88 
POREST AND STREAM 
The Wild Dacfcs of Erie Hatbof. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
For a good many years, during the season when the 
law would not allow me to shoot ducks, and when I was 
in some parts of the West where the ducks were not 
protected, but I would not shoot them then when they 
ought to be protected, I have made the ducks and their 
Ways a close study, but it remains for me this spring to 
“meet up” with a duck that seemed to act differently 
from any I have before seen. At the eastern end of Erie 
harbor and just to the left of the breakwater is a small 
bay covering about 200 acres, that goes under the name 
of the mud flat. The water only averages about three 
feet in depth. Misery Bay, a larger and deeper one, is 
just across the main channel from it. The ducks use 
the shores of Misery Bay for their nests, and use this 
mud flat for a feeding ground. I have counted as many 
as forty of them on it at one time, though generally 
there are not half as many. 
I have a small boat landing on the shore of this mud 
flat, and out from shore about sixty yards have a three- 
foot section of a pine log anchored to a sunken box of 
stone. I use the log to moor my sailboat to in the sum- 
mer season; but I won’t need it this year; the ducks can 
have it. For a night or two after I had put my boat in 
the water this spring the harbor thieves paid it a visit 
and stripped it of its sail, halliards, gaff and boom. They 
left me the mast because I had it fastened in. and the 
rudder was secured to the floor with a lock and chain; 
they left it also. The jib sheet I did not happen to have 
on. The monetary loss is not so great, only the cost of 
the canvas, about 200 feet, and the halliards. The sail 
and everything about the boat I had made myself, but 
they have prevented me from having any use of the boat 
this year. I have forgotten all about my pet duck. 
These ducks began to come over here in less than two 
weeks after the close of the season, and in a short lime 
they became quite fearless of us. They will paddle 
around now within a few yards of where I stand watch- 
ing them. 
One of the first to come was a male redhead, that 
looks to be a year old. He did not begin to feed, but 
took up his station on my anchor buoy, where he would 
stand motionless for hours at a time. I at first took 
him to be a lookout for the other ducks, which were 
feeding, but soon noticed that he would often be there 
alone. He generally comes about 9 o’clock in the morn- 
ing, stays until noon, then returns about 2 o’clock and 
does not often leave before sunset. 
When he first began to come, if I showed myself on 
the beach he would swim off a few yards, then return as 
soon as I was out of sight, but he soon quit that and 
now does not take any notice of me at all. 
When I saw that I would be likely to have him as a 
visitor all summer, I began to think of some way to feed 
him, and getting a small shallow wooden box that was 
nearly water-tight, I filled it with soaked bread and 
scraps of boiled beef and tied the box to the log. He 
went to work on it as soon as he came that morning; 
and the other ducks finding it also, they soon emptied it. 
I refilled it next morning and they cleaned it out again. 
Then that night the box was stolen, so I quit; but I 
sometimes carry our stale bread and drop it on the water 
around his perch. That seems to work as long as no 
wind is blowing. Cabia Blanco. 
A Domestic Hunting Cat. 
Plainfield, Mass.— Fd/tor Forest and .Stream: It 
has been to me an interesting pastime to make a li.st 
of the force naturce which our head barn cat brings in 
from the hunting field; and as it is not only an evidence 
of its marked ability as a feline marauder but of the 
varied fauna of the country, I think it worth placing 
on the minutes of your Natural History Department. 
It comprises the following varmints : Two rabbits, sev- 
eral robins, and other birds, chipmunks, red squirrels, 
barn rats, field mice, house mice, moles, one star-nosed 
mole, frogs, several green and brown grass snakes, and 
a checkered adder. The catch has been considerably in- 
creased since the fields were mowed. I have not found 
any bats or barn swallows in the collection, although 
both are to the manor born and bred. ■ Neither have I 
observed any woodchuck, trophies which are tough sub- 
jects for any but a trained dog. 
This cat’s name is Theodore Thomas, from its musical 
talent, and its upper register comprises the "amut of all 
the roofs and ridgepoles of fourteen connected buildings 
(which would have a hard chair e in case of fire). It Is 
a composite creature, a combination of Manx, Angora, 
Maltese and Tiger. Among its hybrid progeny there 
are to-day on our farm three tailless half-grown kit- 
tens of tiger stripe pattern, two lUaltese grown females 
without tails, a black and white grown female with two- 
inch tail, and three tiger-stripe kittens with full length 
tails. The collection would win at a cat show. 
