FOREST AND STREAM. 
Capers of the Crow. 
A CORRESPONDENT of Land and Water regards it as an 
extraordinary circumstance that a raven should swallow 
a four-bladed jackknife; and still more singular that he 
should disgorge it again. He thinks the feat may "defy 
imitation by the most accomplished of Oriental or 
European jugglers," and he expects everybody to be 
astonished. Nay, more, he declares "the incident to be so 
extraordinary as to be hardly credible," and he concludes 
his observations with the comment that "the raven was 
none the worse for its performance." 
We should remark : Did he expect the bird to die ? 
Now, it so happens that all the Corvida; and their con- 
geners have this same faculty of swallowing all sorts of 
substances and ejecting them at will. Having had the 
pleasure of intimacy with tame crows for a number of 
years, during a residence in the Hampshire Hills of 
northwestern Massachusetts, the writer is most familiar 
with their tricks and their manners. One of their com- 
monest was to feign hunger, and, when fed, fill their 
craws with food to their utmost capacity, and then fly 
off and eject it. The cheekiest of these pets was named 
Tom, and by the fuss and bawling he made at the kitchen 
porch, one would think he was at the point of starvation. 
But it wouldn't be ten minutes after he had flown off 
two, and once in a while, by way of indulgence, the men 
would give him a nest of mice when they found one, 
doling out to him the pink, naked bantlings one at a time, 
and hearing them squeak for a minute after he had en- 
gulfed them in his insatiate maw ! It was fun for the 
men and the crow, but death to the mice. Tom's black 
relatives were not friendly. They were -even hostile, and 
their antipathy extended to their chasing him home 
whenever they happened to discover him off on a forag- 
ing expedition. At such times the strange crows were 
often tempted to make a swoop on the bafnyard and 
snatch up a stray egg or a fledgling, carrying the chicks 
off to their eyries in the neighboring woods; and many 
a heart pang the children suffered when they heard the 
ominous gurgles of satisfaction with which the young 
crows in the tree-tops gulped down their callow pets. 
But Tom was never known to do murder himself. In- 
deed, his presence among the fowls was so unobtrusive, 
and his cute ways so interesting to the Polands and Ply- 
mouth Rocks, that they became unsuspicious of his tribe, 
to that he unwittingly became an accessory a.nd decoy 
in helping the black pirates to make their reprisals. 
Nevertheless, he seemed to have a great dread of the 
w-ild crows, and whenever they pressed him sore in the 
meadows, he would fly to the mowers for refuge, and 
alight on their heads, persistently maintaining his perch 
A Park for Beatrice, 
Beatrice, Neb., March 15.- — Editor Forest and Stream: 
In looking through pour paper of Feb. 4, I find a 
most interesting letter from the pen of A. D. Mc- 
Candless, Wymore, Neb. 
Since Wymore is our neighbor town, and Mr. Mc-.| 
Candless a frequent and welcome visitor to our city, 
as well as a contributor to your pages, it seems quite 
the thing to give to Forest and Stream a little ac- 
count of a park meeting, held here (Beatrice), on the 
afternoon of March 10. The meeting was arranged' 
by the Civics and Forestry Department of the Woman's 
Club, and Mr. McCandless was the invited speaker.; 
The weather was fine and all things propitious, and 
not in many months has so large a crowd greeted a 
Beatrice platform speaker as upon this occasion. 
Mr. McCandless not only knows a great deal about 
parks and nature in general, but he has a most de-. 
lightful and interesting way of telling it to others. He; 
not only knows and appreciates the advantages and; 
enjoyment of parks and beautiful grounds, but he also" 
has the faculty of bringing them into existence. 
Some one has said that "One who ennobles the^ 
world, is second only to Him who made it." Surely, 
the world, or at least one corner of it, is ennobled 
ORCA OR WHALE KILLER. 
Photos by Mr. R. J. Christman. 
A SNAPSHOT OFF THE PORT QUARTER. 
satisfied before he would be back again, crying for more. 
Oliver Twist wasn't a circumstance. It was a long time 
before the family "tumbled to his racket," as_ the saying 
is; but after many attempts to follow him, which he dex- 
terously evaded by flying into the woods and dodging 
pursuit in other ways, he was at last detected in the 
very act of disgorging his plunder. He had a cache under 
a boulder behind a stone wall, which would hold a bushel, 
and when it was discovered it was two-thirds full of 
bread and miscellaneous benavlins which any flotsain-fed 
goat would have burst with envy to behold.^ After sitting 
a moment on the wall and casting about him to see that 
he was not observed, he would plump down by the boul- 
der, and, getting a purchase with the point of his lower 
mandible against the surface of the stone, open his beak 
wide, and the natural result followed. 
