juNfe, 24, 1905.3 
i white Mexican goat, but when they got within 150 of 
' 00 yards, I saw that it was much larger, and the horns 
ere smaller and different. I decided to shoot it to 
;- e what it was, as I had no idea of mountain goats in 
liiis section. I killed it, and my first thought was to 
skin it for the taxidermist, but I soon decided that I 
would not have time, as I was fully one hour's walk 
from camp, with no trail and night comi^ on. I knew 
that if I left it till morning either bears, wildcats or 
some other animals were liable to destroy it, so I took 
the hide for a rug, leaving my bear skin in a little tree 
till the next day. The goat was larger than any sheep 
in the bunch; would weigh undressed, I should judge, 
alDOUt 175 pounds. The hoofs and horns were black; 
horns about 8 inches long, hair from 4 to 6 inches long 
and extending to within some 7 or 8 inches of the feet; 
from there down not more than 14 or ^ inch long. His 
teeth were nearly all gone, and he was very poor. The 
ends of the horns were worn off, and the hide along 
the back and on the hip joints showed a good deal of 
cream color, giving every appearance of being very 
old. I decided that he was a long way from home, as 
it was the first of the kind that I had ever seen or 
heard of in this country, after hunting here for over 
thirty years. When I went back for the bear pelt, I 
hung the head up in a tree, intending to return and get 
it, but have never been on that side of the mountain 
since." 
For seventy-five years after its first description, the white 
goat was little known; its vernacular name tended to a 
constant confusion of Oreamnos with the female moun- 
tain sheep, and with domestic goats separated from 
Mexican sheep herds in the South and reverted to the 
wild state; nevertheless, there remains this evidence- 
positive as opposed to negative, and from people whose 
honesty cannot be impugned. As sponsor for Mr. 
Willis, we have the Hon. T. Roosevelt, and for Mr. 
Johnson, the late Hon. W. N. Byers, of Denver. 
Mr. Grant explains the absence of the goat to the 
South by the dryness of the mountain— that is to say, 
by the absence of snow or streams. Our observation, 
however, has led us to believe that the question is one 
of annual precipitation rather than of abundance of 
streams. Obviously the goat must drink, and m a 
waterless country could not exist, but on the high 
mountains water is usually to be found. The goat, 
however, by preference, inhabits a country of much 
rain and snow, and also a country of low temperature. 
Mr. Grant declares that the goat is marvelously 
tough, and can carry more lead even than a grizzly. 
Certainly the goat is a tough, strong animal, but his 
apparent ability to carry off lead is explained m large 
measure, we fancy, by his shape, which makes the body 
seem much larger than it really is. The hair hanging 
down below the body, and the tall dorsal spines, with 
their crest of white hair, tend to lead the inexperienced 
sportsman to shoot the goat too high and so to miss 
the vital spot. In this way many animals escape which, 
if properly shot, would have succumbed at once. A 
similar tendency to shoot too high was noticed in the 
(old days with the Buffalo, where the high dorsal spine 
a:gain deceived the inexperienced hunter, and led him to 
shoot "through the meat." 
An Angle/s Wildflowerg. 
m 
Charlestown., N. U— Editor Forest and Stream: I 
lkav£ highly enjoyed the letters of Mr. Wee,d, with their 
admirable illustrations, and only wished that I .could send 
you a photqgraph of a cluster of the E^ptgea, miscalled 
Trailing Arbutus, of eight or ten flowers m a bunch, such 
a« we find here in New Hampshire, instead of the usual 
straggling three or four flowers, 
I wonder at this perpetual misnomer, for there is a 
gienuine Trailing Arbutus, botanically known as the Uva 
ursi or Bearberry, which is common about the Great 
Lakes <and is alao found in Massachusetts. It bears a 
i;ed berry like the Arbutus tree of Europe, while the fruit 
of .the Epige:a is a dry musky seed pod. Tlje name of 
Arbutus has been given to it i.n ignorance, hke that of 
trout to the southern black bass, and secerns to stick, but 
I prefer that of the Majflower, which the Pilgrims called 
at, after their ship, when they found it on the hills at 
Plymouth, or even that of Ground Laurel, as it is .called 
in .some sections. 
All of Mr, Weed's half-tone illustrations are excellent, 
aiid they remind me of a Httle patch of damp woods, of 
only .an acre or two, around a spring which forms the 
Ihead of one hraneh of one of my youthful t-rout brooks, 
.and which I have long called "my fores;t garden," and 
which, till last year, I have visited regularly every spring. 
