270 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
per pound, and the sum total. This order is^ cashed at 
the gin's bank, whichever one it happens to be. 
The weigher has some things to watch out for. _Une 
■farmer tells of selling his ninety pound dog nmety times 
in one fall, and still possessing the dog. The dog was 
in the cotton, and wasn't in the wagon when it was 
returned to be weighed— ninety pounds, at the rate ot 
3 cents a pound would be $2.70 a load, or $243 all^ told. 
Others have been known to "sell," or attempt to sell 
their children in the same way. One must watch out 
for yellow cotton— cotton that has been stained by rams, 
or "burned" by being held too long in private cotton 
houses, or too many hulls and woody debris. Some 
loads must be docked, but when competition is strong, 
not much docking is done. Figuring up the value ot 
a load when it weighs, say 2,965 pounds net, at 3-27. 
with the farmer complaining that the gin scales didnt 
give him within a hundred pounds of what his steel 
yard weight in the field amounted to, the ginners— two 
for four gins-yelling "More cotton! More cotton to 
the slow suckers, and ringing the bell, and the local 
blowhard giving some anecdote, and perhaps the round 
bale press expert coming in with a request for some 
different hammer or wrench from the blink-blank one 
at hand— to figure accurately tinder such circumstances 
is a job in the daily experience of the superintendent. 
But he has a cotton calculator, which tells him the value 
of every possible load of cotton from one pound to 
200,0000 pounds, at any conceivable value from a cent 
a pound to fifteen cents. A glance at the printed page 
of figures shows it all. The only need is to read the 
scales and the calculator right. 
The toot of the cotton gin's whistle, far heard, and 
at frequent intervals during the day— and night, too. 
when the crop is big— is a most impressive feature of 
the cotton country. Close at hand the red, or black, 
buildings, a chimney spouting a combination of soft coal 
and wood smoke, ventilators from which fly shreds ot 
white, snowy lint, the suck "overflow" from which 
flies a cloud of dust at intervals— darkies smgmg, 
mules laying their ears back suggestively, whips crack- 
ing, cotton wagons full and empty, the hum of the gms 
and fans, and the old farmer, perhaps some negro 
"uncle" renter, out at the knees, heels, elbows and toes, 
clutching between thumb and forefinger the slip ot yel- 
low paper, calling for $75— five per cent, of what his 
lOO-acre crop will bring— such a spectacle will make 
even the old-time cotton man step to one side for an- 
other look from a more advantageous view-point. ^ 
On Saturday "evening"— the afternoon— the pickers 
are paid off, and come to town. They throng the streets, 
all manner of colored folks, spending what |hey haVe 
earned during the week. With from four to fifteen dol- 
lars "spending money" each one chooses and selects. 
"They buy what they want, if they've got the money 
to pay for it." Friiit, chickens, canned stuffs, dress 
goods, anything and everything they can see that prom- 
ises good looks or a pleasant taste. In the back alleys, 
in the shacks that are white-washed, one hears the click 
of little cubes of "ivory," a low, droning noise, as the 
players of craps whistle and call for luck. In the jail 
are some crap players, and the marshal is always on the 
lookout for them— but nevertheless "Coontown ^s fre- 
quently in evidence," as the local paper says. Ani once 
in a while "Coontown" adds a coffin to its purchasefej 
due to failure of the cubes to be thoroughly und^rstodd 
by all parties present. . = 
Around the gin in picking time, and m the streets 
on a Saturday evening, one sees and hears the things 
that go to individualize the cotton town. ^ 
To the tourist from the spruce pulp country, its a 
place for wide eyes, and the notebook man feels helpless 
and grows irritated because so much is there to collect. 
Stray expressions, colds facts, red-hot figures. 
Cotton land is owned mostly by large holders— by m_en 
who own plantations. Witness the Harris Estate with; 
12,000 acres. These men rent their land out at from 
$3 to $5 an acre, and perhaps a sub-renter pays six dol- 
lars an acre for choice land. The land is worth from 
$30 to $150 an acre, and produces from half a bale to 
perhaps two bales. 1,500 pounds of seed cotton makes 
a bale, and the gins figure that the seed will almost pay 
the expense of ginning and the lint pays for the cost of 
the seed cotton and makes the profit. In Lake county, 
Tenn., there are seventeen gins, fifteen running this year, 
with a daily output of from ten to sixty bales a day. 