At first there was a disposition to give the black imp 
credit for being provident, and a charitable deacon in the 
neighborhood admired the wonderful forecast with which 
he hedged himself against possible scarcity and want; 
and pointed out this praiseworthy trait to all the Sunday 
school children as worthy of emulation. And some of 
the susceptible ones actually began to have a shade of 
reverence for the bird, until some missing sleeve buttons, 
a mustard spoon, innumerable iron wedges, screw bolts, 
and other articles of that ilk were accidentally discovered 
in his collection of edible bric-a-brac ! Thenceforward he 
was branded for an impostor and a thief! It was a 
favorite occupation for him to hang around the men who 
were grinding their scythes under the shed, and to prig 
the iron wedges which lay near the snaths on the ground. 
He would pick them up and hold them in his beak and 
hobble about the place, but, if a persistent effort was 
made to take them from him, he would finally fly off to a 
fence, and, if closely pressed, swallow them. He would 
not always deposit them in his museum, either. Often 
he would fly to the roof of the barn and stow the wedge 
away under a cleat, where it would be recovered after- 
ward if time and patience were allowed. But more than 
once he detected the men clambering up the roof, and 
would at once recoup the wedge before they could reach 
St. He was a sagacious rascal, that Tom ! 
Tom would swallow anything ; but there were some 
tid-bits which he was not so ready to disgorge as iron 
wedges and j ackknives. He would hunt for himself in 
the fields, following the mowers and picking up grass- 
hoppers, frogs, beetles, and sometimes a small snake or 
until they drew off and disappeared. Alas! it was this 
intimacy with the men that caused his death ; for one 
day, while gleaning after the scythe in the field, he was 
struck by the blade and disabled — a judgment, it was said, 
for monkeying with the wedges. 
I tempted a fate almost as tragic for myself when I 
gathered that crow from its nest in its infancy. The nest 
was built in the topmost branches of a sixty-foot hemlock 
UNITED STATES SHIP PATTERSON. 
which grew close to a granite ledge. A stout dead limb 
projected about ten feet above the rock, but the rest of 
the trunk was bare up to the frond, say a distance of 
thirty feet in all. Of course I slipped and fell at the 
moment when the prize was within reach. Boys always 
do. And that limb, which I happened to strike in my 
descent, clutching it desperately, was all that prevented 
my testing the hardness of the rock. But for the inter- 
position of that dead branch I should never have got my 
crow. As it was, I made sure of a footing at the next 
trial, and the nest was mine. In it there were three of 
a kind. Charles Hallock. 
National Cixy, California. 
and uplifted by the speaker who, upon a mid-March 1 
day can so talk about trees and streams and flowers, 
that his listeners can hear the purring of brooks — the- 
swish of leaves and the breath of flowers; and, at the 
close of his talk, are ready to do the things necessary ; 
to make the imaginary a reality. 
Such was the case at this March park meeting. A ■ 
commission was organized, which is now at work, and 
the probabilities are that ere many months shall come j 
and go, a large square of ground, containing many 
beautiful trees, may be converted into a public park, 
which shall be not only a "comfort place" to the city, 
but a monument as well to the cleverness and earnest- 
ness of Mr. McCandless. Mrs. A. Hardy. 
A Social Whale, 
ON^the mormng of September 24, 1904, the U. S. Coast 
and Geodetic Survey steamship Patterson sailed from 
Kiska, Aleutian Islands, for Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands, 
by way of Dutch Harbor, Alaska. About 10 A. M., when 
between the North Head of Kiska Island and Chugal 
Island, a large Orca, or "killer" whale, measuring about 
25 feet in length, came alongside the vessel and kept her 
company for about an hour. During all this time the 
cetacean kept close to the ship and was plainly visible, 
even when beneath the surface, owing to the clearness of 
the water of that portion of Bering Sea. But as the 
monster came frequently to the surface to spout, rolling i 
over somewhat after the manner of the Delphini, and ex- I 
posing above the surface its entire length, special oppor- I 
tunity was afforded not only to observe it with the eye, ' 
but to photograph it as well. Many exposures were ; 
rnade, though, as might be expected, quite a number of 
them failed to connect with the object at the proper 
moment. The accompanying photographs are among the 
best secured. The whale seemed not only to appreciate 
our society, but also to take a certain interest in the stem 
portion of the vessel. Perhaps the revolving propeller was i 
a factor of attraction. For quite a while it maintained • 
about the same place in relation to the ship — abreast ' 
the quarterdeck on the port side— but after a time it 
amiised itself with frequently diving from side to side 
under the keel of the vessel. After keeping us company 
for quite an hour, the monster "sounded" and was seen 
no more. Dr. J. Hobart Egbert, 
BwoLVLu, H. J., Jan. 20, Surgeon U. S. S. PattersQji, ' 
