FOREST AND STREAM. aSS 
April 23, 1904.] 
Nofth^n Bitds in Italy. 
Prof. Henry H. Gigliolo, of the Royal Zoological Mu- 
seum, Florence, Italy reports the occurrence last winter — 
1902-3 — in central Italy of the great white-billed diver 
(Colyinbus adamsi), two of which were captured; a 
female on Lake Montepulciano December 2, 1902, and a 
iiaale on the rgth of the same month on Lake Trasimeno. 
This winter there has been an invasion of northern 
iltaly by the Bohemian waxwing (Ampelis garrulus L), 
■which appeared in great numbers in December and Janu- 
•ary. It is reported from Nice that more than 200 speci- 
mens, said to have come from Corsica, have been sold in 
'the market. 
The yellow-billed loon, described by Gray in 1859, is 
:an inhabitant of Arctic America, west of Hudson Bay, 
•and is given as a casual visitor to northern Europe and 
Asia. Its occurrence in Italy is, of course, very ex- 
nraordinary. A good figure of it is given in "The New 
Lost in the Woods.— VIIL 
A Lost Hunter. 
^Continued from page 815 ) 
One morning just after there had been a fresh fall 
of about one inch of snow three of us started to make 
the Echo Lake drive. The Old Trapper and the Colonel 
were to take the stands, while I, with our spaniel 
Sport, was to make the drive. The others scattered, 
but Henry had arranged to go for the mail. Those 
of us who were huntmg got one buck, which fell to 
the Colonel. We hung him up about three miles from 
.camp, and over four hours after the Colonel fired his 
:shot. The deer was weighed ten days after he was 
'hung up, and the scales recorded 198 pounds. We were 
pretty well tn-ed out by the time we reached camp, and 
had no desire to hunt the remainder of the day, but 
spent most of the time in visiting with some Indians 
hunting near by. 
At dusk, Henry, who had gone for the mail, had not 
returned, and the worry which we felt developed into 
genuine alarm when at nine o'clock he had not re- 
turned. We had fired guns and "hollered" at intervals 
without result, and so the Old Trapper and myself 
lighted lanterns, and taking one gun started to look 
him up. It did not seem possible for him to have gone 
astray, as the woods were full of logging roads and he 
had the Pembine Creek and the railroad to take a com- 
pass line to in case of being lost, and by following a 
trail along the former he could walk right into camp. 
We went over the route we thought he would take to 
the logging camp, shooting our gun and yelling, but no 
answer did we receive. To one who has never had 
such an experience let me say it is not a pleasant situa- 
tion. At such times, if he has not known it before, a 
person will find that he is possessed of a very vivid 
imagination. It seems as if there is nothing that will 
not be thought of. All kinds of accidents are pictured 
in the mind. The lost one may have shot himself. He 
may have been shot by some other careless hunter. 
His gun in the act of firing may have exploded. He 
may have fallen and broken an arm or a leg. A tree 
may have crashed down and killed him. A limb or 
part of a tree top may have broken off and felled him 
with a fatal blow. He may have fallen into a lake or 
be mired in some swamp. Or he may be wandering 
miles away, traveling as only a frantic man can when 
he is lost. So it is no pleasant situation to have a 
member of your party lost and it was in no pleasant 
frame of mind therefore that we hunted for our man. 
After beating around the roads and choppings for 
quite a time we fiiially reached the logging camp. The 
cook, when awakened, said that Henry had been there 
and had started back to camp late in the afternoon. 
This was somewhat of a puzzler, and we were at a loss 
to know just what to do when we heard a young fellow 
calling to us as he stuck his head out of the door of 
the main shanty. "Say," says he, "are you fellows look- 
ing for that hunter?" We allowed that we were, and 
were very much relieved when he responded with: 
"Well, he's in here sound asleep." Come to find out 
he had started for camp and when not far from the 
logging shanty had shot at and supposed he had 
wounded a deer. It was so dark he thought he would 
go back and stay all night so as to be near the place 
in the morning, and ready good and early to look for 
his deer, but he never thought about our being alarmed. 
It was three o'clock in the morning when the Old Trap- 
per and myself, completely beat out, crawled into our 
bunks. 