All the land, with the exception of five or six small- 
say hundred-acre— patches, is in the hands of estates 
or large holders. "That's the trouble." Let land be 
put on the market and the big holders outbid the little 
men. Land can't be bought. But there is cotton land 
left by the river after every flood. If a man knows the 
way the river is wiggling, he can run in and after a 
year of squatting take out a deed for "300 acres, more 
or less." This land, some of it in the hands of thriftless 
negroes, or dangerously situated as regards the river, 
may be had at from twenty-five cents an acre up. Some 
people are taking up such claims— usually clay lined 
river folks, who keep a skiff, a flat boat and a house 
boat in the back yard against the spring floods. 
But however interesting cotton and a cotton town may 
be, at the end of three' weeks, during which I "wrote up" 
and took a look at Reelfoot Lake, I grew uneasy, I one 
day went afloat from Tiptonville, having waited in vam 
for a medicine and show boat, which I had seen up- 
stream, and wished to join. I found the river not less 
interesting than before. Raymond S. Spears. 
Mr. Hubbard's Death in Labrador 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The reports of Mr. Hubbard's death by starvation, 
on the watershed of the Northwest River in Labrador, 
are perhaps not accurate as described in the daily press, 
but unless information to the contrary reaches us it 
would seem as though the party was not quite sufficiently 
skilled in woodcraft. Mr. Hubbard died about the 
middle of October, and had been on scanty diet for a 
nionth. From the iSth of September to the 15th of 
Ocftbber one might expect to find a good many kinds 
of "food, excepting on the rocky barren plateau. 
Assuming that bears, beavers and caribou were not 
easily obtainable, although all are inhabitants of the 
region until the caribou move southward, one would 
expect to find the following supplies: 
Porcupines, woodchucks (Arctomys), hares, red 
squirrels, lemmings, and several smaller rodents. We 
have depended upon hares for meat at times when we 
were too much engaged in exploring to care for variety 
in food. They are easily caught by setting snares in 
the runways, and the rudest and most carelessly arranged 
snares of common string gave us all of the meat that 
we wanted. A pail half full of water set in a runway, 
and containing a little seal oil for bait and to keep the 
water from freezing, will catch so many small rodents 
during the night that one is not likely to go hungry 
unless he is sqeamish. 
Porcupines are pretty good eating, and are to be found 
in the spruce valleys. Woodchucks are not good eating, 
and are not common, but their holes can be found occa- 
sionally. Foxes, wolves, lynxes and otters are practically 
out of the question for food supply, unless one has un- 
limited time for outwitting them, or for finding their 
haunts. 
So far as my experience goes, trout and chars will 
bite at any time of the year, although they will not rise 
to the fly excepting during the summer. They will take 
natural or artificial bait of various kinds. , J 
Suckers can be snared in the still waters if one is 
equipped with a small "waterscope." i 
Eels are abundant in most of the streams _ until 
hibernating time. But they probably ceased to bite in 
September, 
Ciscoes and other coregonus could undoubtedly be 
caught in a small gill net set at night, although we have 
not tried it. The gill net would certainly pick up 
suckers. ; 
For starchy food, one can find almost anywhere col- 
lections of ferns, and the rhizome of one that is common 
in Labrador. (OjMMm&a.?) is fairly good eating. It 
seems to be the chief food of the bears when they first 
emerge from winter quarters. 
The fruit of the curlew berry (Empetrum) and of 
two cranberries remains upon the plants all winter, and 
in such abundance that one need not go very far without 
getting a supply. The young tops of caribou moss, 
though astringent, have a fine flavor, and contain enough 
starch to make the caribou fat. Poplar buds can be 
obtained almost anywhere where there is any sort of 
wood. They are a favorite food of ptarmigan and 
grouse, and are not to be despised as a luxury when 
one is exploring. The buds of willow and of white 
birch can be obtained pretty generally in Labrador, but 
they are not good to eat excepting when one is starving. 
The buds of the white bush maple are good and whole- 
some. 
