Etec. tg, 1903.3 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
4BB 
has to trust all to the horse, that a great affection is felt 
between man and Beast? 
A summer spent in such riding makes riding in Central 
!ferk on one's return seem very tame. E. C. G. 
New York. 
Texas Bad Men. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Tom Gilchrist in his catalogue of the bad men of Texas 
mentions Tom Smith among them. If this is the Tom 
Smith that I knew, and I think he is, I and he had some- 
thing to do with keeping "bad men" (in their minds) in 
order many years ago. 
He had entered the Confederate army when only 17 
years old in 1861, and had staid in it until "the break up," 
then coming home, the military governor of Texas had 
appointed him sheriff of Fayette county, and I acted as his 
deputy, the only one he had. 
The citizens in this county then were still divided into 
two parties, Union and Confederate, and these again were 
split up into parties who had private feuds among them. 
Nearly every man was on the watch to get a drop on some 
other man, and all went armed ; but I would only have to 
hold up my hand and sa}', "Gentleman, I command you in 
the name of the Commonwealth of Texas," to stop a row 
at any time. The sheriff was a far younger man than I 
was, and he looked still younger than he was, but he 
could keep these bad men in good order. 
The bad man who gave us the most trouble for a while 
called himself "Major." He had been in the army (most 
of these young men had), and he may have been a 
Major. He informed us that he had not surrendered yet, 
and never would, either. I did not care whether he did 
or not as long as he obeyed the law; and we were here 
to help him to do that, I told him. 
He always wore a fancy velvet coat and a Mexican 
sombrero, and rode a splendid horse. He made a practice 
of coming into Lagrange every Saturday, filling up with 
whisky, then "shooting niggers," as he called it. He never 
really shot any, and did not try to, of course; but he 
would scare every negro he met half to death. 
The sheriff and I were standing in the barroom of the 
only hotel in town one afternoon, waiting for something 
to turn up (neither of us would ever take a second drink 
here, although a dozen of men would want to "set them 
up"), when the Major was heard from. He was emptying 
his pistol — at nothing, probably — ^away down the street 
near the river. 
"I'll stop this right now," the sheriff told me, and he 
and I ran out just as the Major came past at a gallop. 
I caught hold of his bridle and the horse stopped. The 
Major had been riding him with the reins lying on the 
horse's neck; if some one had not already been run over 
the horse should be given the credit for it. 
I had my pistol out and had the hammer up. I had 
formed an Opinion long since that the Major's mouth 
was the most dangerous part of him, but was not taking 
any chances. 
"Light down here," the sheriff commanded, and the 
Major got off his horse. 
"Give me your pistol," he was next told, and he handed 
the sheriff his pistol. 
"Now, you get out of town, and stay out of it," the 
sheriff said, "if you want this pistol send in on Monday 
and get it, but you keep out of this hereafter." 
He never sent after his pistol, and the next time we 
arrested him was out in the country on a ball room floor. 
The sheriff had a warrant for him that someone had 
gout out on an old charge, and had only now made up his 
mind to push it. The Major had obeyed orders and kept 
out of town, but he sent the sheriff word that if he tried 
to serve that warrant the Major would shoot him. We 
heard of this ball out at a planter's house and concluded 
to serve the warrant there. The Maj or was certain to be 
there; he could not miss a dance. 
I proposed to get two men out of our troop to help us 
if we needed help; the Major was not dangerous, but his 
friends might be. 
I got the men, and starting after dark we rode out to 
this house, leaving the two men and our horses in a creek 
bottom a few hundred yards from the house, the sheriff 
saying that we would not need the men. Then we walked 
up to the house. The ball was in full blast, with the 
whole house lit up. The dancing was in a lower room, 
■which had both a front and a back door. I left the sheriff 
at the front door and went to the back door, then pushing 
it open went in just as the sheriff' entered through the 
other door. The Major was in a set on the floor with his 
pistol on; he had got another pistol, it seemed. He saw 
the sheriff before he did me, and his hand went dowm for 
his pistol. 
"Keep your hand off that gun," I told him. "Get your 
hands up," and I walked over to him with my pistol 
pointed at him. 
