4 
POREST AND STREAM. 
tJULV t, 190J. 
A Plea for the Sea Birds. 
The passing of the buffalo and wild pigeon is a force- 
ful commentary on the indifference of the people _ of 
those days. Are the people of this generation showing 
any greater degree of interest in the wild life of the 
present day, much of which is rapidly decreasing in 
numbers? Few people realize how near the gulls and 
terns of our coasts came to extinction during the last 
decade, when fashion decreed that the snow-white 
plumage of these beautiful denizens of the beaches 
was necessary for millinery ornamentation. 
A simple proposition, in fact a public duty, is now 
before the American people: Shall the sea birds be 
preserved for future generations? Unfortunately this 
class of birds gather in colonies during the breeding 
season, and are thus in greater danger than the wild 
bird that breeds singly. Plume hunters can still kill 
them as in the past, when large colonies on our sea- 
board were destroyed in a single season. Ariother 
.method of extermination is egging; this is quite as 
fatal as killing the birds. There are yet small colonies 
of sea birds on the coasts and large inland lakes of the 
country which will serve as a nucleus, and may, by the 
greatest care and watchfulness, repopulate our country 
with these birds. If this desirable result is to be 
achieved, action must be taken at once by the public; 
it will not do to neglect the matter another season, or 
.our children will say of us, what we now say of our 
fathers, regarding the buffalo and wild pigeon: When 
you had the opportunity to save the sea birds you did 
iiot do it, and we are deprived of a part of our heritage. 
The sea birds can only be saved by placing at each 
colonv, during the breeding season, an energetic, faith- 
ful and fearless warden who will st'and guard during 
the three months when the birds are brooding their 
eggs. The part the public can take in this great eco- 
nomic and aesthetic movement is to supply the neces- 
sary funds. The National Association of Audubon 
Societies, an incorporated body, will do the adminis- 
trative work. 
During the present breeding season this Association 
has forty such wardens employed; but this number 
should be increased to at least three hundred men, in 
order to fully guard all of the remnants of colonies_ that 
once existed. The public are urged to join the National 
Association, the membership fee being $5 a year, all of 
which sum is used in bird protection work, as the ex- 
ecutive officers of the society contribute their services 
without compensation. 
The seashore without the sea birds would be like a 
garden without flowers, or a landscape without trees. 
Unless active measures are taken now to prevent this 
disaster, it will surely come; then, reader, it will be 
too late to do more than grieve. This is not a duty 
you can delegate to your neighbor, it belongs to you; 
will you help save the sea birds, or will you see them 
vanish? To your descendants you are responsible. 
William Butcher, 
President N. A. A. S. 
Notes from the Rangeleys. 
Upper Dam, Rangeley Lakes, Me., June 23 . — Editor 
Forest and' Streami: Since the recent hot spell the water 
here has become too warm on the surface for trolling, 
and that mode of fishing is about over until the fall. Fish- 
ing has been very good here this spring, and some very 
large fish, both trout and salmon, have been taken. 
This is my first trip here in five years, and I find the 
appearance of the lakes much improved by the falling 
down of the dead trees around the borders. Many trees 
were killed when the level of the lakes was raised for 
water storage a number of years ago, and for many years 
these ghosts of trees lined the shores in great numbers. 
Five years ago salmon were rarely caught in the two 
Richardson Lakes, but now salmon seem to be as plenti- 
ful almost as trout, and to have increased greatly in size. 
It is a well known fact that fish weighing in the neigh- 
borhood of 20 pounds are often seen in the late fall under 
the mill at the Upper Dam. However, the record size 
caught is, I believe, only a little over 13 pounds, but this 
record will not stand for long. 
Salt water smelt introduced into these waters a num- 
ber of years ago have thrived wonderfully, and occasion- 
ally' reach the size of a pound in weight, and by some are 
considered better eating than trout or salmon. They, 
however, can only be caught when they come to the Dam 
in the early spring to spawn, and then only by means of_a 
net, for they do not seem to take to> the hook. Their 
chief excuse for living, however, is to feed the salmon 
and trout. 
Deer and larger game seem to be on. the increase, owing 
undoubtedly to Maine’s very good game laws. From ‘all 
reports the game laws are respected much more than 
they were ten or fifteen years ago. Protection came too 
late for the poor caribou, and their name is but a memory 
here now. 