Here within a few hundred yards, I have always gath- 
.ered a big bunch of Painted TriUiums, Clintonias, Dwarf 
(Cornel or Bunchberries, Star-flowe.r or Trientahs, Bell- 
wort or Nontaria, and on a little higher ground .around it. 
Ladies' Slippers and Hobblebush, Viburi-mv- lantanoides, 
;and FiarelLa, always getting my hands full. The spot is 
:a!bout a mile and a half from the village on a bee-lme, but 
Etwo miles by the road, and up hill all the way, and for 
ttwo years I have felt unequal to the climb, and have con- 
iined my rambles to the more level ground nearer the yil- 
aage, in fact seldom going beyond the smooth walking 
•of the streets. Yet there are many other of the wildflow- 
ers which Mr. Weed writes of withiu easier reach. 
The showy Orchis (Orchis spectabis) grows in the val- 
iley of the brook at the upper end of the village, while half 
.a' mile further north, in a swamp alongside the raihvay 
■.track, I have found the most showy of the Orchis family, 
;fhe :tall Orchis grandiHora, while the lower and more pur- 
ple one, the Orchis Umbriata. is very common in the 
meadows along the brooks, and on the hillsides, I have 
found the Hound-leaved Orchis, or Orchu orbtculata. In 
tthe same swamp, with the tall Orchis, grows the Arethusa 
•or Pogonia as it is now called, and in a swamp around a 
small spring pond, nearly on the summit of one of the 
ihio-hest hills overlooking the river, four miles below the 
■viflao-e grows its cousin the Cymbidium, now called by 
•some" other name which I forget. The same pond m July 
is white with lilies, while the brook which flows from it 
iin late summer is scarlet with Cardinal flowers, or Lobelia 
cardinalis, and in the hill pastures the Blue Lobelia is 
■plenty In the river meadows I find the Bloodroot 
■£uimrm) and the Dog's-tooth Violet, while nearly all the 
Varieties of the Cornel, from the Dogwood down to the 
Bufichberry, are to be gathered in the woods. Then there 
are the Linnea, and the Claytonia, both of which I dis- 
covered in my trout fishing excursions along the brooks 
and carried home to my mother to copy. 
She was both artist and botanist, and made a large col- 
lection of drawings of our native wildflowers. Beside 
the common Lady Slipper which I have mentioned, I also 
found the great White one and the Yellow one. The 
former one has been quite exterminated in this region by 
an old Indian doctor, who came here many years since, 
and who claimed that its root was a sure cure for con- 
sumption. 
A root of the Yellow one I gave to an English friend 
in Lowell, who sent it home, where one. of its flowers 
took a prize at a Manchester horticultural exhibition. 
Another root of it which I dug up in the woods some 
four years since and set out in a damp place in my sis- 
ter's garden, had five superb flowers on it about three 
weeks ago. Then we have the Pink Azalea in one place 
on the hills, and on the opposite side of the river, in Ver- 
mont, a small patch of the Mountain Laurel, both of 
them being nearly at their extreme northern limit of 
growth. Following these in the summer come the Red 
and Yellow Lilies on the hills and in the meadows, then 
no end of varieties of Goldenrods and Asters, winding up 
the season with the beautiful Gentians, both Fringed and 
Bottle, and altogether this is a fertile field for a lover of 
wildflowers. 
I got acquainted with many of these flowers while trout 
fishing when a boy, when I often topped off a half-full 
basket with such as I could find, and took them home to 
learn more about them. 
I have little else to write about. Physical weakness 
has prevented me from climbing the hills to the distant 
trout brooks, and I have not been able to get to the more 
distant lakes, where I could cast a fly from a boat, so 
that I have not wet a line for two years, and have had to 
rely on Forest and Stream for my tale of adventure. It 
is hardly necessary to say how much I have enjoyed the 
"Trails of the Pathfinders" or Cabia Blanco's graphic 
and simply-told notes of his prairie experiences, and_ I 
have also followed Raymond Spears down the Missis- 
sippi, though I sometimes think with Coahoma that he 
occasionally got into pretty bad company. I was de- 
lighted a year ago to see the once familiar signature of 
"Forked Deer" and read his account of his trip to Crater 
Lake, but I miss the names of Shoshone, and Kingfisher, 
and Kelpie, and wonder whether any of them have un- 
noted and unknown, followed Rodgers and Didymus 
"over the long divide." Von W. 
The Parasitic Habit. 
