FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Sept, i, 1906. 
28 
The Angler’s and the Gun¬ 
ner’s Wild Flowers, 
Whether the angler and the gunner love the 
streams and woods because they contain fish and 
game, or whether they love to fish and hunt be¬ 
cause fishing and hunting leads them along charm¬ 
ing streams and into beautiful woods, is in my 
own mind still an open question. For my own 
part, I should not care to fish in an unsightly 
stream or hunt in a dreary country; and yet, on 
the other hand I am not sure that a stream en¬ 
tirely devoid of fish or mountains entirely de¬ 
pleted of game would not have lost a certain 
amount of charm for me. If one sees in a picture 
only as much as he brings to it, does not the 
angler who sees in imagination the leaping 
trout or the gunner who pictures in his mind's 
eye the running deer and the flying bird, have 
an additional attraction in river and forest 1 
However this may be, there are some wild flowers 
and fruits so intimately associated with the 
angler’s and the gunner’s trips that they must 
always have a special interest and be only for 
him. Whether or not he would care for them if 
they grew in his back yard. I am not prepared 
to say. 
Some wild flowers serve to tell the angler when 
the season is on. From the time when the trad¬ 
ing arbutus with its fragant clusters of pink and 
white blossoms ushers in the trout season until 
the yellow bloom of the witch hazel with its 
spicy odor heralds the approach of the close of 
the hunting season, plant and shrub fly their 
signals to call the sportsman’s attention to the 
swift passing of the pleasant days. Late in April, 
far up the mountain side among the mass of 
brown and gray, the shad bush throws out its 
white banner to tell the angler that bait fishing 
for trout must be in its prime. It is so early 
in the season that he is half in doubt, fearing 
that it may be a belated snowdrift in a deep 
hollow. Then early in May the birthroot or 
purple triilium from beside the big rock on the 
steep bank above the narrow mountain road, and 
a few days later the more secluded painted 
trillium from its hiding place among the little 
hemlocks warn him that fly-fishing has begun. 
Now come the columbine fringing the stony 
terraces with its large red flowers, the dogwood 
with its flat white and green blossoms, the white 
clusters of the hobble. bush with their sweet 
elusive odor, and the mountain violets of every 
shape and hue to see him well through the merry 
month of May. In June the purple fringed orchis 
demands the angler’s admiration from its swampy 
home beside the stream. Camping one season in 
June with my sons near the mouth of a mountain 
brook, our attention was attracted by a bunch of 
large, green, lance-shaped leaves from the midst 
of which sprang a thick round stalk topped with 
a heavy plume of small purple flowers. It was 
a purple fringed orchis in fullest vigor and bloom. 
It stood in a dark wet place between the road 
and the stream, and must have been shaded the 
greater part of the day. Each morning and even¬ 
ing as we passed up and down the stream we 
stopped to look at and to talk about it, and finally 
we dug it up to take home when we broke camp. 
It was so big and gorgeous that it appeared 
greatly out of place amidst its modest surround¬ 
ings. 
The bass fisherman has all the late summer 
flowers for company, but I am inclined to think 
that he will elect the jce-pve weed as his emblem. 
Its tall stalk, its big rough leaves, and its crown 
of "crushed raspberry" blossoms make it a con¬ 
spicuous and beautiful object along the route to 
and from the stream. One August I was fishing 
the river for bass at the point about a mile dis¬ 
tant from my home, and the road that I took 
was lined at places with these plants. One in 
'particular always called for a few minutes’ halt. 
It was a magnificent specimen nearly ten feet 
tall. It stood a little below the road and dis¬ 
played to great advantage a large mass of its 
purplish pink flowers. An edition of Thoreau 
that I have seen somewhere contains a colored 
plate of this handsome plant and flower, and the 
picture does great credit to the artist’s sense of 
the beautiful. 
Occasionally a plant or flower will mark the 
exact time when a certain kind of fishing is at 
its best. One old angler that I used to meet 
always wanted to go trout fishing when the 
maple leaves were the size of a gray squirrel’s 
ear, and another, who was a great fly-fisherman, 
put his faith in the days when the rye was in 
blossom. For myself, my most successful trips 
for trout with the fly-rod have been taken when 
the mountain laurel was in bloom. In fact, the 
most successful trip in my life, when a trout eager 
for my fly appeared to lurk behind every rock, 
and when I brought home enough trout to supply 
half the town, was taken when the open spaces 
on the mountain sides were covered and the 
mountain roadways lined with great masses of 
these white and pink flowers. A little later 
comes the rhododendron, but for me the trout 
season is nearly over when this tall shrub puts 
forth its handsome bunches of color. 