To me it seems strange that mountain lions, or, as 
they are locally called “Injun devils,” are not more plen- 
tiful here. There certainly would be good foraging for 
them. They, like the wolves which were common here 
once, seem to have departd with the advent of settlers. 
Wellj -ype do not miss them, for in the deep snows here 
in Febluary and March they would soon get away with 
the deer. 
It is a mistaken idea which some people . have that cata- 
mounts ,'will attack only fawns and does, for I have seen 
large bucks which have been killed by them. While 
hunting in the Sierra Nevada Mountains last summer 
I came on the yet warm carcass of a particularly fine 
buck. He evidently had been lying down on the side of 
a very steep hill when jumped upon by the cat, and he 
must have made a great fight of it. I followed the evi- 
dences of the conflict up hill for about a quarter of a 
mile, for bushes, grass and earth were torn up and 
thrashed , around as if a small-sized landslide had taken 
place. His hide was scratched in long strips where the 
cat had raked him fore and aft. His neck was not broken 
nor could I find a mortal wound except where his en- 
trails had been eaten into. This was all the cat had 
eaten, but I supposed he would return and finish him off 
at his own convenience. P. W. 
[We know of no evidence that the mountain lion, 
panther or cougar, has ever been found in Maine. A few 
years ago Forest and Stream took up this question and 
went into it quite fully, trying to get some tangible evi- 
dence of the occurrence of this species so far east. None 
was forthcoming. Mr. George A. Boardman was inter- 
ested in this matter during the many years of his resi- 
dence in Maine, but wrote us only a short time before his 
death that he had never succeeded in finding any. On 
the other hand, in a list of the fauna of the Saint Croix 
published in 1899 and 1900, in his memorial volume, Felis 
concolor, the cougar, is given as well authenticated. It 
is probable that this may have been from old lists, not 
revised up to the date of Mr. Boardman’s latest informa- 
tion. 
On the other hand, Mr. Manly Hardy, a naturalist, and 
more than that a fur buyer for many years, said in 
Forest and Stream in October, 1904, that so far as one 
was able to ascertain there never was the real live 
panther in Maine. Mr. Hardy’s definition of the term “In- 
dian devil,” as used in Maine, is an interesting one; it “is 
any animal seen or heard in the woods, that the person 
seeing or hearing can’t tell what it is.” 
Mr. Hardy has taken a great interest in this matter and 
has run down a multitude of stories bearing on it; when 
traced to their sources all of them proved false. The late 
David Libby, of Newport, Me., well known to old readers 
of Forest and Stream under the name “Penobscot,” feels 
certain that he once shot at a panther. His good faith 
cannot be_ doubted, but he himself said that he did not 
see the ammal very clearly and missed, and as Mr. Hardy 
puts it, “It is unreasonable to suppose that in all these 
years only one mountain lion has been in the Maine 
Avoods, and Mr. Libby is the only hunter that has seen 
one. Hunters and guides in the bordering Province of 
Ncav Brunswick ridicule the idea of panthers there. And 
this reminds us that a year or two ago a contributor 
sent us a story of an adventure in Maine in which the 
hero, by a magnificent feat of coolness and courage, 
rescued the heroine from a ferocious panther. The 
climax gave a splendid thrill, but fidelity to the truth of 
natural history forbade the printing of the story.] 
Mother Care. 
Besides the combativeness of many creatures — ordi- 
narily meek and mild — when they have young, there is 
the deeply interesting and curious question of ruse 
practiced on behalf of the young. I think it is Mr. J. 