Since writing my note on the cuckoo and its victim I 
have been reading a very interesting book on "Our .Com- 
mon Cuckoo" (Cuculus canorus), by A. H. Japp, F. R. 
S. E. The conclusion which Mr. Japp reaches in regard 
to the bird's parasitic habit is, that it is the result of 
"polygamous promiscuity" or in simpler phrase, free-love. 
By reason of this, it is a,rgued_, the female cuckoos have 
become decimated and being the object of so much atten- 
tion from the males, have lost tlje regular habits of ne.st- 
buildiiig and brooding. This is a plausible enough theory. 
Darwin, however, held that the parasitic habit was the 
result of .the irregular laying of the cuckoo^ and the con- 
sequent inconvenience of having young birds and eggs 
in the nest at the same time and' the early migratory call. 
An old rhyme has it.: 
"July, he may fly, 
August, he must." 
Mr. Japp trav^erses this on the ground of recent obser- 
vations which go to show that the cuckoo is not such an 
irregular layer as Darwin supposed, and that anyhow 
young birds and unhatched ,eggs in the same nest of vari- 
ous species is not at all an uncommon occurrence, and 
that if the old cuckoos migrate in July or August the 
young ones certainly do not until September or October. 
Mr. Japp, of course, refers to our cuckoos (which are 
not unknown to be guilty of parasitism, though in an in- 
cipient way, as it were), and especially to our cowbird 
(Molothrus bonuriensis) \Yhich is as bad an offender as, if 
not a worse, than Cuculus canorus, inasmuch as it is more 
destructive of the eggs and nestlings of its. victims. But 
Mr. Japp" is evidently in doubt about Molothrus, for he 
says: "One point on which I would fain have more 
definite information about' the cowbirds — results of exact 
observation and comparison— is as to the disparity of the 
sexes in numbers." ' Are' the male cowbirds largely m 
excess of the female? 'Ha've any of our American orni- 
thologists observed this?' If not, then it would seem that 
J\Ir. Japp's theory falls to the ground. 
' As an alternative theory' we have 'that mentioned in my 
previous note (viz., the 'necessity' put upoii the parent 
cuckoo of countervailing the murderous instinct of its 
progeny), or that of a gentleman who writes me to say 
that Cuculus canorus has no inherited knowledge of nest- 
building' and hence the parasitic habit.. Finally, we have 
the theory of the innate depravity or degeneracy of the 
bird, as thus expressed by Geddes and Thomson in "The 
Evolution of Sex" : "The general character of the birds— 
the unsociable life, the. selfish cruelty of the nestlings and 
the lazy parasiticaL habit — have a - common basis in the 
constitution. The insatiable appetite, the small size of 
the reproductive organs, the smalltiess of the eggs, the 
sluggi'sh parturition, the rapid growth of the young, the 
great preponderance of males, the absence of true pairing, 
the degeneration of maternal affection, are all correlated, 
and largely explicable in terms of the fundamental con- 
trast between nutrition and reproduction, betweeti hunger 
and love. Similar unnatural or immoral instincts in 
birds, in mammals and even in the lower animals, are 
explicable in similar terms. The cuckoo's habit is a 
natural outcrop of the general character or^ constitution, 
only one expression of a dominant diathesis." F. M. 
Aflier ican M«se«m of Natwtal Histoty, 
' The annual report of the American Museum of 
Natural History of New York City for the year 1904 
is an interesting paper, illustrated by a number of beau- 
tiful photographs of specimens. 
Within the year the permanent .endownjent .fund has 
increased $573,000. The city makes an annual appro- 
priation of $160,000 for the Museum's maintenance, and 
beyond that the total receipts from all sources has 
been over $78,000. The increase in annual members 
has been 278, and the loss through death and resigna- 
tion 87— a net gain of 191. In the departments of 
mammalogy and ornithology a number of sinall bird 
groups have been added to those already on exhibition, 
and two large bird groups, one representing the 
flamingoes, a result of the work of Mr. Frank Chapman, 
to which reference has already been made, the other 
illustrating the bird life of the irrigated portions of the 
San Joaquin Valley in California. Among the large 
mammal groups, one of the Roosevelt elk, one of the 
large Alaska Peninsula bear and one of the Mexican 
collared peccary are in preparation. 
In the department of vertebrate paleontology, the most 
striking specimen on exhibition is the huge skeleton of 
Brontosaurus, but there are many others. 
