Oct. 29, 1904.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
860 
"Now — whoa, Charley! — bring your bridle. There, 
there, Charley! We'll show 'em what you're good for. 
Whoa, boy !" 
Father saddled the horse and rode him, often far from 
home, declaring "he's as safe a horse as I should want," 
and Chass grew so fond of him that at last he would go to 
him of his own accord, and allow himself to be caught 
outside. He would stand as still as a statue for the feeble 
old man to mount, which must have been very trying to a 
horse so nervous, for father's legs were stiffish, and 
he was sometimes a long while in getting up, refusing 
assistance. 
But years elapsed before we "boys" could get that horse 
to stand for us, or allow himself to be quietly caught by 
us. And in the meantime we were compelled to apply 
some of the professional horse trainer's tricks to thor- 
oughly subdue him. Once we tied his front feet together 
and threw him, when he was in «a rebellious mood, and he 
got upon his hindfeet and plunged about in that plight, 
a magnificent, terrifying spectacle. 
When he is angry, though he never seems to desire to 
hurt any man, he is the stubbornest, most unconquerable 
equine I ever saw. When good-humored he is the kindest, 
gentlest, most faithful. A whisper is better than any loud 
command, a barely perceptible touch of a whip sends him 
lunging forward. He will pull till he falls. He will go 
wherever his rider guides, if the rider shows no fear. 
When he tries to "run away," as he often does, all that is 
needed to check him suddenly is to laugh boisterously at 
him, when he at once slows down, and proceeds in a de- 
based, shamed manner, nose close to the ground, sighing 
dejectedly. This has been the case hundreds of times. 
No man could, after looking at the sudden change in his 
manner, doubt that he is ashamed to be laughed at, as 
was the case with Major, the clown dog. Yet, like that 
same dog, he delights in provoking laughter when loose 
in the pasture, and will do the most unheard-of stunts 
undoubtedly for that reason. He looks as if laughing 
himself. He will imitate certain of our motions well-nigh 
as faithfully as a monkey could : such as kicking at an im- 
aginary foe, striking, pretending to drink from a bottle, 
which he holds firmly between his teeth by the neck, 
smoking, etc. He has not been trained to do these tricks ; 
he performed each one successfully the first time it was 
attempted. He's not a conversationalist, like "Clever 
Hans," but for quick understanding and humor I doubt 
if his equal exists. He plays with us, with the pigs, with 
the dogs, with the calves, and is exceedingly careful never 
to harm any small animal or bird. The chickens are 
never disturbed by him, even if they eat most of the corn 
from under his very nose in his trough. 
Flora, an old mare, once picked up a large shoat that 
was trying to get into her trough, and lifted it gently oyer 
the high wall of her stall, dropping it on the other side. 
Old Bay, whom I had dragging logs for me in a clear- 
ing, soon showed that he comprehended my object, so 
that after starting a log heap he could be trusted to take 
the logs to it alone, place them alongside, and wait for 
me to come up with my little load and unfasten his. After 
the first time he needed no driver to any heap. If a log 
caught against any small, low stump, he'd look around, 
hump himself, and lift it over. If the stump was high, 
he'd give a jerk or two, then pull to the right or left. He 
seemed to enjoy the work. L. R. Morphew. 
[to be continued.] 
Another Snake Hunting Dog. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Mark E. Noble, in a late number, gives an account of a 
snake-hunting dog. When a boy I had another of the 
snake hunters, a large white bulldog, which I raised from 
the time he was two weeks old. He was, without excep- 
tion, the ugliest dog I have ever seen, and his temper cor- 
responded with his looks. I called him Bull. 
The most of the snakes that Bull found were black- 
snakes, but we sometimes found a rattlesnake; and I was 
always afraid that Bull would manage to find one. That 
is what he did. He came home one day and laid down on 
the porch without growling at whoever looked at him, 
as he generally did. My aunt saw that there was some- 
thing wrong with him, and called me to examine him ; 
she was afraid of him. I found that he had been bitten 
on the jaw, and his head on that side had swollen up so 
as to close the eye. I did not want to lose him, and ran 
all the way up to an old colored woman's house who had 
the name of being a doctress. The farmers would call 
her when in need of a doctor as often as they would call 
the regular doctor. She came back with me, and on the 
way down gathered a large handful of a weed that grew 
in the fence corners, and which we called snakeweed. 