"I quit," he told me, holding up his hands, while the 
sheriff took his pistol, the Major telling him that this 
made two "guns" now the sheriff would owe him. 
Had this happened up in the North, the women— there 
was a whole room full of them — would the half of them 
have been screaming now, while the rest would be faint- 
ing. There was none of that here, though. The most of 
these women were lying flat on the floor to escape any 
stray balls that might be flying around. We led the Major 
out past his friends, most of them were armed, but none 
of them interfered; then a negro boy brought him his 
horse, and he leading him we went down to where ours 
had been left. When the Major saw my two men he 
wanted to know where the rest of the troop was. "At 
home," I told him, "I have all I need of them here; in 
fact, two that I don't need. Now, Major, I have asked 
Tom not to handcuff you, and he won't; but you have 
been a soldier, you know what will happen if you try any 
monkey business with us." He would not; he would get 
out on a bond to-morrow, he thought. He did not, 
though. Cabia Blanco. 
— ♦ — 
Substitutes for the Hand. 
The uses of the human hand are various, the chief of 
which is as the organ of touch and of prehension. The 
sense of feeling is distributed all over the body; but in 
examining any substance by touching it we use the ends 
of the fingers. It is there that this delicate sense is 
primarily placed. So, too, in seizing and holding any 
object we employ the hand. 
In the lower creation we find in some animals organs 
that are used for the same purposes, those most nearly 
approaching the human hand both as a tactual and a 
prehensile instrument being the proboscis of the elephant 
and the paws of the monkey. The latter creature also 
has a powerful means of "holding on" in his prehensile 
tail, which convenience he shares to some extent with 
the opossum, and which in human circles is rivaled only 
by the persistence of the man who is waiting around for 
a Presidential appointment. 
Something akin to the delicacy of touch, as it exists 
in the ends of the fingers in the human hand, we find, 
we say, in various organs in the lower creation. To these 
lower animals it is as important as it is to man, as it 3.s 
as vital to their well being as it is to his. In the cat, 
for instance, how exquisitely delicate is the sense of 
touch as it exists in the extreme ends of Tabby's "whis- 
kers." Every individual bristle is as sensitive to touch 
as is the electrode to the influence of the magnetic cur- 
rent. "The cat," saj^s an old writer, "stealing along in 
darkness, in order to invade the pigeon-loft or chicken- 
pen, is materially aided by these organs, which communi- 
cate an impression from the slightest contact with any 
object. They enable it to creep through crevices with- 
out running foul of any impediment, or to steal through 
tangled brushwood upon the bird or the leveret, and thus 
combine with the power of nocturnal vision, and its 
springy feet, well armed for destruction, to fit it for its 
insidious habits." This extreme sensitiveness of the cat's 
whiskers is peculiar to all her tribe, and serves the same 
purpose in all in pursuing their prey through the thickets 
and jungles as in honest puss when on her way to the 
pigeon-loft or the chicken-pen. 
The antennas of certain insects answer the same pur- 
pose as the whiskers of the feline race. Speaking of 
these antennse, Bingley, in his Natural History observes, 
"These instruments, of apparently exquisite sensibility, 
appear adapted to very different purposes, but to purposes 
with which we may remain long unacquainted." What- 
ever different purposes they may be adapted to, may, as 
he saj'S, long remain a secret ; yet anyone that has ob- 
served an insect reaching out his long antennse and grop- 
ing about with them as if in quest of information as to 
his whereabouts, can have no doubt that one purpose in 
their construction was that they might be the organs of 
touch in those small creatures. 
In some animals this organ is very imperfect, and un- 
less it is made up to them in some way of which we 
know nothing, their knowledge of objects around them, 
so far as knowledge is to be gained by this sense, must 
be very limited. In the hog, for example, the sense of 
touch seems to reside in the end of the snout; in the dog 
and the mole, in the end of the nose ; in the giraffe, in the 
long flexible upper lip ; in birds, in the bill ; and in some 
other creatures, if this sense exists in them at all, it is 
perhaps only in the tongue. 