I will mention incidentally in the interest of natural 
science, that Maltese, Angora and Manx or rabbit cats, 
have been bred in this township for seventy years at 
least. As long ago as 1847 there was a pure white strain 
of fluffy Angora, but it has since been merged into side 
varieties and complexions. The real thing would com- 
mand a good price from pet stock fanciers. 
Charles Hallock. 
Postscript, July 24. — Do not fail to add to the list of 
game' caught bv our cat one full-grown young woodcock. 
C. H. 
The mid Life. 
Mr. Alden Sampson, student, traveler, big-game hun- 
ter, and recently Game Preserve Expert of the United 
States Biological Survey, has recently printed an 80-page 
pamphlet, entitled “Three Essays on the Wild Life.” 
These papers, which were read before the American 
Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 1904 and 1905, 
are enlilled I.. “On Thought Transference by Scent and 
Touch,” II., “A Deer’s Bill of Fare.” III., “The Estab- 
lishment of Game Refuges in the United States Forest 
Reserves.” The three are dedicated to John Muir, 
“whose genius, patience and endurance have revealed for 
our enjoyment the wisdom of the forest.” In the first 
paper Mr. Sampson discourses very pleasantly and acute- 
ly of the senses of touch and smell, and on the mental 
sensations called up by these senses. The aim of his essay 
I r ^ 190^- I 
is to bring his readers into closer contact with other 
creatures sharing organic life with us. 
“The Deer’s Bill of Fare” gives a freely annotated list 
of the plants on which the deer feed, and the enumera- 
tion of these plants and the writer’s comments on them 
are certainly very intere.sting. Yet we can hardly agree 
with all that he says. He more than once refers with a 
seeming contempt to the cow which eats “grass” as con- 
trasted with the deer which feeds largely on herbs and 
shrubs, and intimates that the food of antelope, elk, 
mountain sheep and mountain goats consists chiefly of 
grass. We fancy that this difference is more imaginary 
than real. The cow in its “grass” diet may include a 
hundred different plants, and, as is very well known, it 
eats the leaves of trees and their tender twigs just as 
horses do. We know too little about the food of wild 
ruminants to generalize very much about them. 
It is not safe either to measure the tastes of animals 
by the human taste, for we all recognize that what we may 
like may be very distasteful to certain other animals. 
The tendency to personify the mammals, the birds, the 
reptiles, and even the fishes has come to be part of the 
popular natural history of the day, and need not be dis- 
cussed further than to say that it will run its course and 
die a natural death. 
The paper on "The Establishment of Game Refuges” 
holds much information of worth and appeals especially 
to all the Forest and Stream family, and all three essays 
are scholarly and interesting. 
Chapman on the Ffamingfo. 
Mr. Frank M. Chapman has already given us a, great 
deal of information with regard to the breeding habits of 
the 'flamingo, for he is the first man who has carefully 
studied these birds on their breeding grounds for a con- 
siderable length of time. It is true that Mr. C. J. May- 
nard and Sir Henry Blake something more than twenty 
years ago had an opportunity to see these birds on their 
bi'eeding grounds, but they were not able to spend much 
time with them, although they did correct the erroneous 
impression as to the manner in which the flamingo sits 
upon its nest. In 1904 Mr. Chapman spent a week study- 
ing a flamingo colony consisting of about 2,000 nests. In 
all this 2,000 nests there were but tw'o which contained 
two eggs. All the others contained a single egg or a 
single young one. The nests, as is well known, are built 
of mud, rising but a little distance — from five inches to 
thirteen inches — above the ground, the diameter at the top 
is from twelve to fourteen inches, and the top of the mud 
pile is hollowed out a little to receive the egg. It is evi- 
dent that long continued rain storms would tend to break 
down these nests, and Mr. Chapman states that during 
his visit continued heavy rains flooded the ground on 
which the nests were placed and every nest became an 
islet, while numbers were submerged. 
When the egg is hatched, the young bird is covered 
with white down and has a bill which is straight. At the 
age of one month the bill begins to show a bend, at the 
age of two months it is quite a little bit bent, and at the 
age of four months almost as much bent as in the adult. 