Otho Paget, one of the chief authorities to-day on fox- 
hunting, who holds that an old vixen fox will some- 
times, to save her sore-pressed cub, cunningly cross the 
line of scent, and so draw off the hounds till the hunts- 
man discoA^ers the mistake. Jesse, in the chatty book 
called “Gleanings from Natural History,” notes a state- 
ment to the effect that “when a hind hears the hounds 
she will allow herself to be hunted, in order to lead 
them away from her fawns.” I have no experience in 
the matter, and cannot say whether the statement is 
safe or not. But I have had experience in regard to the 
ruse of both the partridge and. the wild duck on behalf 
of their young. As regards the partridge, mother and 
father will often collaborate to cheat the intruder, man 
or dog, and lure him away from their, young. Last 
summer I was within a very few feet of treading on a 
little family of partridges crouching on some rough 
ground. As I crept about the field, watching a cuckoo 
trying to palm off her egg on some small birds, so 
that she might provide her future child with a comfort- 
able home, a pair of partridges suddenly bounded up 
almost in my face. They flew off a little way, then 
dropped to the ground and dragged themselves and 
cried out in agonized tones, as though they were 
Avounded birds, and I had only to go and pick them 
up vvith my hand. But I knew this ruse, and looked 
down, and there were the chicks, just out of the shells. 
I remarked on the striking likeness of these partridge 
chicks in general coloration to partridge egg shells. 
The same fact struck a friend of mine lately in regard 
to the lapwing chick and the lapwing egg shell. Does 
natural selection come in here, too? Is it a sort of 
unconscious ruse of nature’s, by which those partridge 
chicks which most closely resembled, in the distant 
past, their egg . shells fended to survive, while those 
■not resembling the . shells (that harmonize with their 
surroundings fairly well) tended to attract the notice 
of enemies and so be wiped out in the struggle of life? 
In any case, granting the harmony, the belief is again 
borne in upon one that behind this matter there must 
be mind. Here, in the case of the partridge, male and 
female show almost equal affection and anxiety, though, 
as Avith the mallard (which resorts to a very similar 
ruse), I have noticed that the mother is the more 
anxious and bold of the two.- — ^J. G. Cornish in Corn- 
hill Magazine. 
Where Have they all Gone? 
St. Paul, Minn . — Editor Forest and Stream: Here is a 
clipping from a St. Paul paper, June 4, 1864: 
“From the firing of guns all over town early yester- 
day morning one would have supposed an Indian attack 
Avas on. Immense numbers of pigeons were flying over, 
most of them only a few feet from the ground. Every 
man and boy who had a gun was peppering them_ from 
his dooryard. A number got several dozen without 
leaving their premises. A great many were killed with 
stones and clubs.” 
If, instead of nesting in the trees reasonably close to 
human habitations, the passenger pigeons had nested 
in the swamps of the far north, they might be with us 
to-day. Yet no satisfactory theory has been yet offered 
for the vanishing of the millions of these birds off the 
face of the earth. The slaughtering that went on at 
the nesting grounds did much to thin them out; but 
other causes have been put forth for their total disap- 
pearance. 
Destroying game at the breeding places in the far 
north, it is stated, is prevented by the multitudinous 
and pestiferous mosquito. In the marshlands, where the 
geese and ducks breed, the mosquitoes hold undis- 
puted sway, and not only does man refuse to enter the 
forbidden domain, but egg stealing and bird-eating 
animals give the region a wide berth. The wildfoAW 
accordingly rear their families in peace, and when the 
icy ^asp of. Jack Frost begins to glaze the lakes and 
ponds, the birds move southward to open waters. 
1 1 j’ lea-St, in the far north the sportsman is be- 
holden to the pesky little native of New Jersey for 
preserving the balance as far as Avild geese and other 
fowl are concerned. There is providence in all things 
upon this earth, and while we along the Atlantic border 
fight the mosquito de novo with kerosene, these little 
denizens of the swamp are acting as game wardens for 
us in the far north Chas. Cristadoro. 
Fish and Water Temperature. 
BY EDWARD A, SAMUELS. 
In a recent convention with one of my friends whose 
chief recreation is found in the use of the fly-rod, he 
mentioned a few facts Avhich, although not entirely new 
to all readers of Forest and Stream, will prove inter- 
esting to many of them. , He had been reading my 
article on the use of the sunken fly, printed in Forest 
AND Stream, Feb. 25> and found in my account of the 
manner m which I employed a large Prince William of 
Orange fly in a deep, dark pool on the Indian River, 
rt. S., something that corresponded with an experience 
he had on a famous trout stream not long ago. 
The^river was, on account of recent heavy rains, more 
than “bank full,” the water extending back into the 
undergrowth sometimes several rods. Of course, the 
rapids, as such, were hardly visible, great masses of 
water tumbling down over the submerged rocks in a 
AAuld, angry current; as for the pools they were entirely 
characterless, for they spread out into miniature ponds 
and were very deep; their surface, moreover, was cov- 
ered with flecks of foam and small drift stuff which had 
floated away from the shores. 
