372 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Why Has This Bulletin Been Allowed to Become 
“Out of Print”? 
Secretary Marshall Says That Popular Publications Should Remain In Circulation 
brush that held nothing large enough to climb. 
The dogs must have struck his trail red-hot and 
a-smokin’. They went by us rip! slam! bang! 
through the thick stuff, Rove’s ki-yi’s melting 
into an unbroken string of sizzling i-i-i-i-i-i’s, 
and Bugle’s usual y-o-u-g-h! y-o-u-g-h! replaced 
by a sort of long-drawn sobbing cough. 
The entire chase was virtually at out feet—a 
drama viewed from the topmost gallery, but on 
a stage that night had curtained with her man¬ 
tle, leaving us to hear and feel the rapidly-shift¬ 
ing play and its busy actors below us. 
Was that a faint splash in the brook, or had 
our imagination tricked us? Usually a coon 
slides in noiselessly, but this fellow was sure in 
a hurry, and may have blundered. A little later 
there was a commotion from the brook as if a 
couple of wash-tubs had been thrown into the 
river, the music shutting off abruptly as the 
dogs’ heads went under water for an instant. 
Again came the fierce, eager cry of the dogs 
from the valley, and we knew the coon was run¬ 
ning on the flats, turning and twisting through 
the thick underbrush in an endeavor to gain a 
little leeway. No thought now, Bugle, old boy, of 
the sharp briars; no waiting for Rove to rout out 
the game. Your blood’s afire, you don’t even 
feel the needle-like points, but lead the march, 
with your best foot first. Select quickly now 
your tree, you cooney man. 
******* “You’ve ‘eard the Bugle blowed 
There’s a regiment a-comin’ down the Grand Trunk 
Road; 
With its best foot first 
And the road a-slidin’ past, 
An’ every bloomin’ campin’ ground exactly like 
the last. 
While the Big Drum says, 
With ’is Row-dy, Dow-dy Dow.” * * * * 
A sharp turn of the chase in our direction, 
and then splash!—splash!—splash! The coon 
has doubled and is climbing for the rocks above, 
not stopping to make a fight in the water, as a 
coon often will; with all that racket behind him 
he surely must have thought there was “a regi¬ 
ment a-comin’.” 
No use, little man! You’ve made a splendid 
run with so short a start and your sawed-off 
legs. That small body of yours packs a stout 
heart. Silence for a moment, and then came 
the tree cry of the dogs. 
We crossed two branches of the stream be¬ 
fore reaching the tree, a big hemlock towering 
above a tangle of laurel on a steep, springy hill¬ 
side. We could not see the coon even with the 
aid of a strong flashlight, so it was build a fire 
and stay till morning. It was one long and cold 
stay. Bugle curled up near the fire and close to 
the tree; Rove selected a dry spot a bit up the 
hill. Every half hour or so Bugle got up, 
smelled around the trunk of the tree, and made 
a short circuit to see if the coon had come down; 
good work for a dog green at the business. 
Once during the night a bear mouse, foraging 
in some dry leaves up the hill, caused a diver¬ 
sion. Both dogs appeared sound asleep, but in 
a flash they charged up the hill, making such a 
commotion as to awake even Herman, who, I 
think, belongs to the race of cave men, but was 
born some thousands of years too late to grace 
that strenuous epoch. He curled up on about 
enough twigs to make a good-sized bird’s nest, 
and slept all night. 
We shot the coon at daylight. It was a male, 
weighing close to 18 pounds. 
“What of the hunting, hunter bold? 
Brother, the watch was long and cold.” 
New Salem, Mass., Feb. 21, 1914. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Some time ago you recommended Farmers’ 
Bulletin No. 513, “Fifty Common Birds of Farm 
and Orchard.” 1 have just succeeded in getting- 
one of these from the Massachusetts congress¬ 
man, Calwyn D. Paige, from his quota which 
was left, although they are now out of print. 
A letter from a member of the Biological Sur¬ 
vey says that the bulletin is entirely out of print, 
and “it is useless to advertise this publication as 
the department is entirely unable to supply re¬ 
quests for it.” 
Now if this were a. best seller novel, it might 
be good economy to leave off the publication on 
the ground of economy. But with an educational 
publication like this, the greater the demand, the 
better pleased the tax-payers are when they un¬ 
derstand the need and the value of the publica¬ 
tion. 