After bruising it, she boiled it in a quart of milk, and 
was about to give it to Bull; but I was afraid he might 
Snap at her, and taking the tin pan with this stuff in it, 
I forced him to drink it all. In a few hours I made an- 
other dose of it for him. 
He was up and looking for his breakfast next morning, 
but the swelling did not leave his head altogether for a 
week. He began hunting snakes again, but took care not 
to find any more rattlers. 
I hunted up the rattlesnake that had bit him, and found 
he had bitten its head nearly off, then had hammered it 
into a jelly against a stump. He caught a snake just be- 
hind the head, then thrashed it on the ground until it was 
dead ; he sometimes would shake it all to pieces. 
Bull met with a peculiar death a year after this. He 
was lynched for killing chickens. He had got to be so 
cross that my mother would not let me keep him at home 
any longer, felling me to kill him or lose him. I could not 
lose him, arffl woutd not kill him ; so I took him out to 
where he had killed the snakes and left him there. He 
began to kill chickens. He would take a chicken's head 
off with a single snap, and do it so quickly that there 
would be no time to stop him. After he had killed half a 
dozen, my uncle took him out to the timber and killed 
mrru Cabia Blanco. . 
Mountain Goats in the Bronx. 
Two mountain goats have been added to the attractions 
of the New York Zoological Park. They are yearlings, 
$nd come from British Columbia. 
" Monarch the Big Bear/' 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Among the advertisements of new books a week or two 
ago, I noticed the announcement by Scribner's of "an in- 
timate animal study" by Mr. Ernest Thompson Seton. 
The advertisement said it was Seton's longest and best 
story, a "return to his earlier method," an "intimate 
study" by the great naturalist of "Monarch the Big 
Bear." 
For a definition of Mr. Seton's "earlier method," I 
turned to the introductory note in his "Wild Animals I 
Have Known," in which he says : "These stories are true. 
Although I have left the strict line of historical truth in 
many places, the animals in this book were all real charac- 
ters; they lived the lives I have depicted." We have Mr. 
Seton's earnest assurance that he has known the animals 
he writes about, has observed them with scientific ac- 
curacy, and has set down only what he knows to be true. 
His stories are natural history recorded with literary art 
— science in an attractive dress. 
Eager to read the results of a naturalist's intimate study 
of so interesting an animal as the grizzly, I obtained a 
copy of Mr. Seton's new book, "Monarch the Big Bear," 
and read it carefully. It purports to be the life history of 
the big grizzly captured for the San Francisco Examiner, 
presented by Mr. W. R. Hearst to the city of San Fran- 
cisco, and now confined in Golden Gate Park. 
In the dedication Mr. Seton says the epic tale was told 
to him by two rough men of the hills who did not know 
how to talk, using words that would be "meaningless 
without the puckered lip, the inter-hiss, the brutal semi- 
snarl restrained by human mastery, the snap and jerk of 
wrist and gleam of steel-gray eye, that really told the 
tale." He says he gives a translation of their story, "for 
theirs is a tongue unknown to script." 
But there is another "foreword" to the book, in which 
the author discredits this picturesque dedication, and de- 
clares that the story of Monarch is founded on material 
gathered from many sources "as well as from personal 
experience;" that "the intention is to convey the known 
truth," but that the liberties taken "exclude the story 
from the catalogue of pure science." 
So the two rough men of the hills, whose crude speech 
and "brutal semi-snarls" were translated into a "tongue 
known to script" by Mr. Seton resolve themselves into 
"many sources" and Mr. Seton's personal experiences 
with grizzly bears. As I read the book, however, I re- 
solved the many sources into one, and identified one of the 
rough, inarticulate and semi-brutally snarling moun- 
taineers — the Lan Kellyan of the tale. Almost every ad- 
venture and feat attributed to Monarch by Mr. Seton is 
told in a book, published about a year ago, entitled, 
"Bears I Have Met— and Others," by Allen Kelly, a book 
containing Mr. Kelly's plain narrative of the capture of 
Monarch. Obviously Lan Kellyan is a perversion of that 
author's name. 
Comparing the two books, . I find that Mr. Seton has 
converted Mr. Kelly's facts into fiction, and translated his 
avowed fiction into "the known truth," and "natural his- 
tory." Parallel columns would show this clearly, but that 
method would take too much space, and I will refer to 
the episodes briefly. In the first chapter Mr. Seton intro- 
duces Pinto, a bear introduced in Chapter XVIII. of Mr. 
