JUNE 3, 1905.] 
FORESf AND STREAM. 
438 
that tliy observation formerly led me to i-ecommehd the 
establishment of a military post." 
Fremont's party at this time was on short iallowance 
of food. Word had been sent to Carson to bring from 
Fort Hall a pack animal loaded with pfovisions, for there 
was no game in the country and it was hard to purchase 
food of any kind from the Indians. 
On Sept. 3 Carson rode into camp with provisions suffi- 
cient for a few days. The party kept on down Bear River, 
and on the 6th saw from the top of a hill the Great Salt 
Lake. 
Up to this time this lake had been seen by compara- 
tively few white people; in fact, only by trappers who 
were wintering through the country in search of beaver 
and who cared for geography only so far as it helped 
them on their way. No white man's boat had ever floated 
on its --dense waters, it$ islands had never been visited, 
and no one had made a survey of its shores or even 
passed all around it. Among trappers it was generally 
believed that while the lake had no^ visible outlet there 
•?/as somewhere in it a tremendous whirlpool through 
liich its waters flowed out by a subterranean channel 
the ocean. 
All these facts and beliefs made Fremont very anxious 
to visit the lake and survey it; and having with him a 
rubber boat he had high hopes of what he might ac- 
complish. However, since the party was on short allow- 
ance, the provisions which Carson had brought with him 
being now exhausted, he sent back to Fort Hall seven 
of his extra men under the charge of Francois Lajeunesse. 
The party was now reduced to eight, five of whom were 
to make the first voyage of discovery on the Great Salt 
Lake, while three should remain on the shore as camp 
'keepers. It was only now discovered that the boat was 
badly put together, and when put in the water and loaded 
it leaked air in rather a serious way, so that the constant 
use of the bellows was needed to keep it afloat. Fortu- 
nately they had good weather at starting, for the day 
was very calm, and they reached one of the islands to 
find the rocks along the water's edge encrusted with salt, 
and a windrow from ten to twenty feet in breadth, con- 
sisting of the larvae of some small insect which inhabited 
the water, and had been washed up on the shore. These 
worms, so called, are the common food of certain tribes 
of Indians living in the neighborhood of these salt or 
alkaline lakes. There was little on the island to attract 
^explorers, and in view of the frail nature of their craft, 
and the danger of storms, they did not stay long, but re- 
embarking, reached the shore at a point quite distant 
from their camp. Food continued scarce and a day or 
two later they killed a horse for food. 
At Fort Hall a few horses and oxen were purchased, 
the latter for food, and here Fremont sent back eleven 
of his men, some of whom had shown that they were un- 
fitted for the labors of so difficult a journey. Among 
those he was obliged to part with here was Basil 
Lajeunesse, a good man whom Fremont was sorry to 
lose. Leaving Fort Flail Sept. 22 the journey continued 
down Snake River. All along the river Indians were en- 
camped waiting for the salmon. Under date of Oct. i 
Fremont says : "Our encampment was about one mile 
below the fishing falls, a series of cataracts with very in- 
clined planes, which are probably so named because they 
form a barrier to the ascent of the salmon, and the great 
fisheries from which the inhabitants of this barren region 
almost entirely derive a subsistence commence at this 
place. These appeared to be unusually gay savages, fond 
of loud laughter, and, in their apparent good nature and 
merry character, struck me as being entirely different 
from the Indians we had been accustomed to see. From 
several who visited our camp in the evening we pur- 
chased in exchange for goods dried salmon. At this sea- 
son they are not very fat, but we were easily pleased. 
The Indians made us comprehend that when the salmon 
came up the river in the spring they are so abundant that 
they merely throw in their spears at random, certain of 
bringing out a fish. 
"These poor people are but slightly provided with win- 
ter clothing; there is but little game tO' furnish skins for 
the purpose, and of a little animal which seemed to be 
the most numerous, it required twenty skins to make a 
covering to the knees. But they are still a joyous, talka- 
tive race, who grow fat and become poor with the salmon, 
which at least never fail them — the dried being used in 
the absence of the fresh. We were encamped immediately 
on the river bank, and with the salmon jumping up out 
of the water, and Indians paddling about in boats made 
of rushes, or laughing around the fires, the camp to-night 
has quite a lively appearance." Geo. Bird Grinnell. 
[to be continued.] 
Fishcfmen's Patron Saint. 
St. Peter, of course, is the fisherman ; but anglers may 
find a saint of their own in St. Zeno, who is commemo- 
rated on April 12. Verona's patron saint is convention- 
allly represented holding a fishing rod, with a fish at the 
end of the line ; the reference being to the tradition that 
he used to enjoy fishing in the Adige during his episco- 
pate. He must have commanded good sport if he exer- 
cised as much control over that river in life as he is said 
to have done two centuries after his death. In 589 Italy 
was visited by terrific floods, and the Adige threatened 
to swamp much of Verona. But the faithful gathered in 
St. Zeno's Church by the river, and though the water rose 
to the windows outside, none of it could pass the doors, 
and after twenty-four hours of prayer it subsided. This 
rests on the authority of Gregory the Great. — London 
Chronicle. 