We had a somewhat similar experience one year 
when hunting on the Pine River, but not with a mem- 
ber of our own party. Two of us, while up river and 
about a mile or so away from it, heard a great deal 
of shouting over in that direction, and finally worked 
over that way. We were walking along a logging road 
that led directly to the river when out of the brush 
on one side of the road burst a hunter on the run. 
and Heretofore Unfigured Species o£ the Birds of Nerth 
America," by Daniel Giraud Elliott, two volumes. New 
York, 1866-1869, plate 63. 
Some Birds of the South. 
In the proceedings of the Biological Society of Wash- 
ington, last November, Mr. E. W. Nelson, the naturalist, 
whose investigations have covered so much territory 
north and south, describes a number of new forms of 
birds from southern Mexico. Among these are a new 
quail dove, long-toed grouse, owl, woodpecker, two 
jays, several warblers and a bluebird. 
In the November Condor he has an interesting illus- 
trated article on the Mexican cormorant, which he found 
breeding at Lake Chapala about Christmas time, 1902. 
Most of the nests were just completed, and as yet con- 
tained no eggs, but qiiite a number had a single egg, and 
in a number of cases two eggs were found. A series of 
He was a sight to behold. His clothing was all torn, 
his face and hands bleeding from scratches, his hat 
lost and his whole person bedaubed with the black from 
the half burned logs he had been crawling over. When 
he saw us he sank to the ground completely exhausted, 
saying: "My God! how glad I am to see you." When 
he revived sufficiently to talk we found that he belonged 
to a party that was camped about two miles further up 
stream and right on the banks of the river. He had 
been running around an area not over a half a mile 
square all the morning trying to find the river, and 
there it was so close that by standing still the sound 
of the water as it rushed over some rocky rapids could 
be plainly heard. Once on the river bank all he had 
to do was to follow a well-beaten logger's trail right 
to his camp. The poor fellow, however, had become 
almost crazed, and when we led him to the river he 
could not for the life of him tell whether his camp 
was located up or down stream. We finally took him 
to it, and when we left he vowed that no power on 
earth could ever get him into the woods again. 
He was simply "rattled" so completely that he could 
not seem to get any idea of direction from looking at 
the sun, and he had no use he said for his compass 
because he didn't know whether to go east, west, north 
or south in order to reach the river. He had become 
so excited that he would run through the woods until 
exhausted, and generally he would wind up at the place 
from which he started. 
This seems to be the general experience of men lost 
in the woods. Instead of keeping cool and following 
their compass, or, if without one, a direction from the 
sun, they imagine the compass is wrong, they get an 
idea that camp is located in just such a direction, and 
the more they travel the worse they become, until 
finally they reach a half-crazed condition. It would 
seem as if a man with a compass could work out of 
any part of Wisconsin now that it is so gridironed with 
railroads and so completely laid open by the work of 
the lumbermen, and yet only last fall a well-known 
physician while hunting was lost, and it was only after 
snow disappeared that his remains were found only a 
few miles from the place from which he started, ana 
from all appearances he had wandered around until he 
died from exhaustion and exposure. 
It is a bewildering thing to get lost in the wild woods 
and start out two or three times from a given point, 
in an effort to find your bearings, only to wind up at 
the same starting point. It is discouraging, and one 
can at once see how it would put the mind of an inex- 
perienced person in a whirl. The main thing, however, 
IS to keep cool. The first tendency, if a compass is at 
hand, is to doubt it. Don't do it. Stick to the com- 
pass, no matter how much it may seem to deviate, and 
it will always be found to be correct. 
There is an old story current about an Indian who 
went out to hunt and carried a compass with him for 
the first time. When ready to return to camp he fol- 
lowed the compass, only to find that he was lost. He 
looked at the compass and said to himself, "Compass 
lost, Indian lost." Then he placed the compass on a 
log and with a stick shattered it with one blow, and 
as he did so ejaculating: "Compass go to , Indian 
find himself," and he did. 
This may be all right for the Indian, but it won't do 
for the white man unles-s he is an experienced woods- 
man. A man who, when in the woods keeps his head, 
can take a compass line and by sticking to it can land 
himself arnong familiar landmarks. The next thing is 
not to be in too much of a hurry. Don't tire yourself 
out, but carefully husband your strength. Guard against 
emergencies by always seeing to it that you have some 
matches and a small lunch in your pockets before you 
start out. You may have to lie out all night, and if 
you do when darkness overtakes, stop, build a fire and 
stay by it until daylight. Don't shoot all of your am- 
munition away at once. If you are with a party you 
should have a signal for help. For instance, three shots 
fired as quickly as possible might mean that you wanted 
some one to come to you. If y®u gave the signal and 
eighteen eggs were- taken. A later inspection of the 
colony, January S, 1903, showed it to be deserted, pre- 
sumably as a result of the earlier visit. 