Kelly's book, and tells seriously the story of a she bear 
slapping her cubs when she is shot in the ham, an incident 
which is related humorously in Mr. Kelly's chapter on 
"The Adventures of Pike." 
Mr. Seton's second chapter is devoted to the exploits 
of a grizzly that climbed trees after bees' nests. I pre- 
sume that is one of Mr. Seton's personal experiences, for 
I do not find any of Mr. Kelly's grizzlies climbing trees. 
The arboreal habit of the grizzly is one of the hitherto 
unknown truths of natural history. The credit for dis- 
covering it must be awarded to the novelist-naturalist, 
and it may, perhaps, be placed in the catalogue of pure 
science. It must be a truth known to Mr. Seton, for 
chapter three of his book puts the grizzly again up a tree, 
from which he jumps upon a pestering dog. In fact, in 
that chapter the grizzly lives up a tree, whereas Kelly and 
all other unscientific hunters and writers of the grizzly 
represent that animal as unable to climb. 
In Chapter V. Mr. Seton's Monarch climbs out of a 
corral to escape combat with a bull. That incident is in 
Chapter XVII. of Mr. Kelly's "Bears I Have Met." 
Chapter VII. of Mr. Seton's book is an account of the 
herding of sheep in a box canon by a grizzly. It is the 
identical story that Mr. Kelly in his book tells of the 
mythical bear Clubfoot. Chapter VIII. continues the same 
story— Mr. Kelly's story — even to the detail and the very 
language used in describing the "dead-line" of the bear's 
well-worn path across the mouth of the canon to keep the 
sheep impounded. 
In Chapter IX., Mr. Seton tells how a hunter and the 
grizzly sought refuge from a forest fire in a pool of 
water, and remained there side by side in a truce of fear. 
That is the same story told in Chapter XV. of Mr. Kelly's 
"Bears I Have Met." 
In Chapter X., Mr. Seton tells how Monarch wrecked 
a hunters' camp, tore the tent down and flung it into the 
fire, and how cartridges flung into the fire exploded and 
frightened the bear away, while the hunter watched the 
circus from a tree. Mr. Kelly tells this story as an ex- 
travagant yarn, and has fun with it in his chapter on 
Clubfoot. 
Chapter XI. of Mr. Seton's book has its parallel in the 
previously published Chapter XI. of Mr, Kelly's book, 
combined with an incident from "The Adventures of 
Pike," in Mr. Kelly's Chapter VII. It describes a dispute 
of the right of way between a man and a bear, 
All the details of construction of a bear trap, and the 
behavior of a grizzly when caught in one, as given by 
Mr. Seton in Chapter XII., are found in Mr. Kelly's book 
giving the true story of the capture of Monarch. 
Chapter XVI. is made up partly of bits from Mr. 
Kelly's "Chronicles of Clubfoot," in which Old Brin, 
Reelfoot, Pegtrack, and other notorious marauders are 
shown to be local variations of the Clubfoot myth. Mr. 
Seton explains in his foreword that he tells the last two 
chapters of his story as they were told to him by several 
persons, including the two mountaineers, and therefore 
no further parallel is necessary. 
What I fail to understand is why Mr. Seton should 
have pretended that he got his story "from many sounetf" 
and "from personal experiences," and represented his 
compilation of bear yarns as an "intimate animal study* 
of his own, when he had previously confessed in a letter, 
which was printed in "Bears I Have Met," that this 
"intimate animal study" was another's. In "Bears I Have 
Met" appears a facsimile reproduction of a letter written 
by Ernest Thompson Seton to Allen Kelly, in which Mr. 
Seton says: "Herewith I send the sketch I made of 
Monarch soon after you captured him. If you tell the 
public his life as well as you told it to me, it will surely 
be a go." The letter is dated June 15, 1903. Mr. Kelly's 
book was published in September, 1903, and Mr. Seton's 
story of Monarch is published in October, 1904. 
Why does Mr. Seton now think it necessary to say 
that the story of Monarch was told to him by one whose 
"tongue is unknown to script"? Did Mr. Kelly consent to 
Mr. Seton's use of his work? 
