Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and 
Copyright, 1904, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
Gun. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. I 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1904 
j VOL. LXIIL— No. 14. 
( No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
ACCORDING TO THE RULE OF OBY. 
Now this, was the weather rule of old Old Oby, who 
was the father of Oby's son Obadiah, who was the father 
of 'Diah, who was the father of Oby, who was the father 
of Old Oby's son 'Diah, who was the father of Lyin' Oby, 
whom nobody ever believed, and who was the last of this 
particular race of Obadiahs. This was the rule of Old 
Oby the weather prophet: Kill a black duck, or a broad- 
bill, or a coot, or a sheldrake, in August; pluck it, and 
take note of the feathers. If it shall have pin-feathers 
on the breast, there will be an open fall and winter. If, 
instead of the pin-feathers, there shall be found the breast 
covering of thick, fur-like down of the winter jacket, this 
will mean an early fall and a hard winter. 
As a foreteller of weather to come, Old Oby had great 
repute in his day and in his own country on the south 
side of Long Island. There are many duck shooters who 
consult the sign of the wild duck's breast, and implicitly 
believe in it. Mr. Miles Wood, of Brooklyn, who has 
followed the ducks of Long Island and North Carolina 
and Virginia for seventy years, more or less, reports that 
he has often tested Old Oby's rule, and the results have 
been such as to give him faith in it. In the middle of 
October, 1902, he found the broadbills, black ducks, and 
sheldrakes still in the pin-feather stage of plumage, indi- 
cating an open winter; and, as everyone knows, the win- 
ter of 1902-3 was a mild one. In the autumn of 1903, 
ducks killed in the early part of the season were found 
to be covered with down and to be without pin-feathers; 
this meant cold weather, and the winter of 1903-4 was a 
hard one. This season the ducks have moved south very 
early; a Currituck correspondent reports that they have 
already reached those waters in great numbers. A broad- 
bill, a sheldrake, and a black duck, killed on Long 
Island on September 17, were found to be without pin- 
feathers, to have their full coat of thick brown down on 
the breast, and to be as fat as they usually are in No- 
vember. By weather prophets who prognosticate accord- 
ing to the rule of Old Oby, this is taken to signify that 
the winter of 1904-5 will be one in which the duck 
shooter will do well to use No. 2's and 3's instead of 4's 
and 5's when he goes after his game, and to lay in an 
extra ton or two of coal for his home. 
A PHASE OF FIELD TRIALS. 
It is commonly accepted that the field trials of the Ten- 
nessee State Sportsmen's Association, held in 1874, were 
the first held in the United States. Since that pioneer 
event, a multiplicity of field trials have been held in every 
section of the United States and in Canada. 
Since the first trial, the intervening years have been 
happily distinguished by a beneficent and progressive ad- 
vancement in the arts and sciences. The traditions and 
beliefs pertaining to the professions of law, medicine and 
divinity have undergone great and improving changes. 
The political, social and mechanical worlds have not 
escaped the transforming hand of progress. In innumer- 
able instances, old ways and means, once excellent, have 
become obsolete, having been superseded by the newer 
and better order of things. 
Yet in all these radical mutations of time and progress 
in worldly affairs, field trial interests seem to have pos- 
sessed a charming immunity from change. It is as if 
they were perfection from the outset. In sentiment and 
associations, they seem to be alike everywhere. Their 
traditions, beliefs, procedure and affectations of good 
fellowship and brotherly sportsmanship have been main- 
tained inviolate from time immemorial. They are as im- 
mutable as light and love. 
Let us compare the remote field trial days with the 
near, which is the equivalent of comparing the near with 
the remote, or with any other. 
At all times there were five dominant factors, namely, 
the club members and owners of dogs in competition; the 
dog handlers, the judges, the sporting press and the 
dogs. Each one had a distinctly special field, and each 
one- thought himself, or itself, the most dignified, im- 
portant and indispensable. 
In the remote days the field trial procedure, in a -general 
way, was much as follows: Some weeks or days before 
the trials were held, sundry altruistic letters from amiable 
sportsmen appeared in the sportsmen's press descanting 
Ornately on the incomparable benefits which accrued tg 
sportsmanship from practical field trial participation. 
