stripe. Now, narrow stripes down the 
back are common enough among woodpeckers, for they 
have a high protective value, blending the bird to the up- 
right furrows of the bark he is on, but of western wood- 
peckers Avith anything approaching a definite stripe on the 
under parts for the whole length, I can think of but one. 
It is true that one is not easily conjured into the bird 
described, but he is found in that locality, is a migrant, 
and might, in some plumages, he said to have black back 
and wings and dirty yellowish or "light brick-color" 
stripe along the belly; and, which is important, he is 
just about the size and weight of a robin. 
The bird I refer to is the WillianHon's sapsucker, the 
most curious of our woodpeckers. The mature male is a 
bird never to be forgotten, so brilliant in color and ex- 
quisite in his gloss— jetty black on breast, wings, and 
upper parts, set off by the clear white of his rump and by 
white wing and cheek markings, with a narrow strip of 
most vivid scarlet down the throat and another narrow 
stripe of the richest yellow from the tail up to the breast, 
approaching but not joining the scarlet of the throat. The 
female has no mark in common except the white rump 
and the yellow in the belly. She is a light brown bird, 
with black and white barred wings and usuallv with a 
black patch on her breast. For j'ears the two were not 
connected by naturalists, and even so distinguished a 
naturalist as Dr. Coues described them as different 
species. The young male resembles his father, but his 
colors are dull, the red throat is replaced by whitish, and 
the yellow of the belly is dingy or obscure. He might 
very easily, in some plumages, give one the impression of 
ti black bird with a light stripe beneath. Critically speak- 
ing, he would not answer very closely to Forked Deer's 
description, but then a young male of Williamson's wood- 
pecker answers so much better than anything else. 
Next as to the chances of finding him then and there. 
He is a shy and solitary bird, living by preference in the 
ieep coniferous forests at a good altitude. In summer 
hey breed at from 5,000 to 9,000 feet, and Major Bendire, 
vho must long remain the greatest ornithological authority 
m that Klamath region, said that he found them nov/here 
30 abundant as in the vicinity of Crater Lake. In Sep- 
ernber they begin to come to lower land, preparing for 
heir southward journey, and between the 20th of Septem- 
■ler and the first part of November he saw them not un- 
lommonly around Fort Klamath. There is therefore 
-very likelihood that Forked Deer picked rp a specimen 
if t'.,is usually rare bird. 
Tlv re is a possibility- not to be scoulvd that he is the 
(ird that did the damage to the fruit, but as Forked Deer 
oes net say that he killed the bird in the act, and from 
he very nature of the bird itself, I infer thar he got the 
vrong fellow. I think myself that the editor is right in 
'Ointing the finger of disapproval at Lewis's woodpecker. 
For Lewis's woodpecker belongs to a group of wood- 
eckers which I have long mistrusted were up to new 
ficks. Slow and stupid as he appears on his lumbering 
ight, he is just the bird whom I should expect to 
ranch out and do some new, quite unlooked for thing. 
Vhtn I found that in Colorado some of them had taken 
p the habit of shelling and storing acorns in holes, while 
1 California others of them, imitating the California 
oodpecker, were trying to drive theirs unshelled into 
■evices made previously by the California woodpecker, 
saw that this was a bird which would bear watching, 
here is evidence enough that he does attack small fruits 
:casionally, and it is quite in the line of probable de- 
Mopment that he should acquire a taste for apples. 
Should anyone think it absurd or strange for a wood- 
^cker to eat apples, I will remind them of the cousins of 
is bird, the red-bellied and the redheaded woodpeckers. 
I Florida the former has taken up the habit of eating 
■anges, mostly refuse fruit when last reported, to such 
I extent as to earn the name of "orange sapsucker." 
id of the redheaded woodpecker of the north I cannot 
> better than to quote a small portion of Wilson's ac- 
unt of him, one of the classics of ornithology, full of the 
Iden glow of September and the harvest: 
^Wherever there is a tree, or trees, of the wild cherry, 
vered with ripe fruit, there you will see them busy 
long the branches; and in passing orchards, you may 
lily know where to find the earliest, sweetest apples, by 
lerving those trees on or near which the redheaded 
ilodpecker is skulking: for he is so excellent a connois- 
'ir in fruit that, wherever an apple or pear is broached 
him, it is sure to be the ripest and best flavored, 
lien alarmed, he seizes a capital one by striking his 
en bill deep into it, and bears it off to the woods. 