Did Mr. Kelly tell Mr. Seton that grizzlies climb trees 
after bees' nests? If this book is a "return to earlier 
methods," are we to deduce that all of Mr. Seton's varied 
and wonderful experiences with wild animals were 
warmed-over tales told to him by "rugged men of the 
mountains, one sentence at a time," with "inter-hisses, 
semi-brutal snarls," and in language unfit for publication, 
or lifted from other people's books? 
Captain Kelly is one of the contributors to Forest and 
Stream, and it strikes me that he might throw some light 
upon these questions, and show us how a great naturalist- 
novelist makes "intimate animal studies." 
John Malone. 
Thb Players, New York. 
Monster Toad in "Solid Mineral." 
Seattle, _ Wash., October.— Paleontologists are deeply 
interested in a remarkable discovery made in the coal 
mines at Renton, Wash., twelve miles from Seattle, yes- 
terday afternoon. In a solid strata of coal an immense 
toad was discovered. It was alive, but when carried to 
the surface, 300 feet, lived only a few hours. 
Dozens of miners saw the toad, but its scientific value 
did not appeal to them, and no attempt was made to take 
accurate observations or even care for the remains after 
life had become extinct 
The University of Washington has taken up the matter, 
and an attempt will be made to recover the toad, and col- 
lect all possible facts. 
If the size of the entombed curiosity has any meaning, 
it' must have been a patriarch, as report has it that a 
bucket was hardly large enough to contain it. 
Portus Baxter. 
[The accepted explanation of such occurrences— and 
there have been scores of reports of them— is that the 
toad was not in the solid rock, but in a crevice of the 
rock; and the report that it was in the "solid mineral" 
was due to carelessness of observation. Successive inci- 
dents have been given currency on the simple say-so of 
workmen, and the "toad in the rock" has become one of 
the established myths of natural history.] 
Deer Prongs and Ages. 
Jamestown, N. Y.— Editor Forest and Stream: In 
your issue of October 22 we notice that Jacobstaff has an 
article headed "Locked Antlers," in which he says, "the 
larger buck was of six prongs, the lesser of four prongs, 
seven years and five years," conveying the idea, as I take 
it, that the ages of those deer were ascertained by the 
number of spikes or prongs on the antlers. Such, how- 
ever, is a popular error entertained by many, as the 
prongs on the horns show nothing to be relied upon in 
fixing the age of a buck after its fourth year of age. See 
works of J. D. Caton on the "Antelope and Deer of 
America," page 226. Thus the buck with six prongs 
might have been anywhere between four years and eight 
or ten years of age. Old Shekarry. 
Sandy Gladstone. 
Mr. S. Murray Mitchell writes me, under date of 
October 9, that Sandy Gladstone died that morning. This 
news makes it seem as though some of the pleasure had 
gone out of hunting. Always a lover of a shotgun and 
a greater lover of a good dog, I have often wondered 
which (gun or dog) would be left at home when seeking 
the stubble fields and hedges where Bob White lives and 
loves and hides. Were it necessary to make a choice, 
really I think it would be the gun. 
Sandy Gladstone has not been hunted for the past three 
orfour seasons, as he was only lacking a few months of 
being fourteen years old when he died. He was by Breeze 
Gladstone out of Delaware, and was always a credit to 
his proud lineage. On the bench or in hotly contested 
field trial, Sandy was never overlooked by the judges, let 
them be never so critical. But it was his qualities as a 
gentleman's field dog and field companion that appealed 
to me, and to anyone who ever had the privilege of shoot- 
ing over him. A companionable dog, a gentleman him- 
self, you carried yourself better when in his society. 
Fast, true, staunch, eager, he had a wonderful nose and 
great "bird sense," Independent, paying but little atten- 
tion to the other dogs, he hunted his own ground, and he 
never grew jealous or "hogged," never refused to back, 
nor can I recall his breaking shot. 
Mr. Mitchell has other dogs — several of them; he has 
owned many before, and probably will own many more in 
the years to come. It is poor consolation to say it, but 
I venture the thought that Sandy is the one dog of his 
life. It is so with all these animal friends of ours. We at 
some period in our lives secure a horse or a dog that 
comes closer than any other horse or dog. When we lose 
this one something is lacking in every other horse or dog 
that we ever own. 
Is not this true? q g 
All communications for Fobbst and Stream must be 
directed to Forest and Stream Pub. Co., New York to 
receive attention. We have no other office. 
Ail the game laws and fish laws of the United States 
and Canada are given in the "Game Laws in> Brief f 