The young birds are so strong and so well able to take 
care of themselves that as soon as they are out of the 
egg they will leave the nest under the stimulus , of fear. 
Persons interested in birds should not fail to secure 
copies of Mr. Chapman’s paper, which is printed in the 
Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 
Vol. XXI., pages 53 to 57. 
The Great Auk. 
Mr. John E. Thayer has recently purchased for the 
Thayer Museum at Lancaster, Mass., a soecimen of the 
great auk (Plautus iinpennis) . The specimen, which 
was once the property of . Gould, the naturalist, is said 
to be the best, or onej.pf the very best specimens, in ex- 
istence. It was purcljased in 1838 from Gould for Vis- 
count Hills’ Hawkstqne collection, which was later sold 
to Mr. Beville StanieL and when he determined to sell, it 
was purchased through. Roland Ward for the Thayer 
Museum. 
Besides this specimen, the Thayer Museum has re- 
cently secured three eggs of the great auk, all of which 
came from the collection of Mr. Robert Champley, of 
Scarborough, England. Of these three, one was pur- 
chased by Mr. Champley in Paris, while the other two 
came from the collection of ten eggs discovered in the 
Mtiseum of the Royal College of Surgeons more than 
forty years ago. Four of these were sold at Steven’s 
salesroom, London, July ii, 1865, and brought from£29 
to £33 per egg, or not far from $150 apiece. Great auk 
eggs, as is well known,, are usually 4)^ to 4^ inches 
long, and from 2 t/s to 3)4 inches broad, and are white 
or yellowish in color, beautifully marked with black or 
brown dots and bldf.ches. Sometimes these are more 
or less evenly distributed over the whole egg, at others 
they are collected chiefly at the larger end. 
A Colony of Martins. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Justice of the Peace Creelman, of the Borough of 
Wilkinsburgh, a suburb of Pittsburg, has a colony of 
purple martins on his place that he has been making a 
study of for the past fourteen years. He has had built 
a two-story and attic house for them, and they have oc- 
cupied it each season for that length of time. There 
are porches around the house for the purpose of giving 
the old birds a chance to. take their young out for an 
airing. They have twenty-eight young birds at present 
and are now preparing them to take their annual trip 
south. They, leave on the 27th of August each year, 
never going a day sooner or later, and return on the 
first of every April. 
Previous to their return each year a single bird, an 
envoy, comes on a few days in advance, seemingly to 
inspect the house, as that is what he does do. Then he 
returns south again and in a few days the whole family 
arrives. 
Each of the seven pair of birds have a suite of two 
rooms. One of them they use for a nursery for the 
young birds. The colony never increases in size, the 
young of the previous year being sent out to the world 
by their parents the following spring to hunt up quarters 
for themselves. Cabia Blanco. 
Hybrid Wild Duck, 
It is a_ well known fact that the hybrids among differ-' 
ent species of ducks are not very uncommon, and iir, 
Grinnell’s “American Duck Shooting,” a list is given of; 
the species which have been known to breed together.! 
Mr. Ruthven Deane, in the last Auk, has noted the re-' 
cent discovery of a hybrid between the shoveler and the:' 
blue-winged teal, the specimen nov/ being in the pos-j 
session of Mr. James P. Gatlin, of Ottawa,, 111 . The birril 
w'as killed by a keeper of the Green Wing Gun Club on 
their preserve along the Illinois River last April. It is) 
smaller than the shoveler — about midway in size between) 
that and the teal. The bill is like the shoveler’s and the: 
plumage partakes of the characters of both species. Mr..’- 
Deane points out that every specimen of hybrid duck; 
that has ever come under his eye was a male bird, but' 
draws no conclusion from this fact. It is to be remem-^ 
bered that the plumage of the male bird being so much-: 
more conspicuous than that of the female, an unusual 
combination of characters in the latter sex might' escape i 
observation much more easily than in the male. Mr.? 
Manly Hardy, of Brewer, Me., has in his collection a!: 
number of hybrid ducks. - 
Placer Mining’ in A/aska. 
A very large number of, persons engaged in mining will 
feel a deep interest in Bulletin No. 263 just issued by the 
United States Geological Survey, which deals with “The. 
