34 
FOREST AND STREAM 
July 12, 1913 
You can shave with a 
At last you can get a full 
hollow-ground razor made 
absolutely safe by our pat¬ 
ented safety attachment. 
are 
There 
guards for the 
blade for both 
the right and left 
hand. The guard 
protects you when 
you shave so that you 
cannot cut yourself no 
matter how closely or 
how quickly you shave. 
There is nothing to get out of 
order; the Zepp Safe- 
Razor is 
guaran¬ 
teed for 
25 years. 
AGENTS: 
profit-sharing pi 
contains the 
liberal offer ever 
made by any 
manufacturer. 
The Zepp Safe-Razor has all the good 
features of both the straight razor and 
the hoe variety of safety razor with none 
of their disadvantages. The Zepp Safe- 
Razor can be used as a straight 
razor. The blade is made of the 
best Vanadium steel, is full concave 
being ground on four 
different size wheels, and 
is hardened and tem¬ 
pered by elec¬ 
tricity. 
for 
Write 
our 
fund 
which 
an 
most 
INC 
CO 
299 BROADWAY 
The Zepp 
Safe-Razor 
is the only 
double-guarded 
razor. It com¬ 
bines Highest Qual- 
with Greatest 
Safety. 
Ask your dealer for the 
“ Zepp ” or send us $3.00 
and we will send you a 
Zepp Safe- 
Razor for 
a thirty 
day free 
trial. If you don’t 
it we guarantee to re¬ 
money. 
RAZOR 
NEW YORK CITY 
in five minutes and when you have 
finished your face will feel like velvet. 
Are You An Outdoors-Man? 
Do You Love to Hunt, Fish and Camp? 
Then how do you manage to stumble along through life without 
FIELD AND STREAM? 
Edited each month for enthusiastic sportsmen, by enthusiastic sports¬ 
men, Field and Stream brings to you each month the breath ol the pine- 
woods. the plash of the stream, the atmosphere of God’s outdoors ! 
And then the practical articles by the recogn'zed leaders of the craft 
—the “how to” articles by men who have actuall- “been there.” There 
are hundreds of suggestions that will make your future trips more 
successful—the little “dodges” ami “stunts” devi.-ed by practical men 
of a lifetime’s experience. Field and Stream is the shortcut that will 
bring them to you this year! 
Get posted, too, on our $3,000 Prize Fishing Contest. Perhaps you 
caughta Prize Winner lastjear and didn't know it. Look over the 
prizes and conditions, and records of last year’s winners now running 
and find out what you missed. 
We want to get acquainted with you ! So here is a special in¬ 
troductory ofi'er. We’ll send you a two-piece, five-foot bait rod 
split bamboo tip, solid wood butt, nickel fittings—and a three 
months’ trial subscription to FIELD AND STREAM, both for . $1.00 
Split bamboo rod, regular price 
3-mouth subscription to F. & S, 
$ 1.95 
Send us your name and address, and mention where you saw 
this adv, together with a One-Dollar “William” today, for this 
ofler is limited to a supply of 150 rods we have been able to 
secure at a special rate. 
FIELD AND STREAM, 450 Fourth Ave., New York City 
Bird Notes From Maine. 
Last year an enthusiastic bird lover wrote for 
the Republican Journal, of Belfast, Maine, the 
following story of the purple martin. The in¬ 
terest in these birds is so general and the bird 
lover is so often asked for the secret of his 
success with them that I think the information 
contained in his little sketch may be timely and 
welcome to your readers. I have observed the 
bird lover in his dealings with the English spar¬ 
row, and notice that the shotgun is his only 
argument. Recently he brought down two of 
the invaders at one shot. In spite of his watch¬ 
fulness, a pair of them built in a back room of 
his new and palatial martin house. To-day he 
said: “I shot the female and the male went 
away and got another mate. He brought her 
back to the nest, but he had learned about a 
gun and was cautious. I couldn’t get near them 
for a long time: they would flv away up into 
the orchard, and the male bird would flutter 
around the female and coax her to move along 
out of harm’s way. He surely kne wa lot. lint 
I. got her.at last.” We hope that this second 
disaster will discourage the unwelcome intruder, 
and that he will not seek a third mate to share 
his misfortunes. The story follows: 
If one is interested in birds at all, the purple 
martin, with a song, call or note for every emo¬ 
tion, cannot fail to he a favorite. They are of 
gregarious, social habits and their happy dispo¬ 
sition and harmonious adjustment engages the 
attention of the observer. Their notes are full 
and melodious, with all the changes from joy to 
expostulation, but they seldom sound in anger 
except at the intrusion of some enemy. In the 
latter case the martins are very fearless and 
courageous, and are the only birds with the ex¬ 
ception of the barn swallows which will venture 
to attack the small hawks. In doing this, the 
brave birds sometimes come to grief. I have 
seen two of them caught by hawks which sud¬ 
denly turned on their backs and caught the at¬ 
tacking martins in their talons, both falling to 
the ground. On one of these occasions I hnri¬ 
pened to be near enough to rescue the martin, 
but on the other the birds fell too far away for 
the result of the struggle to be seen by me. 
The food of the martin consists of flying 
insects, and ranges from moths and dragon flies 
to mosquitoes. The color of the birds until they 
are a year and a half old is a dull purplish blue 
above, and brownish grav below. Durinsr the 
second winter in their southern home in Mexico 
nearly the entire plumage of the male bird is 
changed to a rich purnlish blue while the female 
retains her duller earb. 
The old martins arrive about the last of 
April and begin to build about the 20th of May. 
The younger birds arrive about the middle of 
May and sometimes start nesting as late as the 
20th of June. There are many more males than 
females, which is probably due to the fact that 
the female is caught or trapped on her nest 
hv cats or other enemies. As a rule it is diffi¬ 
cult to suit the martins in a nesting site. For 
twenty years I have tried to get a colony of 
them to build and return the succeeding season 
with their augmented families. They would start 
the first year with one pair of year-old birds, 
hatch, rear their young, depart, return the next 
year, and be ioined by several more pairs, only 
to leave suddenly, deserting their eggs, nests 
and even their partly grown young. There 
seems to he no satisfactory explanation of this 
unnatural condition, and it has never been clear 
to naturalists. 
T have, however, noticed that this early de¬ 
sertion of their nests has occurred after a long 
period of cold, rainv weather, when the birds 
have been wet or chilled through. On the 20th 
of May, 1902, a cold rain storm killed a dozen 
or more of the birds at my houses. Upon taking 
down the martin houses after an early exodus, 
I have sometimes found one dead martin in¬ 
side, which may have been enough to frighten 
the rest of the birds away. Another possible 
explanation lies in the fact that the martins are 
very early migrators. Whatever it is that causes 