' hen the Indian corn is in its succulent, millty state, he 
acks it with great eagerness, opening a passage through 
' numerous folds of the husk, and feeding on it with 
•at voracity." 
Tiiere was a man who made ornithology into poetry 
hout. laboring to do it! Such simple, profitable seeing 
li the pictures bound up in the words, is the gift of — 
ly Wilson. 
If it be asked, as is reasonable. Why might not this be 
bird which is damaging the Oregon corn and apples, 
answer is decisive: the redheaded woodpecker is not 
J west of the Rocky Mountains. There are, indeed, 
o very many woodpeckers in Oregon, so that it is 
' to find the sinner, When he is found I would ad- 
vou not to shoot him if you can help it, and above all 
r to offer a bounty on his scalp. His appetite is vora- 
N and he v/orks havoc for a season perhaps among 
fruit, but remember that all the rest of the year he 
FOREST AND STREAM . 
has an appetite just as insatiable which he is satisfying 
m large part off from the farmer's natural enemies. No 
commission of forestry is going to do a fraction of the 
work that the poor unpaid woodpecker is doing He- 
works early and late and he works hard and he gets 
curses for the little harm he does— not small to one man 
ot course at times, and not to be endured too patiently 
even by the most forgiving— but, taking private ownership 
out of the question, very little indeed to the aggreo-ate of ■ 
work performed for the public benefit. ° 
Fannie Hardy Eckstorm. 
BsEWER, Me. 
287 
Eatertamment for Man and Beast. 
•^wf^ md 0un. 
'^o^'^^njcatiom intended for FoiiiT akd SrtEAM should 
i^ew york, and not to any mdividual connected with the paper. 
The Game Laws in Brief 
Stales lnfKLT^'°u^. ?/ """^ 8^'"= °f United 
1 J Canada. It tells everyt i ng and eives it correctly 
il'e ifrief "'""^ P'^" °^ °^ the dealers who handfe 
Every one of the half dozen popular magazines contains 
at least one story of which the hero is beast, bird, or fish. 
Mr. John Burroughs's protest in behalf of his dumb 
mends, in the Atlantic, has passed unheeded. A whole 
school of writers keeps step with the "Jungle Book" man, 
or struggles along the trail of the "Sand Hill Stag." A 
literary tendency is clearly manifest, and we see no reason 
why It should stop at the terrestrial fauna. The flora is 
as yet unexploited, and since we have had the tragedy of 
the brook trout and the pathos of the pachydermata, why 
not also the miseries of the edible mushrooms, the loves 
ot the lotuses, and the tragedy of a dead beet? Erasmus 
Uarwm and his botanical epic are pretty well forgotten, 
and tiie way lies open for a literary adventurer to publish 
as many short stories as there are leaves in Vallombrosa. 
JNor need the process stop at the organic creation. Two 
scientists of our acquaintance only ceased from writing a 
comeoy of the chemical elements because they found (as 
xhe British matron had earlier in Darwin's "Loves of the 
i'lants ) that the matrimonial complications necessitated 
by the allegory passed all bounds of morality and avail- 
ability. 
The chemical comedietta was intended for children, and 
It seems that pretty much all animal stories are planned 
for the very child-like. For the animal heroes and 
heroines are strangely unlike any animals that the aver- 
age reader knows, and amazingly like those characters of 
the dime novel and Sunday-school book which the adult 
reader usually scorns. We have tested it high and tested 
It low. Occasionally a Mr. Jack London strikes the note 
oi veracity, as Mr. Kipling knew how to invest jungle 
life^ with poetry, or Mr. Joel Chandler Harris to fill the 
tire r Kabbit stories with shrewd wisdom and exuberant 
humor. But this is the exception. What may be called 
the beast tale of periodical literature possesses neither 
veracity, poetry, wisdom, nor humor. The question Why 
do people read these stories? only raises the more im- 
penetrable mystery. Why do people read most of the mag- 
azines at all ? The answer is possibly that people do not 
read the magazines, but look at the illustrations; and 
that the popularity of the new school is simply a tribute 
to the pencils of Mr. Thompson-Seton, Mr. Heming, Mr 
Bull, and others. 
But if there is doubt about the demand for sentimen- 
talized quadrupeds, there is no doubt about the supply. 