All communications intended for Forest and Stream should 
always be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Co., 
New York, and not to any individual connected with the paper. 
Minnesota Forests. 
Aitkin, Minn. — Editor Forest and Stream: Among the 
things that have come to my notice through the current 
papers of this section is that the Government has given 
the lumbermen permission to raise Lake Itasca two feet 
(this is inside the park inclosing the source of the Mis- 
sissippi River). Thus it will be seen that lumbering is 
common, even on reserved lands. It was claimed, in giv- 
ing this permission, that it would do no harm to the park 
and would enable the lumbermen to float their logs. 
Later, when the heavy rains of May and June come, this 
water from Lake Itasca and hundreds of other lakes and 
reservoirs will be turned into the river along with the 
natural floods of the season and the settlers will be 
allowed to float out as best they can. Along the river are 
deserted houses and fields rendered tenantless by the 
water route, and at Government expense, in its frantic 
efforts to assist the infant industry of denuding the forest 
lands of Minnesota. 
Another thing I learn from the same source is that the 
lumbermen are allowed to cut 95 per cent, of the timber 
on the much-lauded forest reserve of northern Minnesota, 
"the park that would stay put." Well, what is there to 
reserve after a lumberman's 95 per cent, is gone? There 
will at least be the brush and enough debris to make a 
splendid forest fire some day. 
A third item is that the State has made an appropria- 
tion to lower the outlet of Gun Lake two feet. Now, 
Gun Lake has no possible wagon road to its borders; 
none of the land that would be drained will ever be set- 
tled. On the east of the lake is high and dry hard-wood 
hills. It is the home of small and large-mouth bass. It 
is none too deep at best, as rocks rise above the water 
in numerous places. Along the west and north shores 
are marshes where wildfowl breed secure from intrusion 
in summer. To drain lands is all right in some cases, 
but it is folly for a State to drain land it don't own and 
could not use if it did. To drain a deep-water-lake in any 
country is a crime against nature if not against law, and 
I cannot see what there is behind this drain scheme. I 
have been told that the land to be drained in this case 
belonged to a land company composed of certain ex-State 
and county officials ; but even this does not explain, for 
as far as I can see the benefit to the land would not pay 
the expense of maintaining a lobby to get the appropria- 
tion. It may be that there is some State land near to 
be stripped of its timber, and the State is fixing a path 
for the thief to get away on, but I have failed to see any- 
thing in this line that would pay. It looks like a crime 
without a motive, though scratch most any of the drain- 
age schemes and you will find a land swindle behind it. 
If the State wants to encourage settlement in this part 
of the country let it concentrate on building good roads 
out from all the centers. Such drainage as is necessary 
to make the roads is all sufficient, but practical farming 
is impossible without roads. E. P. Jaques. 
The Cuckoo and its Victim. 
Much has been written about the habit of the cuckoo 
depositing its eggs in other birds' nests and many have 
been the opprobrious epithets bestowed upon the parasite. 
In this connection I should like to point to a habit of the 
victims which does not appear to have excited much 
attention among naturalists and which yet is quite as 
extraordinary as the other. 
It is a well known . fact that as soon as the young 
cuckoo is able to do so (and that is within a very short 
time after he has left the shell), he proceeds to eject his 
foster brothers or sisters from the nest. Sometimes these 
fall quite a distance and sometimes only a few feet from 
the rim of the nest, and in the latter case are plainly 
visible to the mother on her return. What does she do? 
Proceed to carry back and comfort her outraged children? 
Not a bit of it. She regards them with stony indifference, 
and so they die miserably from want of food and warmth. 
Let me quote here an instance of this as recorded by 
the eminent English naturalist, D. H. Hudson : 
"The end of the little history — the fate of the ejected 
nestling and the attitude of the parent robins — remains 
to be told. When the young cuckoo throws out the nest- 
lings from nests in trees, hedges, bushes and reeds, the 
victims, as a rule, fall some distance to the ground, or in 
the water, and are no more seen by the old birds. Here 
the young robin, when ejected, fell a distance of but five 
or six inches, and rested on a broad, bright green leaf, 
where it was an exceedingly conspicuous object; and 
when the mother robin was on the nest— and at this stage 
she was on it a greater part of the time — warming that 
black-skinned, toad-like, spurious babe of hers, her bright, 
intelligent eyes were looking full at the other one, just 
beneath her, which she had grown in her body and had 
hatched with her warmth, and was her very own. I 
watched her for hours; watched her when warming the 
cuckoo, when she left the nest and when she returned 
with food, and warmed it again, and never once did she 
pay the least attention to the outcast lying there so close 
to her. There, on its green leaf, it remained, growing 
colder by degrees, hour by hour, motionless, except when 
it lifted its head as if to receive food, then dropped it 
again, and when, at intervals, it twitched its body as if 
trying to move. During the evening even these slight 
motions ceased, though that feeblest^ flame of life was 
not yet extinguished ; but in the morning it was dead and 
cold and stiff; and just above it, her bright eyes on, it, 
the mother robin sat on the nest as before, warming 
her cuckoo." 
