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FOREST AND STREAM 
May, 1920 
FORESTS STREAM 
FORTY-EIGHTH YEAR 
FOUNDERS OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETY 
ADVISORY BOARD 
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, New York, N. Y. 
CARL E. AKELEY, American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
FRANK S. DAGGETT, Museum of Science, Los Angeles, Cal. 
EDMUND HELLER. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 
WILFRED H. OSGOOD, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 111. 
JOHN M. PHILLIPS, Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
CHARLES SHELDON, Washington, D. C. 
GEORGE SHIRAS, 3rd, Washington, D. C. 
WILLIAM BRUETTE, Editor 
JOHN P. HOLMAN, Associate Editor 
TOM WOOD, Manager 
Nine East Fortieth Street, New York City 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL WILL BE TO 
studiously promote a healthful interest in outdoor rec- 
reation, and a refined taste for natural objects. 
August 14, 1878. 
MAY VISITORS 
T F May is the month of flowers, it is also pre-emi- 
* nently the month of birds. All through March 
and April the procession of hardy brown-coated 
sparrows has been marching slowly northward, but 
with the warmer days of middle and later April 
more delicate birds begin to make their appearance 
from the South; warblers, clad in gay colors and 
active as fairies, and other bright plumaged birds 
suggestive of tropical beauty, or at least of the light 
and warmth of the northern summer. 
It is about the first of May that the warblers 
begin to appear in numbers, but it is not until the 
10th or 12th that they swarm about the newly- 
budding trees. 
Nor is their stay long, since many of them pass on 
to more northern regions and are not seen again 
until autumn, when, in their modest fall plumage, 
they are not recognized except by the bird student. 
With the later warblers come other birds that 
remain with us all through the summer, and whose 
bright colors and cheerful notes make glad our 
hearts. How beautiful is the plumage of the Balti- 
more oriole, and how cheery his whistle, as he works 
his way deliberately along the twig on which he is 
feeding, sounding the while notes of encouragement 
to his mate swinging in the home that hangs from 
the bending twig of a nearby elm. 
Still more gorgeous is the scarlet tanager as he 
flashes into the light and stops on some branch in 
full view, where for a moment he blazes like a flame 
and then plunges into a thicket, which hides his 
gorgeous colors. Beautiful, too, either when seen or 
heard, is the rose-breasted grosbeak, seen less often 
than heard, but always a joy. 
If early in May is the time when beautiful birds 
come to delight the eye, the ear takes more pleasure 
in later May and early June. Catbird and wood- 
thrush and brown thrasher and veery and a host of 
other birds, that are with us now or will be soon, 
do each their part to fill with joy the hearts of the 
outdoor men and women. 
Now is the time to start out with field glass and 
note book, and perhaps with one of the pocket vol- 
umes, of which there are now so many which tell 
one how to identify the birds. There is a world of 
pleasure in the discoveries that one may make in 
spring. 
NATURE’S YARDSTICK 
I F you want to find out what kind of stuff there is in 
A a man get him into the woods. Put a pack on his 
back, tip him over into the river, lose him and let 
him spend a rainy night in the woods without a 
blanket, tent, or fire. Let him wasli camp dishes, 
dress fish, rustle firewood. Watch his temper, note 
whether he smiles or grumps, whistles or growls, 
emphasizes the unpleasantness or takes it as a part 
of the day’s work and play. You business men who 
pick your subordinates, who judge your colleagues, 
who want to know whether your man is clean, adapt- 
able, industrious, unselfish, loyal, persistent, and op- 
timistic will never know him so well as when you 
have seen him meet the little or big difficulties of 
the week’s trip back into the woods. He may camou- 
flage quite effectively his real qualities to you in town 
but he cannot hide his smallest defect in the woods. 
The primal man never could. Again, the man of 
noble qualities manifests them under the influence of 
the woods far more than he does under the cloak of 
formal civilization. One learns very quickly what 
man he would care to spend his time with and to 
what extent he would trust him. 
A party of four men went into northern Maine to 
spend a month in the woods. They were business 
and professional men of moderate means and of 
ordinary equipment, bent upon four weeks of vaca- 
tion and recreation. Their destination was some 
thirty miles from the nearest railroad and they hired 
a buckboard to carry their luggage while they walked 
the distance. The buckboard was none too substan- 
tial when they started. About twenty miles had been 
covered when, encountering some especially rough 
road, one wheel collapsed and progress stopped. The 
wheel, it seemed, was beyond repair and could not be 
replaced at that distance from civilization. One of 
the party had at one time been a blacksmith and the 
others turned to him as the logical one to make such 
repairs as might be possible under the circumstances. 
But that individual would have nothing to do with 
the wheel. It couldn’t be fixed, he said, and he 
wouldn’t fix it if it could. So he sat on a stone and 
told the driver all the unpleasant things he could 
think of about people who didn’t know how to drive 
and didn’t know any better than to drive such a rig 
anyway. His feet were sore and wet and he was 
hungry. The afternoon was well along and a steady 
drizzle of rain had fallen since noon. Things looked 
bad. 
One member of the party had laid the broken parts 
to one side and was examining them carefully, 
whistling under his breath, as was his habit, and 
puffing cheerfully at his pipe. His feet, too, were 
sore and wet, and he was hungry, but here was a 
situation that seemed to demand attention. He was 
going to see what there was to it. Several spokes, he 
found, were broken beyond repair, the hub was 
cracked, and a portion of the felloe beyond all hope 
of future use. But this fellow had seen a broken 
wheel before, and although he had never been called 
upon to repair one, it looked as though someone 
would have to attend to this one. Going down the 
road a short distance, he cut a young hardhack from 
which he began to trim and fit a rough spoke. Tools 