We feel, indeed, that the production is too copious and 
uniform to be the result of individual enterprise, and we 
suspect in the whole matter the machinations of a syndi- 
cate which was first called Seton-Thompson and then, for 
purposes of reorganization and evasion of the law of 
copyright, was renamed Thompson-Seton. Upon this 
hypothesis the recent remarkable flotation of animal 
stories falls under familiar commercial processes. Im- 
agine a resourceful and unscrupulous syndicate which 
has gained possession of all the undigested securitie'? of 
the fiction market. Obviously the whole supply of re- 
jected articles might have been got at a base price. What 
would the substance of such stories be? Of course, the 
humdrum pathos and conventional melodrama that lie 
within the observation and mental range of the writers. 
Such an accumulation would appear to be wholly 
worthless from all points of view. But here is where the 
genius of our supposititious syndicate comes in. You can 
always unload a bad stock market security by changing 
its name and denomination. It would be superfluous, and 
in the present market conditions unkind, to recall the in- 
stances of stocks which have brought better prices every 
time a consolidation reduced their actual securitv. Upon 
this pregnant idea what we may call the Anim'al Story 
Irust based its fortunes. One may imagine the process 
of conversion prior to marketing. A dreary story of the 
death of an old woman in a country village is to be sold 
For old woman read Sheesquaugh the Cougar, for village 
lead "bleak, crumbling precipices iridescent with such 
colors as are only seen under the desert sun," votes the 
board of directors, and the editors tumble over each oiher 
to buy. Again, we imagine the svndicate's blue pencil 
cancelling the title, "Algernon's Heart Sorrows." and re- 
writing it, "Plunges of Pete the Cayuse," with the note, 
'Printer, substitute Pete for Algernon." And tiie pub- 
lishers who broke Algernon's creator's heart compete for 
"Pete" at the top of the market. 
Now, it is far easier to expose this method of unload- 
ing undigested copy than it is to stop it. We may pity 
the editors and publishers, we may warn them of the im- 
pending depression when the underwriters shall be con- 
fronted with unmanageable blocks of manuscripts, and 
Cuvier shall have been exhausted from cover to cover- 
but we cannot restrict their right to buy at their own risk! 
Refusing to read Algernon travestied as Pete is only^ a 
partial measure. In fact, no effective protest is possible 
unless the animals should organize a protective associa- 
tion, and appeal to the humanity of the syndicate. One 
may imagine a sensible "cayuse" complaining as follows: 
"What right had you to impute to me disgusting human 
sentimentalisms ? What warrant had you to deprive me of 
my inborn horse sense and put upon me scarcely human 
idiocies? If you cannot respect yourselves, gentlemen 
at least respect the feelings of a horse of good manners' 
sound nerves, and sane habits." That such would be the 
sentiment of the beasts reassembled in jf-sopian council 
there can be no doubt. And, failing their voice, we make 
the plea of our worthy but silent friends our own. New 
York Evening Post. 
Main: and its Game. 
All communications intended for Forest and Stream should 
always be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., 
New York, and not to any individual connected with the paper. ' 
BANGORMaine, September 26.~Editor Forest and 
ff'^ain- 1 he outlook for game in Maine for the fall that 
h.n ,^1,°" i"'' °r ^ ^'3>'s '"ore, is better 
thai It has been for years. This is due in a large measure 
IVnll '^'y. ,^P^!I '» t!ie early summer, when the 
w- hl f .1 , P'i["-Hlges were given a chance to grow 
me fir ^V''''''•''''^^^''^'^ ^^''^y' accompany wet fum- 
7,Z: I 1 ^ l^ce" cold,' to be sure, but the mother part- 
h rH. I H^^" ^^'^ ^" ''""P ''^'''"^^ warm, and the 
rpnnt. r !" 7">' °^ ^3'"^, according to 
report. Consequently there will be more birds to shoot 
and eat in camp this season than before, which is an ad- 
vantage m varying the frequent venison diet of the hun- 
, ""^^^V ^° ^''^ ^'^^ gunners, and the fact that 
woodcock have also seemed to summer well adds to their 
joys, and they are proving the truth of t*he reports by 
coming home with some birds about every trip into the 
outlying covers, although the days of the big bags an-' ' 
pear gone from Maine covers forever. The hard time 
tor the birds that is, in those covers reached from the 
cities is bunday, when it seems as if there was a gunner 
for about every bird abroad. This in spite of the law 
making Sunday a close time, a law which is better ob- 
served by those who don't like partridge stew than by 
those who claim that their weekday duties give them 
license to break the law on "the only day they have until 
their fall vacation." The fact that no birds can be sold 
'".I r.u"'"''^,*^ l'^^ '^'"^^ ^^'■y ^'^rgely the nefarious 
work of the market hunters, although there are still a few 
who will bear close watching. With this restriction added 
to the efforts made to enforce the bird law, there seems 
to be considerable hope for the grouse and woodcock, 
^•^i^^^^fe^^ years ago seemed doomed to annihilation. 