In the proceedings of the Biological Society, just is- 
sued—March 10, 1904— Mr. Nelson prints an important 
paper of about twenty pa^es entitled: "A Revision of 
the North American Mainland Species of Myiarchus." 
This group, which appears to reach its greatest de- 
velopment in the American tropics, including the West 
Indies, IS known in the north only by the species 
cinerascens, which extend up the west coast to Oregon, 
and criniltis, which is found in eastern America as far 
nprth as southern Canada and New Brunswick. These 
birds, it is remembered, very commonly employ the shed 
skins of snakes as nest building material. 
After some introductory matter, Mr. Nelson gives a 
key to the species and sub-species, which number about 
twenty, and subsequently describes each. The paper is 
largely technical, but of great interest and value. 
it was not answered then wait a little while before re- 
peating it. 
When going into a new country to hunt we have 
always taken the direction of the water courses and 
the general trend of the ridges, so that when without 
a compass on a cloudy day kriowledge of these things 
helps us out when in a strange place. Any wind storms 
that have passed through a country have usually come 
from one general direction, and by noting this and the 
way that the timber lies, information that may be of 
value can often be obtained. The runways of the deer 
generally cross the country in a well defined direction, 
and by observation of this a man can still further for- 
tify himself. Our own experience in this phase of life 
in the woods has not been extensive, but we have fre- 
quently known of parties hunting near us whose mem- 
bers have suffered severely. In one instance one man 
laid out one night and had his feet so badly frozen 
that he was crippled for life. Carolus. 
la a New England Park. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
The winter of 1903-4 will long be remembered in New 
England for the extreme and continued cold that pre- 
vailed, which, with the numerous storms, caused the de- 
struction of many game birds, nearly exterminated the 
Bob White, and even many of the ruffed grouse, which 
are supposed to be able to survive the most severe 
weather, were unable so to do. It has been the general 
impression that the grouse's habit of budding would pre- 
vent individuals of this kind from suffering from want 
of food, but an examination of a number of these grouse 
that have been found dead has shown empty crops, 
although apple and poplar trees, the buds of which they 
are said to be particularly fond of were within easy reach. 
We have in Springfield, within a mile and a half of 
the business center, 465 acres of land belonging to the 
city, called_ the Forest _ Park, which has not been devel- 
oped in quite so artificial a manner as has been the case 
with many such places in other towns. Within its limits 
regularly breed the woodcock, Bob White and ruffed 
grouse, and wood duck have several years nested there. 
A flock of fifty or more semi-domesticated wild geese 
roam at their will around the park, some of which each 
season pair and raise their young. For a number of years 
ring-necked pheasants have there been raised in confine- 
ment, and every spring many of these have been let loose, 
some of which have remained and made their home in the 
park. Last winter it was noticed that these pheasants 
were standing the hard weather much better than the 
omer game birds and that they did not seem to want for 
food. Ten years or more ago there was planted in one 
section of the park a half acre or more of barberries 
{Berberis vulgaris). These have grown to be shrubs 
three or four feet in height, with long spreading branches, 
which, during the colder months, are heavily laden with 
scarlet berries. It was observed that the pheasants were 
feeding upon this fruit, and during the winter eat many 
bushels of these berries. Following a fall of snow the 
conditions among the barberry bushes were similar to a 
barnyard in the country after a storm of this kind, where 
the snow had been trampeled down by domestic fowls, 
so numerous were the foot prints of the pheasants. I 
m.ention these facts, thinking they might interest persons 
v>ho are engaged in raising these birds, for this kind of 
barberry is easily cultivated and will not only furnish 
pheasants whh plenty of food during the colder months, 
but the shrubs will_ give them shelter against inclement 
weather and their living enemies. 
The presence of representatives of any of these species 
of birds that I have mentioned, in a public park, where 
they are protected in fact, as well as by law, makes a very 
attractive addition to what is usually found in such places. 
The honking of a goose, the drumming of a ruffed grouse, 
the whistle of a Bob White, the glimpse of a pheasant 
skulking in the high grass, or of a woodcock skimming 
over a group of alders, are sounds and sights that give 
pleasure to many. Robert O. Morris, 
S BAG^ AND 