The monkey's fore paw most resembles the human 
hand both in its shape, its situation, and its general 
adaptation to use; but it falls far below the latter in 
efficiency, mainly for want of a true thumb. "If we 
vigorously scrutinize the hands of the ape tribe," says the 
author of "Structure in Animals," "we shall soon per- 
ceive that they are instruments for grasping rather than 
organs structurally adapted for tact and nice manipula- 
tion. In all the thumb is short and feeble; in none is 
it a fair antagonist to the fingers, though in some 
species it is better developed than in others." 
Of all these appliances the proboscis of the elephant is 
the most remarkable substitute for the human hand and 
arm. Its wonderful flexibility and strength, its extreme 
sensitiveness as an organ of touch, and its power of 
manipulation by which it is able to crush the body of a 
lion or to pick up a pin from the floor, constitute it, as 
Bingley says, "one of the most useful and extraordinary 
instruments that the wisdom of Providence has bestowed 
on any species of animal." T. J. Chapman. 
All commxmications for Forest and Stream must 
be directed to Forest and Stream Pub. Co., New 
York, to receive attention. We have no other office. 
Thoreau as a Naturalist. 
Henry D. Thoreau had a wonderful gift not only as 
an obsen^er of nature in her fields and forests, but that 
rare faculty of describing truthfully and vividly the habits 
and language of her wild children. Although he hunted 
without a gun, neither bird, beast, plant, or flower escaped 
his keen search, and his descriptions will appeal to every 
true sportsman and close observer of nature. In this 
respect he was a leader and not a follower nor imitator of 
others. Our most gifted and brilliant writers and ob- 
servers of nature, such as John Burroughs, C. C. Abbott, 
William Hamilton Gibson, Bradford Torrey, Ernest 
Ingersoll, Frank Bolles, Rowland E. Robinson, Ernest 
Thompson Seton, and many others, make quotations 
from his original descriptions, a few of which will speak 
for themselves : 
"The bluebird carries ihe sky on his back and the earth 
on his breast." 
"The woodchuck resembles a piece of rusty iron in the 
grass." 
He says the carrion flower reminds him of a dead rat 
in the wall. 
Again he speaks of the woods in autumn : 
"What wholesome drinks are in the swamps now; the 
rain falling on dried herbs and leaves and fiUing the pools 
and ditches into which they have dropped will soon con- 
vert them into green, black, brown, and yellow tea of all 
degrees of strength, enough to set all nature gossiping." 
His description of the red squirrel is amusing. In the 
winter he threw out corn from his cabin at Walden on to 
the snow for them. He says: "One would come run- 
ning out on the snow crust by fits and starts, like a leaf 
blown by the wind, a few paces this way and then a few 
paces that way, wasting more time than it would have 
taken to reach the corn, when suddenly, before you could 
say Jack Robinson, he would be in the top of a pine tree 
winding up lus clock and chiding all imaginaiy spectators, 
and talking to all the universe at the same time." 
He spealvs of the owl as "the winged brother of the 
cat." He says, "If I were awakened from a deep sleep I 
would know which side of the meridian the sun might be 
by the aspect of nature and the chirp of the crickets. 
Though no painter could paint the difference, the land- 
scape has a thousand dials which indicate the natural 
division of time; shadows of a thousand styles point to 
the hour." 
Again he says, "The wood thrush pitches his flute notes 
in the pine alleys where at twilight is heard the strange 
prophecy of the whippoorwill. The ovenbird beats his 
brass whicher-whicher in the heated shades of noon, 
mixed with the feathery roll call of the partridge." 
Who but Thoreau would describe the drumming of the 
partridge as a feathery roll call? It is also true that the 
metallic notes of the ovenbird are the loudest and 
sharpest in the noontide heat. 
Much has been written of Thoreau; many have tried 
to imitate him, but none have equaled the great philoso- 
pher of our fields and forests. He took pride in his 
poverty of money, and tried to impress on others the fact 
that there were other kinds of poverty much worse than 
the poverty of money. 
One of his old friends remarked as he stood looking at 
the old bed on which he died : "Thoreau was ostenta- 
tiously poor." While he lived his writings were very 
little sought for, but in the few decades that have passed 
since he died, there has been a great demand for his 
works. 
