18 
FOREST AND STREAM 
DR. ROBERT P. ELMER. 
“At the second shot the boys said, ‘You hit 
him a‘gain,’ and Will said, ‘Well, I'll be 
darned.’ 
“The impatience of the boys could not be 
restrained any longer and they determined to 
capture the ’possum alive, in attempting which 
he was allowed to get into the creek, and one 
of the boj's murdered him with a shotgun. He 
was half grown—a little larger than a good- 
sized rat.” 
A DIDELPIIIC TKAGEDY. 
(Possum potest non pngnare.) 
It came to pass, but I don't know how, 
That the last Didelphys, and man-with-a-bow. 
The self-same crossing happened to seek. 
At the bridge over Independence Creek. 
The ’possum was safe, or so thought he. 
On the highest branch of a Kansas tree; 
Four hands to hold with, also a tail. 
And the latter he never had known to fail. 
The archer had taken along some cusses, 
Armed with obsolete blunderbusses. 
Ostensibly giving to them an “outing,” 
But really only to do his touting, 
\\ hen he should be able to shoot and show 
Ilis marvelous skill with shaft and bow. 
And bag all tbe game, and poke some fun 
At the others w'ho clung to the “has-been” gun. 
The man was aggressive, the ’possum passive; 
The latter petite, the former massive; 
The archer bold and self-reliant; 
The small marsupial quite defiant; 
For he had been guilty of many crimes. 
And been indicted a hundred times. 
And, being presumably out on bail. 
He clung to bis freedom with claw and tail. 
His idiot-grin of innocence, 
Was an artful plea, but no defense. 
And was promptly stricken, as plainly “sbam,” 
When the first shaft hurtled and creased his ham. 
Knowing the luck that follows the bow, 
.^nd know'ing tbe Atcbison archer so. 
If I had been that quadruped then, 
I should have fled from the haunts of men 
With a speed continually increased, 
.■\s the squares of my several jumps, at least. 
Till I could send back a ’possum’s curse 
From a place not mentionable in my verse. 
Jan. 4, 1913 
But he didn’t. The weak, marsupial fool, 
Who never had been to tbe public school. 
Was densely stupid, and did not know 
The way of a man with a shaft and bow. * 
(No more than the readers of Solomon shall 
“The way of a man with a maid,” et ah). 
Knew less of the numbers of arrows in stock 
Than Solomon knew of the snake on the rock. 
For an archer will shoot till his shafts are sped, 
And then, if the ’possum be not yet dead. 
Will gather his arrows again and again. 
And shoot, and shoot with might and main. 
And keep on shooting until he has hit 
All of the places the size of it. 
And so it must happen, that soon or late 
Didelphys Virginia must meet his fate. 
He met it- but, ob, tbe miraculous luck! 
The second, as well as the first, shaft struck. 
And the fool marsupial lost his grin. 
As he rubbed the stump where a leg had been. 
He lost his head and uncurled his tail. 
And, as usual, with people when both ends fail. 
The attraction of gravitation began. 
To bring him down to the level of man. 
The closing scene of the tragedy then. 
My muse would hide from the eyes of men! 
The splash of the fall in the freezing river; 
The grin that my country has lost forever. 
The rush of the hunters with gun and bow. 
The sound of the bludgeon with blow on blow. 
The crack of the ribs by the hurled stone met. 
The crunch of the boot heel, spike-beset; 
All this, and more, I might portray. 
But it seems sufficient to only say, 
That, after the close of the human storm, 
Didelphys Virginia was “out of form.” 
.And then in the gloaming they rushed for home. 
And the rifle’s crack and the shotgun’s boom 
Was drowned by tbe archer’s triumph cry. 
As he waved the marsupial tail on high! 
Christmas Archery in Chicago. 
It is a rare thing for archers to draw the 
bow on Christmas day, but that is what we did 
in Chicago. 
The weather was beautiful, with a tempera¬ 
ture of 41 degrees above zero, clear sky and 
a light wind from the southwest. 
Not expectmg such weather, social engage¬ 
ments had been made which kept a number of 
archers from the range. 