The thing which makes this pamphlet a suc¬ 
cess is the colored illustrations, from Fuertes’ 
drawings of the fifty birds. We can’t identify 
birds without colors, unless we aspire to be orni¬ 
thologists and spend a lot of time in museums. 
But everybody wants to know fifty common 
birds. The Grange ritual exhorts us to make the 
birds our friends and call them all by their 
names. How are the million members of the 
Grange, for instance, to call all the birds by their 
names unless the children and their elders have 
free access to a pamphlet like this one? The 
attraction of color and its educational value is 
illustrated by what we did in the annual meet 
of the Massachusetts State Grange. We put in 
the seats one morning before the meet about 
three hundred ads of Reed’s Bird Guide, with 
colored birds and flowers on the cover. After 
the meet we went around to gather up what had 
been left in the seats, as ads are usually wasted. 
We found only three of the three hundred left. 
The Patrons of Husbandry wanted to learn to 
call birds by their names, and everywhere among 
Patrons we find the Bird Guide with its colored 
pictures. A bird is largely color. We do not 
need descriptions to recognize birds so much as 
we need the colors and markings. 
As to the need of identifying birds in order 
to further their conservation, the chief difficulty 
in any plan for increasing useful birds is the 
ignorance as to species. There is an agricultural 
paper that is actually doing more harm than 
good, because its bird editor, by the most incon¬ 
trovertible evidence, does not know any species 
except the English sparrow. He sees it all 
around him in the city, and he imagines that all 
the farmers have to do is to trap it and they will 
have finished the task of bird protection in a 
hurry. So when a farmer gets waked up to the 
value of birds, he is supposed to get after spar¬ 
rows or encourage his small boy to, and I have 
in mind some persons who had a ten-year-old boy 
shoot all the native birds on their estate in his 
zeal for bird protection. Everywhere we meet 
ignorance of the common birds which we want 
to protect. 
What is so well calculated to dispel ignorance 
and to do such a great work of protection as this 
attractive text-book whose popularity is its only 
reason for being out of print? Let’s write our 
congressmen and senators at Washington, and 
if the department lacks funds they will see that 
it has funds to do this great work. 
E. O. MARSHALL, 
Secretary of the Massachusetts State Grange 
Committee on Protection of Wild Birds. 
SUGGESTION FROM VETERAN CAMPER 
FOR OLD CAMPER. 
Grants Pass, Ore., Feb. 24, 1914. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In preparing a meal for four people, I would 
wash the trout and wipe them dry, then roll 
them in flour and fry till brown. Spread butter 
on the quail, roll in flour and fry brown. Slice 
the potatoes and fry them in some lard; pepper 
and salt them and fry brown. Then I would 
bake some hot biscuit and make coffee. Would 
have all ready in forty minutes on the table, 
ready to sit down to. 
J. L. GIVEN. 
[Note: The writer of the above response to 
our camp problem is a camper and big game 
hunter of many years on the chase, and, although 
now in his seventy-ninth year, goes after the 
game in the mountains surrounding Grants Pass, 
as regularly as the hunting seasons reappear. His 
trips are not confined to the borders of the vil¬ 
lage, but are into the depths of the mountains, 
requiring many hours of arduous climbing to 
reach the site selected for the camp. 
It was he who discovered and helped carry out 
from the mountains a minister who was shot in 
the chest through the mistake of his (the minis¬ 
ter’s) hunting companion during Oregon’s open 
season of 1912. 
This answer as to the preparation of the meal 
for the unexpected guests is from probably the 
oldest active hunter and camper that has re¬ 
sponded to our invitation to aid in solving “Old 
Campers” problem. When on the trail Mr. 
Given’s pack weighs about thirty-five pounds, and 
his rifle (a .40-82 Winchester) adds about eight 
or nine pounds more.] 
FOR LONGER SEASON IN MISSOURI. 
The Black River Hunting and Fishing Club, of 
Poplar Bluff, Mo., recently circulated a petition 
asking the Federal Government to extend the 
open season for duck, geese and snipe in that 
region from January 1st to May 1st. 
The Federal law prohibits the killing of these 
birds after January 1, but a state law fixes the 
close of the open season at April 30. A copy of 
the petition will be sent to Congressman Joe Rus¬ 
sell, asking his co-operation in getting the open 
season extended, and a copy to the Secretary of 
Agriculture. 
There are approximately four million acres of 
timber land in New Hampshire of which about 
half is in farmers’ wood-lots. 