In many instances the philanthropic writers were owners 
of dogs which they hoped in good time to graduate into 
the public stud, but that benevolent purpose did not 
necessarily hoodwink them to the nice amenities of sports- 
manship. It was held that the trials at large promoted 
valuable acquaintance, good fellowship, good friendship, 
and higher standards of sportsmanship. Indeed, those 
sentiments were among the first solemnly set forth in the 
constitution of every field trial club. From a socialistic 
viewpoint they were perfect sentiments. 
The next conspicuous stage was the selection of judges, 
and the publication of their names in the sporting press. 
Year by year they were eulogized in due stereotyped 
form. It was called to mind that they were men of vast 
experience, iron will, and judicial impartiality; popular 
among their fellows, and without doubt men who would 
give the contestants perfect satisfaction. 
The next step in order was a poem in prose in respect 
to the fitness of the grounds, the abundance of birds, and 
the good will of the local residents. When the concocter 
of the poem in prose wrote those things, a nimble fancy 
was oftentimes more essential than the facts. 
After the trials were run, the truly active, acute and 
interesting stage had arrived. The press, with every up- 
ward and downward stroke, flayed the judges. Their mis- 
takes, great and small, real or imaginary, were set forth 
with an earnestness which would do credit to the fate of 
nations. The able judiciaries before the trials were too 
debased for a dunce's halo after the trials. Stupidity, 
partiality, inefficiency and unworthiness were then their 
chief traits. They were hardly fit to associate with such 
upright and honest men as the handlers. The handlers 
won the lime-light in the next stage of the field trial con- 
sequents. Each one had a dog which was well bred, well 
owned, and incomparable as a worker. The judges, there- 
fore, were wrong, and the reporters were wrong in their 
criticism of the judges, in so far as their dogs were 
ignored or mentioned unfairly. 
And thus year by year is acquaintance and good fellow- 
ship promoted by field trials, and the standards of good 
sportsmanship elevated to greater heights for all good 
sportsmen to emulate, but not to surpass. 
SOME WILDWOOD POISONS. 
Although it is a well understood fact that there are 
many poisonous plants growing in all parts of the coun- 
try, comparatively little is known about them. Most peo- 
ple in the East have experienced, or seen in others, the 
dreadful effects of the poison ivy; while on the other 
hand, in the West, plants acting in another way — as the 
larkspur, or poison weed ; the loco, or crazy weed— are very 
well known, and the damage done by them is exceedingly 
serious. So great is the harm done by loco in some por- 
tions of the West, that between 1881 and 1885 the State 
of Colorado paid out no less than $200,000 in bounties 
in the hope of exterminating the plant. It is hardly neces- 
sary to say that these efforts were ineffectual. 
Over much of the Middle States and of southern New 
England the poison ivy grows in enormous abundance ; 
fences, stone walls, hedgerows and tall trees are covered 
by it, with beautiful effect to the eye, but with dire results 
to the person going too near the plant, provided he or 
she is sensitive to the poison. On the other hand do- 
mestic animals — and no doubt wild ones as well — appear 
to be unaffected by the poison. Cows, horses, mules and 
goats eat the leaves readily, and apparently without ill- 
effect. They push their way through thickets of the vine, 
and seem never to suffer from it. 
The human subject is variously susceptible to the ivy 
poison. Some individuals can handle the plant without 
danger; others cannot go near it. without great subse- 
quent distress. Some people will be very badly poisoned 
by passing to the leeward of a fire in which the stems 
of the ivy are burning. 
There is a great variety of plants which poison animals 
and people who eat them, but most of them are not espe- 
cially attractive, aftd are eaten chiefly in curiosity and 
ignorance by little children. Deaths from eating jimson 
weed occur very frequently in and near large cities, and 
it is but a few weeks since several cases of the kind were 
reported in a suburb of New York. 