There is enough in his journals of the seasons, spring, 
summer, autumn, and winter, to make his name famous, 
and to-day no well conducted library is without his books, 
and as the days go by the demand will continue to in- 
crease. Geo. L. Brown. 
Seaboard Air Line. — X. 
May 15 to Nov. J5, 1903. 
From May to November is a far cry in the life of a 
bird. Many sweet voices that made our outside world 
bright, as they rang among the blooms at nesting time, 
are now adding their charm to round out the romance of 
"old days" that still lingers about many a southern 
homestead. One can imagine the delighted whispering 
that stirs the trailing fronds of Spanish moss, as the sig- 
nal comes, " the birds are here, arrived last night, watch 
out," and soon their forms are seen among the live oaks, 
£..nd gums, brightening the quiet of the old trees into new 
life, fliiiging crisp fragments of northern melody on the 
siill air, just to flaunt the mockingbirds and cardinals. 
The long draught of our early spring seemed to make 
very little difference in the traveling arrangements of the - 
migrating hosts. Orioles arrived on May 12, and the i8th 
furnished a rare musical treat, in the form of a rhapsody 
by a gorgeous rose-breasted grosbeak, that warbled with 
exquisite abandon while gleaning among the vireos, who 
always seem to find rich forage about the oak trees. On 
the 20th scarlet tanagers appeared, the gleam of their 
brilliant plumage emphasizing their every movement amid 
the tender green foliage that glistened from over-night 
showers (the first in many weeks). Robins nested in 
imusual numbers and all our residents were successful 
in rearing their young, as there were no sharp squalls to 
upset their domestic economy, or hurl their fledglings to 
destruction. English sparrows also produced an enor- 
mous crop, owing to the absence of stormy weather. I 
never walk abroad after a heavy rain at nesting time, 
v/hen the paths are dotted with the little naked dead 
bodies of these drowned out Britishers without thinking 
of the remark of a bright young miss of my acquaintance, 
"pickled mussels" she called them, and the gleaming yel- 
low gills of the poor little sodden bodies certainly give 
a "pickled mussel" effect as the eye first lights upon 
them. AH our residents took advantage of the specially 
favorable season to rear large families, and bird life 
abounded everywhere about us all through the summer 
days. 
As to the through travel on the "Air Line," it v as (as 
per my last report) hea'S'y during April, reaching its cul- 
mination the first week in May. The return tide has been 
markedly greater than for many years past. I have the 
unusual note of a flock of wood duck that whirled about 
the old-time haunts of their ancestors for a few days in 
late October. Woodcock have also dropped in on Us, 
and a sturdy specimen startled me on Election Day as he 
whistled up from a brier tangle that edged my path. All 
through the golden days of this superb autumn weather 
Ihe birds have been moving — myriads of all kinds — and 
the end is not yet, for many members of the thrush family 
are still rustling the fallen leaves in sheltered copses, or 
gleaning among the forgotten berries of the dogwoods. 
The shep! shep! shepl shop I of the fox-sparrow resounds 
through the still air of the quiet woods, and one may 
catch many a charming glimpse of rufous coats and gleam- 
ing small clothes as these alert birds zigzag about the 
undergrowth just ahead. As they always keep together, 
one has a fine opportuni^ to view them as he walks 
along, their pretty colors contrasting beautifully with the 
yellows and browns of the fallen leaves. Wild ducks have 
gone over in fair numbers, though I have seen but few 
geese as yet. I wonder why writers and artists will al- ' 
ways insist in describing and depicting the flight of wild 
geese in V formation. The fact is, 1 believe, that this 
X^-shaped flock makes such a striking picture in the 
heavens, as the honking squadrons come and go, that 
people and casual observers in general have come to be- 
lieve that wild geese always fly thus. 
While the fish hawk family is always well represented 
along the Jersey coast, I found them much more in evi- 
dence the past season than in many years. Terns, too, 
were fairly numerous. I saw hundreds of them on each 
occasion when I went outside to view the "troubles of 
Shamrock," but they kept aloof at such distances that I 
could not identify them. ' - 
Speaking of terns, I had the pleasure of a pleasant 