On Thursday next the first day of October, the Maine 
Jaw will be removed from deer, and on and after that date 
men may ki! the biggest deer they can find, and another 
to match It before they exceed the limit, unless, indeed, 
they make a mistake and shoot a smaller one, which in 
mnety-mne cases out of a hundred will be the case. The 
big deer shot m Maine in the early days of the season 
are not very_ numerous, although, of course, some lucky 
hunter occasionally gets a bouncer. Most of the really 
tremendous deer— deer weighing from 275 to 300 pounds 
or more— are shot after the November winds have swept 
otf the remaining leaves, and the largest bucks have for- 
saken the high, hardwood ridges. And some have been' 
killed then of immense size, almost as large as some of 
the moose so proudly expressed to admiring home friends, 
and tar more attractive in antlers. The writer has seen 
a buck deer that weighed, eight davs after it was killed, 
308 pounds, dressed as usual for shipping. 
There is not likely to be the rush for the woods that 
once characterized the Maine non-resident hunters on and 
before the first day of the deer season. There was a time " 
when the trains, from September 15 to October IS, car- 
ried an average of over a hundred hunters a trip to be on 
hand and get the early and— to the novice— biggest and 
best deer. It is no longer so, for they have learned wi<!- 
dom from experience, and now there is comparatively lit- 
tle rush until the second week, when the moose hunters 
appear m swarms, filling the sleeping cars to overflowing 
and making the trains look like trains used in war times, 
with guns and rifles at every window. The warmer days 
of early October are net so good for getting game home 
fresh, although under the new license law one may send 
his game on ahead as soon as shot, and follow at his 
leisure when he has finished his outing. This will un- 
doubtedly make quite a diff'erence in a hunter's ability to 
get his game home in good condition, which some have 
found to their sorrow is not always feasible, even in 
colder weather than October. 
Hunters come into Maine this year, too, under radically 
different conditions from those which have confronted ■ 
them in previous seasons. Under the new license law they 
are compelled— unless residents of Maine, "actually domi- 
ciled therein," as the statute reads— to buy a license before 
they can enter the woods to hunt deer or moose, and the 
law covers both, one license serving to grant all the privi- 
leges which the Maine law permits the hunter of big 
game. Shore gunners who want to try the birds in cer- 
tain coast sections, generally speaking those portions of 
the coast between Portland and westem Penobscot Bay, 
inust pay for a license for their fun, too. In a published 
interview, Mr. Carleton, of the Game Commission, is 
quoted to-day as saying that of 133,000 seekers after game, 
fish and recreation, who came into Maine last year, but 
800 came here to hunt big game. If that is so, and he 
must have been misquoted, then those 800 got a lot more 
than their share, for I myself counted shipments of 1,800 
or more deer through Bangor last fall to points beyond 
the limits of the State of Maine. And if the average of 
one deer to a hunter holds good, then 1,800 were in this 
part of Maine alone to hunt big game. The new license 
will, they claim, and undoubtedly with reason, give op- 
portunity to know just how many come into Maine to 
hunt big game. But of the hundreds who never will come 
here again because of what they regard as unjust discrim- 
ination, the Maine public will probably never hear ac- • 
curately. 
Some of the guides and camp owners are hoping that 
the new law will, not have such a deterrent effect°upon 
new hunters as it has upon those who are old visitors for 
many of these old friends have cancelled their dates in. 
Maine. Where they have gone worries the guide not a ■ 
bit — but he must look up a new line of customers. The 
chance of smaller business, aginst an already greatly 
shortened season from what once prevailed, has led the 
guides in some sections to discuss the feas'ibility of ii)- 