The grouse hunter must content himself with 
a smaller number of flowers—the witch hazel 
being nearly his sole resource in the brown 
autumn woods — but he has some fruits that vie 
with the flowers in beauty . and attractiveness. 
The crimson cones of the staghorn sumach are 
not only very beautiful among the masses of 
flame-like leaves, but they are of especial in¬ 
terest because they furnish at times food for the 
grouse. One of the prettiest pictures of wild 
life that I have ever seen was that of a cock 
grouse balancing himself far out on a branch of 
a sumach bush while he alternately pecked at the 
fruit and then straightened himself up to get 
his balance again. The branch hung out over an 
old mountain road and I had come along so 
quietly in the damp of the evening that he never 
noticed me until I was within a few feet of him. 
The mountain holly with its coral berries, and 
the hawthorn with its fruit of red and of yellow, 
are also very familiar to the grouse hunter. And 
then the crimson partridge berry, on its creeping 
vine and the plump wintergreen berry, interest 
and please him in the fall woods, not only be¬ 
cause they are food for the grouse, but because 
they are beautiful as well as useful. A narrow 
mountain hollow, that I know through which 
runs an underground stream that can be heard 
gurgling among the stones below and which fur¬ 
nishes moisture to a thick carpet of moss, has its 
sides lined with low hawthorn trees that bear 
a plump yellow fruit of which the grouse are 
very fond. A pot-hunter who used a little yellow 
dog to tree his birds once boasted to me of kill¬ 
ing thirty grouse in this hollow in one day, and 
of having put up more than a hundred. I have 
no doubt that the man told the truth and that 
the hawthorn fruit was the attraction for the 
birds. 
And so it gees the season through for him who 
sees something more in fishing than catching fish, 
and something more in hunting than shooting game. 
The angler following the stream or the hunter 
making his way through the woods have oppor¬ 
tunities to see and admire and study wild life 
that are offered to no other class of persons.’ To 
love the plants and flowers and to be interested 
in them, will add greatly to the pleasure of his 
trips and make him more contented when the 
creel is empty or the bag lacking game. He may 
fill his basket with arbutus or the rear of' his 
wagon with mountain holly, and his welcome at 
home may be just as hearty and his own dis¬ 
appointment less keen. And when old age comes 
on, and rod and gun are put aside, he will have 
pictures that 
Flash upon that inward eye, 
Which is the bliss of solitude. 
Chas. Lose. 
Pigsticking in India. 
BY MAJOR T. T. PITMAN. 
Give me the best day’s fox hunting, and I'd 
sooner have it than the best day’s pigsticking; 
but, on the other hand, give me ten days in an 
Indian jungle in daily pursuit of the pig, and I 
wouldn't exchange them for three weeks of the 
best fox hunting. Now what is it that makes 
one look back on a season’s pigsticking with 
such glorious recollections? The surroundings, 
the free life, the cheery party, the feeling of 
being far away from civilization, added to the 
excitement and danger of each day’s sport. 
In order, however, to fully appreciate what is 
meant by this, you must let your imagination 
follow mine, while I stir up a few recollections 
of an Indian summer. 
The station is Meerut, one of the best pig¬ 
sticking centers in India. The month is March, 
the cold weather nearly over with its maneuvers 
and camps of exercise; it is time to sharpen 
one’s spears and get together a few horses for 
the coming hot weather. 
A notice is sent round cantonments summon¬ 
ing the members of the tent club to a meeting 
to discuss the programme of the season. Some 
twenty odd will turn up, the majority officers 
of the garrison, with a sprinkling of civilians. 
A president is elected, a few new rules made, 
and a date fixed for the great event of the year, 
“The Khadir Cup.” 
But let me turn the handle of the cinemato¬ 
graph: It is the evening before the opening 
meet; the head man of the village sits cross- 
legged beneath the shadow of a big tree, watch¬ 
ing the dusty road. The day has been marked 
by the passing of many a bullock wagon, carry¬ 
ing all the paraphernalia of a camp, syces lead¬ 
ing horses of all classes—the 15-hand Arab, the 
water from Australia, the Indian country-bred. 
This weazened up old villager knows that the 
season has come round again when the Sahibs 
visit his country in pursuit of the soor (pig). As 
the sun goes down there is a jingle, jingle and a 
string of eckas, the light cart of the country, go 
past carrying the bearers and light kit, followed 
half an hour later by the Sahibs themselves, 
some riding, some in. pony traps, all laughing 
and talking,, eager at the prospect of what the 
morrow may bring forth. The old man merely 
changes the cross of his legs and takes another 
pull at his bubble bubble. 
But let us take another turn of the handle, 
and we see a group of Sahibs sitting round a 