Methods and Cost of Gravel and Placer Mining in 
Alaska,” by Chester Wells Purington. The work fills' 
rnore than 275 pages and is very fully illustrated by maps,j 
diagrams and photographs. It discusses the condhions of*' 
placer mining in Alaska, prospecting, water supply, thet 
various rnethods of mining together with their appliances, 
the_ quality of the gold, labor, lumber, fuel, roads,! 
freights, customs and many other subjects a knowledge' 
of which is essential to the miner, but important and in-' 
teresting to_ one who. is merely a traveler in or student 
of the Arctic Province, which for the last few years hasj 
proved so important a possession to the United States. 
Very many books have been written about Alaska; at 
first general works like Hallock’s “Our New Alaska,” but 
more and more tending toward the consideration of 
special subjects. Of these Mr. Purington’s work on. 
placer mining is the latest and perhaps the most useful. 
,^Uckerings, 
1 
“That reminds me.” 
A Horrible Experience. 
I WAS in the woods driving along a lonely road when 
my attention was attracted by the peculiar action of 
some birds excited over something in a small pile of 
brush. 
Alighting and securing, my horse, I approached the 
spot to investigate the cause of the commotion. I soon 
found it to be a'large snake of the deadly rattler species.: 
Securing a long pole I attacked the snake. 
My first blow inflicted no injury, owing to the brush 
which protected it, but seemed to arouse and anger the 
snake, which immediately left the brush heap and ad- 
vanced upon me. A more horrible sight no one could' 
imagine than that presented by the enraged reptile. 
Its eyes— a pair of bright sparks — almost seemed to 
reach to where I stood, they flashed so. Its hisses were; 
loud and continuous, while the buzz of its rattles kept; 
time with every movement. I had read that the rattle-i 
snake was sluggish and moved slowly, but this vicious 
reptile advanced upon me as fast as- I could retreat, 
keeping my face to it. I was backing off with pole 
raised watching an opportunity to deal an effective blow, 
and at last believing it had come, prepared to do so with 
all my strength when to my horror I found my weapon 
entangled in the limbs of a tree overhead, while in myi 
blind terror I had backed up against a large brush heap' 
that prevented further retreat. 
My situation was one of deadly peril, and there was! 
but one possible chance of escape. Summoning all my: 
strength I leaped entirely over the snake. It struck at' 
me as I did so, narrowly missing me. 
Immediately securing another weapon I turned on the! 
snake, which had followed me. and knowing it to be a 
fight for life, began raining blows upon it, but through 
excitement and fear could not succeed in disabling it.- 
It steadily advanced for twenty or thirty steps in spite! 
of the blows rained upon it, then — apparently in a frenzy' 
of rage — it made another rush, and as I stepped hastily, 
back I tripped and fell full length, catching my foot un -1 
der the root of a tree fast and firm. In its rush the! 
snake passed over my body and only checked itself within,' 
a few inches of my face. Its eyes burned me, and the! 
terrible odor which an angry rattler emits, made me, 
deathly sick. 
I was helpless and completely at its mercy. In fasci-, 
nated horror I lay w'ondering at the rapidity of its move- 
ments as it assumed the deadly coil preparatory to strik- 
ing. I wished that its venomous bite might be instan- 
taneously fatal, my imprisoned foot pained me so. Then 
seeing the snake was about to strike, I closed my eyes 
and waited. An instant later and it came — a shock, and| 
a stinging sensation upon my throat — and I awakened to! 
find the sheet twisted around my feet and the blanket! 
wrapped around my head and neck, and to vow I never ! 
again would eat sardines, cheese, pickles and mince pie 
at late bed time. One such dream will last a man a long 
time. _ Lewis Hopkins. , 
N. B. — With apologies to Mr. Gregg. 
The American in the corner of the non-smoking first-class • 
carriage insisted on lighting his cigar. The itidignant Britisher [ 
in the other corner protested, and protested in vain. At the next) 
station he hailed the guard with hostile intent; but the placid'' 
American was too quick for him. “Guard,” he drawled, “I think i 
you’ll find that this gentleman is traveling with a third-class ! 
ticket on him.” Investigation proved him to be right, and the i 
indignant Britisher was ejected. A spectator of the little scene* 
asked the triumphant American how, he knew about that ticket. 
“Wall,” explained the imperturbable stranger, “it was sticking out ; 
of his pocket, and I saw it was the same color as mine.” — London ! 
Chronicle. * 
■i 
