194 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 29, 1911. 
Y OU know mallards—wisest and wariest of all 
ducks— Solomons of the air. You can’t knock 
down mallards with a paddle nor can you get.them 
with a gun that plasters its shots all over the face 
of creation. 
A mallard shot is generally a long shot, and long 
shots require a hard-shooting, close-shooting gun. 
That’s why the long-headed man who goes to a 
mallard country takes a Lefecer. When he swings 
it on a towering pair of mallards he does not ques¬ 
tion the result. He know it— 
TWO CLEAN KILLS 
The reason a Lefever kills clean and sure and 
far is Lefever Taper Boring. 
But if you buy a Lefever for the taper boring 
alone, you will get more than your money’s worth. 
Far instance, you will never be handicapped with 
looseness at the hinge joint. The exclusive Lefever 
screw compensates for a year’s wear by a trifling 
turn that you make yourself with a screwdriver. 
LEFEVER 
SHOT GUNS 
Sixteen other exclusive Lefever features and Lefe¬ 
ver simplicity and strength make the $28 gun the 
peer of any S 50 gun on the market. Upwards to 
Si , 000 . Send for free catalog and get Lefever wise. 
Lefever Arms Co., aj Maltbie St., Syracuse,N .Y. 
Ttlarlin 
REPEATER 
Model 
1897 
The best-made 
,22 rifle in the world! 
Shoots all .22 short, .22 long and .22 long rifle 
cartridges without change in adjustment; ex¬ 
cellent for rabbits, squirrels, hawks, crows, 
foxes and all small game and target work up 
to 200 yards. 
It’s a take-down, convenient to carry and clean. The tool 
steel working parts cannot wear out. It’s Ivory Bead and 
Rocky Mountain sights are the best set ever furnished on any 
,22. Has lever action — like a big game ride; has solid top 
and side ejection for safety and rapid accurate firing—the 
real test of a repeater. 
Note the beautiful case-hardened finish and the superb build 
and balance. Examine at your gun store or send three 
stamps postage for new big catalog of all Marlin repeating 
rifles and shotguns. Do it now! 
T7/& 7/7(7r// 1 ? ffirearms Co. 
27 Willow Street, New Haven, Conn. 
When writing say you saw the advertisement 
in “Forest and Stream.” 
IMITATION GAME BIRD EGGS. 
An invention of importance to shooting men 
and others who take a practical interest in game 
rearing has recently been patented by a Surrey 
gentleman. The invention is a most excellent 
imitation partridge and pheasant egg. Indeed, 
the unreal resembles the real egg so closely in 
weight, color and size, smoothness of surface 
and, most important of all, sound when knocked 
against another, that gamekeepers who rear 
their birds on what is called the Euston system 
-—so named by having first been practiced on 
the Euston Hall estate in Norfolk-—are find¬ 
ing it invaluable. 
The Euston system, it must be explained, 
consists in collecting the game birds’ eggs, as 
they are laid and placing them beneath hens and 
bantams until the shells are chipped, and then 
putting them back in the nests in the coverts 
and hedges. While the eggs are being brought 
to this stage of incubation, the pheasant and 
partridge are, of course, sitting on the imitation 
eggs, or as has generally been the case hitherto, 
infertile eggs saved from the previous season. 
Thus not only vermin and egg stealing birds, 
but also the egg poacher is in a great measure 
defeated. For decades past game rearers have 
been trying to manufacture a satisfactory imi¬ 
tation egg. Eggs of glass, stone, cement, and 
other compositions have all been tried in turn, 
but, save for an isolated instance here and there, 
have proved of little or no use. 
The glass eggs, when the birds turned them 
over or were settling down on their nests, 
chinked together, and thus the deception was 
discovered and they were prompaly routed out 
of the nest. The eggs of stone and cement also 
rolled together with an unnatural sound besides 
being too cold and heavy, so they too were dis¬ 
carded by the birds. They take readily, how¬ 
ever, to this new imitation egg, which is made 
of beech wood—a wood, strange to say that has 
a specific gravity of fifty pounds to the cubic 
foot, the exact mean weight of the pheasant 
and partridge egg. 
The other day I met the inventor and was 
told the story of the invention, which is inter¬ 
esting. Some years ago he was private secre¬ 
tary to the late Lord Sondes, and one day, on 
the latter noticing that partridges would not sit 
on some glass eggs, he asked his secretary if he 
could not make a better egg, and there and then 
he began to try. He came to the conclusion 
once that wood could only be the correct ma¬ 
terial, but some time passed before he dis¬ 
covered the wood of the right weight. The first 
eggs that he made were, he told me, most crude, 
for they were made with a pocket knife, yet 
partridges sat on them, and practically ever 
since that time he has patiently been perfecting 
ins patent. 