The rhizome of the yellow water Hly is almost as 
full of starch and as meaty as a potato, and if one 
could get the tannin out, it would make an abundant 
and excellent food supply. I have eaten it several times, 
but the tannin spoiled it for food, excepting in an 
emergency. 
The yellow water lily is found practically everywhere 
in the "scoop hole marshes" of the sub-arctic region, and 
if some chemist will tell us how to get rid of the tannin 
without spoiling the starch, he will be one of the famous 
public benefactors. 
According to the newspaper reports the party make 
no mention of ptarmigan or of spruce grouse, and one 
would jiidge from this that for some reason these abun- 
dant birds were absent from the region traversed. Per- 
sonally I have never been out of reach of one of them 
in Labrador, but have heard from the Indians that they 
sometimes leave a locality for a while. An exploring 
party is apt to make the mistake of carrying too many 
supplies. The tendency is then for one to go for as 
long a time as possible on the food in the pack, and 
then to become weakened, and to lose the ambition re- 
quired for living on the country. I have done it myself. 
This happens particularly when one has set a time limit 
for getting to a certain spot, a fault common with men 
from a clock country, but not one that can be charged 
against the traveler in a sun and moon country. 
If some of us were going over the country traversed 
by the Hubbard party we would take no provisions at 
all excepting enough seal oil, salt and pepper, for flavor- 
ing the luxuries that we could pick up. We would have 
tea and tobacco, to be sure, and these two things would 
be so good all of the while as to pay for the whole 
trip. If we set a time limit on getting to any given 
place and return we might expect to perish before get- 
ting back, unless the time limit were elastic enough to 
allow us to get back "in the spring or by summer, or 
perhaps not until fall, but look for us by winter anyway." 
Some of us do not believe that "sad tales of privation 
and hardship" are often necessary. We go into that 
sort of thing voluntarily on the football team. Some 
of us have been in the wretchedest country in the north, 
with no dry clothes for two weeks at a time, often 
making some sort of camp in a swamp or on a cliff 
when caught by night, sometimes with not a thing to 
eat all day long, because the storms were too furious, 
or there was no time to stop to get food. Cold, wet, 
and hungry— this may sound like complaint and a sad 
tale, but it is not. Personally I would rather be there 
now than to have the best bed and board at the Wal- 
dorf-Astoria, although I dine there to-night. Give me 
instead a seat on the thick wet caribou moss, with the 
sleet bounding off from the tin platter that is washed 
sometimes, and on the platter some wood-rat stew with 
poplar buds on the side. For a relish a seal oil salad 
of brake sprouts. For dessert a handful of spice cran- 
berries picked on the spot, and for luxury a cup of hot 
tea without sugar or milk, and flavored with nothing 
excepting the sweet, pure, strong wind that almost puts 
out the fire of willow sticks. Robert T. Morris. 
New York, March U5. 
Baton Martin von Schlosse*. 
Meyers Falls, Washington, March i2.--Editor Forest 
and Stream: In Forest and Stream of March 5, it is 
said the above named baron was killed by a bear in tfie. 
Olympic penirisula in the State of Washington. The 
announcement is not true. The baron has turned up 
alive and well. Some one, maliciously or some other 
way, gave circulation to a story that may cause nothing 
but panic or harm. . : . ^ - ^• 
The Winter Whitening of Animals 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
An editorial on the above in your issue of December 
2b, 1903, is one of much interest to lovers of nature. 
Some of our scientists ought to take hold of this subject 
and give us an explanation of the true cause. Capt. 
Barrett Hamilton's theories on the matter, "atrophy of 
the pigment cells due to fatty deposits," do not appear 
to me to be well founded, in fact quite the opposite 
ot what I have observed during many years of trapping. 
To begin with, I will take the three best known species 
of our fauna that undergo a complete change: the hare, 
weasel and ptarmigan (willow grouse) The two mam- 
mals above named are remarkable for the total absence 
of fatty tissue on their bodies, and when they do have 
a little It IS only a small streak on the back, from the 
neck to the shoulder blades, which, strange to say, is 
the part where the dark color of the fur is retained 
the longest in the fall. On the underparts where they 
never have any fat, the color remains white all the 
year round. Ptarmigan are in their primest condhion 
about the end of August, at which time they have their 
finest summer plumage. After that period, berries, on 
which they have fattened during the summer disappear, 
and the birds are forced to subsist on the buds of the 
willow and other shrubs. They then lose flesh gradually 
until the end of October, at which ^ time they have 
assumed the white plumage of winter, and have not a 
particle of fat on their body anywhere. The tail feathers 
that are deeply seated in the fatty rump and near the 
oil glands remain black at all seasons. If this whitening 
process of the fur or feathers were due to accumulations 
oi fat, such animals as the bear, beaver, porcupine, skunk 
and others would turn white, as in the fall of the year 
all these animals have a heavy coat of fat on them. 