The ethnological collections have been enlarged in 
many directions. Among the interesting specimens is a 
whaler's ceremonial house from Vancouver Island, in 
which generations of Indian whalers purified them- 
selves. Dr. Clark Wissler has secured a Blackfoot col- 
lection, illustrating in some degree their ceremonial. 
Among the illustrations of the report are those of 
the Alaska Peninsula bear, of Brontosaurus, the 
Nootka house and others. 
The California Condor. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
A specimen of the California condor has been received 
at the Bronx Zoological Park, and is spoken of as a very 
rare bird. If the species is as near extinction as it is said 
to be, the work of extermination must have been going 
on rapidly during the last dozen or fifteen years. 
In 1.889 the condor was by no means rare in southern 
California. I spent about six months in the mountains 
inclosing the southern end of the San Joaquin Valley in 
that year, and hardly a day passed without my seeing sev- 
eral of the big birds soaring in the sky. Frequently I 
saw them joining the buzzards in a feast of carrion, and 
once I shot a large specimen from the top of a tall dead 
tree. The wing spread of the specimen was nearly eleven 
feet without undue stretching. Unfortunately, the skin 
spoiled and I was unable to deliver it to a naturalist in 
San Francisco, who had an order for a condor skin from 
Berlin and asked me to obtain one for him. 
From frequent observation of the behavior of buzzards 
and condors, I concluded that they hmit by sight and keep 
close watch on one another, when soaring, to profit by 
any individual bird's discovery of a carcass. That, I be- 
lieve, is the explanation of the foraging of scavenger 
birds. 
If the California condor has become rare, doubtless it 
is because the stockmen and sheep herders— there are no 
"shepherds" in the West— poison the carcasses of animals 
killed by wild beasts. But if that is the case, why is not 
the buzzard also disappearing? I have not heard that the 
buzzard is in danger of becoming an extinct species in 
California. The law protects buzzards and condors alike, 
and even without the protection of law the condor is not 
in much danger of being shot, for he lives in desolate 
regions, soars too high to be reached by bullets and is 
seldom seen on the ground. I am inclined to doubt that 
there has been any sudden decrease in number of the 
California condor. ' A. K. 
Cow and Fawn. 
During a heavy rainstorm Wednesday, one of Mrs. 
Lawson's cows came home without its calf, only two days 
old. Its grief was plainly manifested by bellowing. The 
calf was found drowned in a swamp. Yesterday (Friday) 
the mother cow was grazing, when there appeared a beau- 
tiful little fawn, chased by three hounds. Thinking, per- 
haps, it was her lost calf, the cow went to its rescue, as 
the little fawn, nearly run down, was bleating from fright. 
The cow threw herself between the dogs and the fawn. 
The struggle for the possession of the fawn between the 
dogs and the cow was exciting. Two of the dogs were 
killed, while the third was so badly wounded it left the 
field of battle, while the brave cow tenderly cared for the 
fawn. Mrs. Lawson was surprised Friday to see her cow 
coming home. By her side was a pretty spotted calf, as 
Mrs. Lawson supposed, but when near the house it was 
seen to be a deer instead of a calf. It had become so fond 
of its foster mother it would not leave, and would let 
the children stroke it ; and seems to be fond of its sur- 
roundings, while the cow tenderly cares for it, and it 
nurses as if she were its real mother. It will be allowed 
to run at large and will be raised with the cattle. "No 
money can buy my pet," says Mrs. Lawson. — Richmond 
(Va.) Times-Democrat. . . - 
4t 
Hunting Without a Gttn.*^ 
From the Boston Herald. 
A SPRING book from the press of Forest and Stream 
is "Hunting Without a Gun," by Rowland E. Robinson, 
famous as the author of the New England dialect stories, 
"Uncle Lisha's Shop," "Sam Lovel's Camp," and others 
of that charming series. While it might have been im- 
agined that these volumes would have, as they did, an 
especial popularity in New England, it has also proved 
that a multitude of emigrants from New England settled 
in the Western States have felt their truth and enjoyed 
in these books the memories of the old home. When we 
think that these books were written by one who had lost 
his sight, their truth to nature seems most remarkable; 
but this very fact shows how deeply ingrained in the 
man's fibre was the love of nature which shines out so 
strong and pure through these pages. "Hunting Without 
a Gun" tells of the pleasures of the nature-lover who 
seeks out the wild creatures without intending to harm 
them. 
We have no o-fUce outside of New York. Address cM 
communications to Forest and Stream Publishing Com- 
pany, 346 Broadway, New York . _ 