At first friends and relations poohpoohed the 
invention, saying the egg could never be made 
quick enough to be retailed at a reasonable 
price, for unlike glass, stone and cement eggs, 
it could not be made in a mould by the thou¬ 
sand in a few minutes; but to such perfection 
has its inventor brought the making of this 
wooden egg that he himself can make 500 in a 
week and by hand withal. 
The chief difficulty that he had to contend 
with in the beginning was in obtaining satis¬ 
factory tools, and in the end he had to manu¬ 
facture some. The obtaining of a oaint of the 
correct shade also presented a difficulty that 
was not easily overcome. 
The actual making of the eggs is most inter¬ 
esting. The wood is received from the mer¬ 
chants in strips about eight inches long and two 
inches in diameter. These strips are converted 
into rollers and the rollers into chains of five 
eggs each by means of chisels and gouges. 
Then the eggs are cut off. tailed and topped, 
and by means of a particular spring chuck 
rendered quite accurate as regards shade. After 
this they are painted, not with a brush, for thus 
a grain would be left and the deception would be 
discovered. They are stuck lightly on circular 
pieces of wood with steel points and then 
dipped into the paint. After this, still sus¬ 
pended on the circular pieces of wood, they are 
hung up to dry, being reversed two or three 
times, so that the paint settles evenly all over 
the eggs. But they are now too glossy, so 
when the paint is quite dry they are .rubbed 
with soap and a fine sand, which does away with 
the gloss. Finally they are laid out in a large 
shed until the smell of the soap and paint has 
entirely evaporated.—Pall Mall Gazette. 
MUDDING. 
“If a bear with a sore head is the crossest 
thing there is, as the old saying .has it,’’ said a 
man from the St. Francis River country in 
Arkansas, “then the bears of the Arkansas sunk 
lands must have the worst kind of chronic sore¬ 
heads.” 
“They are certainly the surliest, most ill-tem¬ 
pered beasts I ever came in contact with. They 
are called fishing bears because they spend most 
of their time catching fish. 
"I can’t for the life of me see why they should 
be so cross-grained and ugiy. I know folk who 
would be happier than larks all the while if they 
had nothing to do but go fishing, like the bears 
of the Arkansas sunk lands. 
“They live on the islands in the wilderness of 
the St. Francis River, and they taught the set¬ 
tlers the art of fishing by what is now known 
as mudding. 
“When one of the bears goes fishing he wades 
into one of the ponds or lagoons and stirs up 
the bl'ttom with his feet. The water is soon 
roiled, and this drives the fish to the surface 
seeking air. Then the bear lakes his choice of 
the lot until he doesn’t want any more. 
“This way of catching fish was noticed by the 
first settlers who came into that country, and it 
struck them as being a good way for them to 
fish. They adopted the method, and mudding 
for fish is to this day a popular pastime all 
through that part of the Mississippi Valley and 
the interior. 
“Yet the sunk lands bear isn’t happy in hav¬ 
ing nothing to do but to go fishing, and he seems 
to find his chief enjoyment in coming to the 
shores of his islands, growling and showing his 
ugly teeth clear to the gums and snapping and 
snarling savagely at fishermen and hunters as 
they pass in their boats. These bears even scowl 
and snarl at one another when they meet, but 
I don’t believe they ever fight, for in spite of 
their invariable surly and savage front, if a man 
in a boat turns it toward one of them on the 
shore and rows that way, the bear will retreat 
; t once to the thick brush and disappear. 
“They seem to be born with a natural grouch 
against everything, and to tote a chip on their 
shoulder, so to speak, but without the pluck to 
stand and have somebody knock it off.”—-North 
American. 
STRIKE INTERESTS ANGLERS. 
Strikes have always been infectious in Paris 
and there is an epidemic of them now. The 
latest development is the strike of the “mourre- 
dus” which is a guild that very few English 
readers have probably heard of. It is the style 
and title assumed by the grubbers after worms 
as bait for anglers, who ply their trade chiefl v 
in the mud of the docks of La Seyne. Unfortu¬ 
nate y for them a marine dredger has lately been 
at work on their grounds, and its mechanical 
shovels and scoops make ail competition impos¬ 
sible for mere manual toilers. 
The men in charge of the dredger have as 
many worms as can be wished for emptied out 
before them, and being quick to perceive their 
advantage have started a competition, which the 
“mourredos” consider most disloyal and unfair. 
They began by complaining to the maritime pre¬ 
fect, who naturally declined to interfere, and 
they then resolved to strike. Up to the present 
this has not had much effect, as the worm supply 
is kept up by the dredger. They threaten, how¬ 
ever, to remain on strike when the monster has 
finished and gone e’sewhere, and this might be 
rather perplexing to the angling fraternity.— 
New York Tribune. 