The young of the Greenland seal (Phoca groenlandica) 
are born white; at birth they are very lean, but soon 
accumulate fat, and at the end of from five to six weeks 
are just one solid lump of fat, when the white coat is 
shed and the dark, mottled color is assumed, just at 
the time that the quantity of fat is the greatest! The 
Greenland seal deposits its young on the ice in February. 
Another species of seal (Phoca vitulina) also is born 
white in the same lean condition, but this white coat 
is shed the same day, within a few hours, and some- 
times immediately after birth, and the dark color taken. 
Ihis last species deposit the young in June. Here we 
have two mammals of the same family, one giving birth 
to its young in winter, which retains its white color 
till the ^spring, or until such time as the influence of 
the sun's heat is felt. The other depositing the young 
in summer, when the white color is immediately thrown 
off. Would not this seem to indicate that cold is the 
chief factor and has more to do with coloration than fat? 
The back of all northern mammals, as a rule, is darker 
than the underparts, being most exposed to the sun's 
rays, while , the other portions in contact with the cold 
or damp ground remain paler or white. The fur of the 
hare and weasel and the feathers of the grouse may also 
be more susceptible to cold than those of other animals 
or birds, owing to some peculiarity of texture and the 
pigment cells ' therefore more easily affected. It is a 
well-known fact that hares and weasels begin to change 
color earlier on the high ranges than they do near the 
coast line, but in each case only after the first frosts, 
and gradually more so as the cold increases. In mild 
seasons the change comes later than in early ones, show- 
ing that there is no fixed time, all depending on tem- 
perature. Another important fact worth noting, and of 
which Capt. Barrett Hamilton says nothing, is that the 
skin of the animal undergoes the same changes, being 
dark in summer and white in winter. 
Nap. a. Comeau. 
GoDBOUT, Feb. 17. 
Hawks and Owls. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Your long-time contributor. Old Sam, whose name I 
was glad to see once again in Forest and Stream, 
writing in your issue of Feb. 27, made a vigorous attack 
upon the whole tribe, or tribes, of hawks and owls, 
stigmatizing them all as habitual murderers of game 
birds and domestic fowls, and damning them without 
discrimination as enemies of society, both human and 
feathered. 
The pretty and interesting little "toy" owl, com- 
monly called screech, comes in for the largest share of 
odium, and is made to appear as an ogre, with a large 
capacity for devouring his fellow creatures. 
The inference to be drawn is that unless these de- 
structive marauders have speedy punishment meted out 
to them by present execution without benefit of clergy, 
there shall soon be neither game birds nor chickens 
left, when the murderous hawks and owls must per- 
force all starve to death. 
Your correspondent gives a number of concrete ex- 
amples wherein the culprits were taken in Aagrante 
delictu, concerning the truth of which no doubt is 
intended here to be implied. But the contention is 
made that these instances were exceptional, and do not 
mark the rule of conduct of the hawks and owls. 
I think a little reflection would substantiate this con- 
tention; and a considerable volume of negative testi- 
mony can be offered in the cause of the defense. 
Passing over the positive testimony afforded by syste- 
matic nivestigation of the stomachs of the accused, 
which show them to be vastly more beneficial than 
harmful to human interests, as evidenced by the char- 
acter of the food found in their stomachs, let us take 
up the evidence of a negative character. 
Every sportsman must have noted that in the pur- 
suit of partridges {virginianus) he has found the same 
coveys on the same ground throughout the season, 
the numbers of birds not appreciably diminished, ex- 
cept by his own gun or those of - other sportsmen, not- 
withstanding the presence of numerous hawks in the 
neighborhood, who are not infrequently engaged in 
hunting the game fields as the sportsman, but evidently 