But the indictment against the cuckoo's victim does not 
end here. In a letter to the London Field a trustworthy 
authority states that he actually observed the mother aid 
the young cuckoo to eject her own offspring after it had 
been previously ejected and restored to the nest. Talk of 
aberration ! It seems to me that the cuckoo is simply not 
in it. But should we condemn the mother? I think not 
Her maternal instinct is limited. Under certain set con- 
ditions it works automatically, as it were ; introduce new 
or strange conditions and it becomes numb, or even per- 
verted. The intelligence is not there — that is the whole 
fact of the matter. 
So, conversely, I think we ought not to condemn the 
cuckoo. Can anyone assert positively that her reason for 
laying her eggs in other birds' nests is because she is too 
lazy to build a nest of her own, or toO' selfish to be bur- 
dened with the care of offspring? I am sure he cannot. 
But it may be asked: What other reason can there be? 
Well, here is one which has occurred to me and which 
I do not think I have seen mentioned in any of the nat- 
ural history books I have read. As we have seen, the 
young cuckoo is much addicted to his individual ease 
and comfort and wants, in fact, tO' have the whole bed 
to himself. (Parenthetically, he may possibly have a few 
prototypes among the genus homo.) That this character- 
istic has been developed since he began to find himself in 
strange beds there are no grounds for believing, and it 
is possible that it is one of his original characteristics. 
Now, then, if this is so, can v/e not see the wisdom of the 
mother bird in electing not to attempt raising a brood of 
young cuckoos in one nest, but rather to dispose her 
eggs singly here and there? After all, the parasitic habit 
may be only an exercise of the instinct of race preserva- 
tion. F. M. 
New York, May 24. 
Size and Power of Owls. 
Fountain City, Ind., May 20. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: Forked Deer's inquiry about the size and power 
of owls reminds me that once when tracking a rabbit on 
the snow the tracks ended at a place where the snow told 
the story of a violent struggle between a rabbit and a 
brown, or great horned owl, as was plainly shown by 
feathers from the bird and fur from the rabbit, while the 
ending of the rabbit's trail evidenced that the owl flew 
away with it. About 200 yards further on I came to a 
place where the owl had alighted and ate part of the rab- 
Ijit, which was a good-sized grown one and which would 
probably weigh about the same as a mallard duck (about 
three pounds). 
These owls were locally known as "Virginia owls," 
"big brown owls," "horned owls"' and more commonly as 
"big hootin' owls." When I was "a chunk of a boy" I 
shot one which father said he thought was the largest he 
ever examined. The spread of the wings was four aiid 
one-half feet, and to the surpri.se of the boy who had 
carried it for several miles, the weight was only four 
pounds. They were rather numerous at that time in that 
section of the country, and were troublesome about carry- 
ing off chickens, which mostly roosted in apple trees 
about the farm buildings. The belief that they could 
carry away full-grown hens was a common one. It was 
also commonly believed that an owl never picked a 
chicken off the roost, but alighting on the limb, crowded 
the chicken off and as it flew toward the ground caught 
it on the wing. O. H. Hampton. 
An Ancestor of the Mttsfc Ox. 
At a recent meeting of the Biological Society of Wash- 
ington, Mr. Wilfred H. Osgood, of the Biological Survey, 
read a paper in which he described and discussed the 
characters and relationships of an extinct ruminant found 
in the Klondike gravels near Dawson, Yukon Territory. 
The nearly perfect skull represents an. animal somewhat 
similar to the recent musk ox, but of a different genus. 
It closely resembles an animal described by Liedy as 
Ovibos cavifrons, but is much more perfect than any spe- 
cimens which Liedy had. 
The animal was larger than the musk ox and the gen- 
eral shape of the head is different. The horns are more 
slender at the base, diverge more widely at the tips, but 
are downward directed as in the musk ox. The teeth, 
which are larger than those of the American bison, re- 
semble teeth of that species more than they do those of 
the musk ox or of the sheep. The specimen does not 
present any particularly sheep-like characters, but does 
appear to have relations with the bison, oxen, etc. 
It is regarded as altogether probable that this extinct 
form was an ancestor of the present musk ox, and an 
interesting point noticed is that some of the characters 
found in the adult fossil form are seen in the musk ox 
only before it reaches maturity. 
Premiums for Killing Sharks. — German papers re- 
port that the marine board of Trieste, Austria, has issued 
a circular in which all Austrian marine officers are in- 
structed to stimulate the killing of sharks. Premiums 
are offered as follows : For each specimen of shark, of 
whatvere species (the eatable ones excepted), up to five 
feet in length, $2.30; for larger ones, $4.60, and for very 
large specimens of the species Oxyrrhinna spalanzani and 
Odontaspis ferat, $11.50. For the capture of man-eating 
sharks prerniums of from $9.20 to $230 are offered. Fish- 
ermen making application for payment are to exhibit the 
specimens to the nearest harbor officer. — Richard 
Guenther, Consul-General, Frankfort, Germany. _ 