There are two mushroom-like toadstools or fungus 
which are violently poisonous. These belong to the genus 
Amanita, and are called fly-killer, fly fungus, and poison 
fungus. The first one is perhaps the best known of all 
the poisonous fungi, and has been used in Europe as a 
fly poison for hundreds of years. While bearing a close 
resemblance to the common mushroom, it may be dis- 
tinguished from it by having white instead of purple gills, 
by its warty cap, its bulbous stem, and by the fact that 
it grows in forests where the edible mushroom does not 
grow. The so-called death-cup or bulbous Amanita, is 
even more poisonous than the fly-killer, and should 
always be avoided, for cases have been known where 
handling it has caused trouble. This species also has 
white gills and grows in woods, though sometimes getting 
out on to the lawns. Both these fungi have a collar about 
the stem just below the head. 
False hellebore, known also as Indian poke, puppet 
root, earth gall, crow poison, devil's bite, wolfsbane and 
bugbane, is also poisonous if eaten. It is a stout peren- 
nial plant from two to seven feet high, bearing large 
plaited, stemless leaves, and a terminal cluster of greenish 
or yellowish flowers, blooming in May to July. Human 
beings have been poisoned by eating the roots, and horses 
by eating the leaves; but certain ruminating animals, as 
sheep and elk, appear not to suffer inconvenience from 
eating it. 
The pokeweed is well known to every American coun- 
try boy, and most of them have made red ink from its 
berries, which are also greedily eaten in autumn by many 
birds. The young shoots of this plant are commonly 
eaten as greens, but these should be well boiled, and the 
water should be changed once before the stems are eaten. 
Poisoning has v occurred from eating the root and the 
fruit ; but, on the other hand, as has already been said, 
the birds eat the berries with impunity. 
Several species of larkspur are regarded by stock 
growers as destructive to cattle. They are among the 
first plants to show their green leaves above the soil in 
spring, and are therefore eagerly sought for by cattle, 
often with fatal results. . It is quite possible that animals 
accustom "themselves to this plant, and that if eaten in 
small quantities in conjunction with other plants, ■ the 
percentage of deaths resulting is very small. 
The leaves of the wild cherry are said to be fatal to 
cattle, which soon after eating are afflicted with labored 
breathing, convulsions and death. In all such cases there 
is an evident odor of prussic acid in the breath. 
The damage caused by loco is well known. Horses, 
cattle, and sheep are affected by it, but horses most of all. 
An animal which has eaten loco is for a time crazy 
(loco Sp.). It seems not to be able to see, and cannot 
altogether control its movements. Apparently starting to 
go in one direction, it will suddenly turn off to one side, 
and perhaps run into a fence or building. After it has 
acquired a taste for the plant, it continues to eat . it, 
searching for it everywhere, and after a few months or 
years dies. 
Allied to the loco is what is known as rattlebox, rattle- 
weed or wild pea, a familiar plant from the Atlantic 
Coast to the Missouri River, and even beyond in New 
Mexico. It acts somewhat as loco does, but is much less 
violent. 
Two species of euphorbia are poisonous to eat or to 
handle. The bitter, milky juice when it touches the skin 
causes redness, itching, and often a breaking out of pim- 
ples and blisters, while if by any chance the seeds are 
taken internally in any quantity, death may ensue. In 
certain sections where the bees resort largely to the blos- 
soms of the euphorbia, the honey is made unsalable, being 
disagreeable to the taste and mildly poisonous. 
Poison ivy, poison oak, and poison sumach, are found 
over most of the country, and are perhaps the best known 
and most distressing of the poisonous plants of America. 
Investigations recently made show that the poison is a 
non-volatile oil, found in all parts of the plant. Like all 
oils, it is insoluble in water, and therefore cannot be 
washed off the skin with water alone. Alcohol, however, 
readily removes it, and its effect is destroyed by an alco- 
holic solution of sugar of lead. Mr. V. K. Chestnut, 
author of an interesting pamphlet on poisonous plants 
of the United States, published by the Agricultural De- 
partment, has this to say about the effect of the oil on 
the skin : 
"Numerous experiments show conclusively that the oil 