The following scores were made. Team 
round, 96 arrows at 60 yards: 
G L. Nichols.... 22 120 21 105 22 108 24 116 87 449 
D'r. E. B Weston IS 90 19 83 17 93 18 88 72 354 
James H. Pendry, president of the Chicago 
Archery Club, shot, but on account of the size 
of the score, his modesty prevented his turning 
it in. 
W. H. Wills, formerly one of our best 
archers, and now president of the New York 
-Archery Club, shot a part of the round with a 
strange bow and arrow. Social engagements 
called him before he finished the round. 
The following scores have recently been 
made in this “neck of woods”: 
Team round: 
H. W. Bishop.... 24 132 21 123 23 133 22 118 90 506 
E. T. Rendtorff. 96 582 
24 140 24 174 . 48 314 
■Seventy-two arrows at 100yds, 50 246. 
•American round; 
IT. W. Bishop . 29 183 30 208 30 226 89 617 
Edward B. Weston. 
The columns of this magazine serve as a 
prompt and satisfactory medium for the com¬ 
munication of facts and ideas between sports¬ 
men. 
Newlon Archery Scores. 
Boston, Mass., Dec. 27.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: On Saturday, Dec. 21, L. C. Smith and 
S. W. Wilder shot a match at Newton Center 
consisting of a double American round. Scores: 
GOyd.s. 
50yds. 
40yds. 
Total. 
S. \Y. 
Wilder... 
.. 28 164 
29 157 
30 186 
87 507 
23 91 
30 148 
30 190 
83 429—170 936 
L. C. 
Smith.... 
.. ’4 112 
26 136 
28 128 
78 376 
16 84 
25 101 
23 113 
66 298—144 674 
G. P. Bryant, Sec’y N. A. A. 
Birds, Game and Fur-Bearing Animals. 
According to the annual report of the Bio¬ 
logical Survey recently submitted to Secretary 
Wilson, the rearing of fur-bearing animals in 
the United States for their pelts continues to 
be a subject of much interest. Skunks, musk¬ 
rats, mink and foxes are reared in captivity or 
on preserves under control of breeders. The 
large prices asked for mature black foxes for 
breeding purposes has resulted in confining the 
industry in the hands of a very few. Compara¬ 
tively few attempts have been made to raise mink 
in the United States, but experiments are being 
conducted in co-operation with the National Zoo¬ 
logical Park with a view to determining the most 
successful methods of rearing these animals. 
Muskrat farming has probably reached its high¬ 
est point of development on the eastern shore 
of Maryland. Muskrat marshes are worth more 
measured by their actual income than cultivated 
farms of like acreage in the same vicinity. Only 
one other animal in the world, the European 
rabbit, exceeds the muskrat in the number of 
skins marketed. 
The report also calls attention to experi¬ 
ments for the extermination of prairie dogs, 
ground squirrels and gophers that are being con¬ 
ducted by means of poison baits, traps and other 
methods. It is a surprising fact that the daily 
forage for thirty-two adult prairie dogs equals 
that required for a sheep, and that 250 eat nearly 
as much as a cow. Spotted fever ticks in the 
two younger stages live almost wholly upon 
small native rodents, and the California ground 
squirrel has been infected with bubonic plague 
by fleas from rats. The danger that these dis¬ 
eases may become endemic furnishes an addi¬ 
tional important reason for the destruction of 
the animals. The bureau reports that the ante¬ 
lope is in greater danger of extermination than 
any other kind of American big game, that there 
is great need for a situable preserve in the ante¬ 
lope country, and that the buffalo on the Na¬ 
tional Bison Range have now increased to eighty- 
one, or forty-four more than the original num¬ 
ber three years ago. 
There are now fifty-six bird reservations, and 
additional inspectors and wardens have been ap¬ 
pointed to care for them. The European rabbit, 
introduced on Earallon Islands, California, and 
Laysan Island, Hawaii, has become such a pest 
that efforts will be made to reduce its number 
on Laysan Island. Every effort has been made 
to stop the sale of plumage of certain birds, 
gulls, terns and especially herons. New regula¬ 
tions passed under the Alaska game law practi¬ 
cally makes game refuges of five islands in 
Southeastern Alaska. Instructions have been 
given to the revenue cutters in Bering Sea to 
insure a strict enforcement of the law protect¬ 
ing walrus. 