On putting his hand into the water, he found it was 
almost icy cold, the temperature not having risen very 
much since the great masses of snow in the woods 
had melted and the frost had come out of the ground, 
Avhere its presence had tended to keep' the little trickling 
nils which flowed into the river almost as cold as if they 
had been passing over ice. 
This condition of the river Avas hardly calculated to 
raise his hopes A^ery high, as far as fly-fishing was con- 
cerned, at any rate. But he was on the river for trout, 
and, being there, he of course determined to make the 
attempt to entice some of the spotted beauties from 
their lurking places in the depths of the pools, using 
the fly only, for he is one of the chosen few who dis- 
dain the use of the bait at all seasons. “Drowning 
angle worms was not to his taste,” he said, and he be- 
lieved that with the fly he could pick out enough fish to 
make a small creel at any rate. 
But after covering the best pools with patience and 
perseverance that is knoAvn only to the angler, he 
found to his disgust that surface fly-fishing was almost 
barren of results, a few small trout only responding to 
his blandishments. 
• After an hour or more of unsuccessful efforts to rise 
-the heavy fish, which he knew must be in the pool, 
during which period he changed his flies frequently, 
and offered as great a variety as possible, he adopted 
new tactics, and putting in a couple of good-sized, 
highly-colored flies, he threw them out into the middle 
of one of the largest pools and permitted them to sink 
well down into the water, recovering them with short- 
drags of a foot or more in length, such as is used in 
salmon angling. At the second or third cast he found 
himself fast to a heavy fish. “It was the sunken fly 
they wanted,” he said, “and I humored them to the best 
of my ability, but every fish I landed was as cold as if 
just taken from the ice.” 
That the temperature of the water has much to do 
with the success of the fly-fisherman; and, not only 
that, but with the play of the fish also, I have proved 
one more than one occasion, particularly in salmon fish- 
ing, and: the fact has been established beyond question 
by the observations of scientific anglers on the other 
side of the water. 
I have before me a report of experiments in this direc- 
tion made by Mr. A. Harper, of Brawl Castle, Scot- 
.land. He conducted a series of investigations regard- 
ing the temperature of the water and its effect on 
salmon angling in the River Thurso, from which he 
drew the following conclusions. 
The blood of the salmon is always about one degree 
warmer than that of the water in which the fish is 
moving; 33° may therefore be taken as the minimum 
temperature of the blood^ — in fresh water at any rate. 
An abnormally high temperature of the river water is 
fatal. Mr. Harper gives a table of sea and river tem- 
peratures taken by him during the months of March, 
April, May, June and July, which tend to show that the 
ordinary sea temperature is the most healthful for 
salmon. From his figures it would appear that the 
“sea during those five months had a range of 12.8°; 
from 39.9° in March, to 66.6° in July. For the month 
of April the means of both sea and river were nearly 
identical, being respectively 44° and 44.7°, and during 
that month it not infrequently happens that more fish 
are killed with the rod on the Thurso than during the 
whole of the rest of the season.” 
Mr. Harper further says, “That from 44° to 48° is 
the best temperature for the fish, is proved by the fact 
that when the water stands between these two degrees, ' 
old and stale fish take the fly more freely than at any 
other time throughout the spring. In May, June and 
July the ascending fish find themselves in water 12° 
or 14° warmer than that they have felt in the sea, which 
accounts for the inferior sport obtained during these 
months.” 
Texas Tatpon Fishing. 
Tarpon, Tex., June 19. — Tarpon fishing is now in full 
swing, and following is the catch for this date (one day) : 
J. M. George, San Antonio, 13; F. H. Reed, Oklahoma 
City, 15; J. E. Cotter, Tarpon, 4; F. W. Chesebrough, 
New York, 9; H. E. Smith, New York, 3; J. R. Wain- 
wright, Pittsburg, 22; Major L. E. Campbell, Denver, 3; 
Mrs. L. E. Campbell, Denver, 4; Chas. E. Gast, Pueblo, 
Col., 2; Joe Curry, Tarpon, i; total, 77. J. E. Cotter. 
