Dec. 30, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
931 
almost lost heart, but followed doggedly till he 
led us round a cliff where there was a straight 
drop of 300 feet into the creek. Trusting to 
the insecure footing we could obtain in the 
snow, we had already traversed places that were 
quite impracticable on bare ground, but here the 
tracks gave out, there was no lodgment of snow, 
the rock face was too steep, bruin had gone 
ahead, but we must go back and up and around. 
We had a gruelling climb from this point, 
sometimes creeping up over bare icy rock; at 
others, sinking up to the middle in the soft snow. 
Our skis were worse than useless, as we had to 
carry them. There was little conversation, each 
being fully occupied with his own business, for 
a false step might be fatal. It was some satis¬ 
faction to find, when we got into easier country, 
that the bear also had found the Devil’s Gate 
cliffs too hard a proposition and had had to 
“beat up,” too. 
When we struck the track again we were a long, 
long ways from the bottom of the canon and 
followed on our skis for a mile or more through 
fairly open country. Eventually, when bruin 
turned down hill again, having a fast 600 yards’ 
ride down a beautiful snow slope making an 
angle of 35 degrees with the horizontal, the bear 
had taken to the creek bed, and we had a kind 
of amphibious spell for the next couple of 
miles, sometimes wading to the limit of our hip 
boots, and when the water was too deep for 
this, climbing round the rocks or through the 
coppices of alder that in places lined the creek. 
Still no bear was in sight, and our hopes of an 
encounter were getting very low indeed when, 
after rounding a sudden and awkward bend in 
the creek, we saw where he had left the water 
and turned up a deep ravine. 
“We’ve got him,” W. whispered; “he won’t 
go far up that side; the snow is too deep and 
soft.” He looked at his watch, and we esti¬ 
mated that we had just an hour longer to hunt, 
unless we wished to spend a night in the snow. 
We stuck the skis up near the creek, took our 
rifles out of the canvas sling cases and followed 
up literally in the bear’s footsteps. He had 
broken trail for us, but still we sank knee deep 
in places, and the ravine was very steep. We 
had left the creek perhaps a couple of hundred 
yards, when suddenly W. touched my arm, and 
in a hoarse whisper said: “I see him.” Almost 
as he spoke I myself caught sight of the animal. 
About a hundred and fifty yards distant there 
were three trees whose butts were close together, 
but their tops diverged considerably < The bear 
was just above these trees, his entire body hid¬ 
den. All we could see was his head. He was 
watching us intently. Presently he poked his 
head a little further past the tree and I raised 
the gun to my shoulder. W. whispered, “Wait.” 
This admonition came too late, for at that 
moment I fired, and the bear disappeared, only 
a moment later to come tearing out from be¬ 
hind the trees. W.’s rifle cracked and bruin 
turned down the ravine and came straight for 
us, floundering in the soft snow, but keeping 
his head well up as though swimming. Shot 
after shot was fired with no apparent effect, 
until one from W. dropped the bear when about 
seventy yards distant. He was up again and 
came bravely on for another twenty yards, when 
a .33 soft nose bullet from my rifle found the 
vital spot. He swung around, tried to rear, and 
then with a mighty sob fell athwart his track 
and was still. 
My first shot smashed his lower jow to a pulp. 
In addition he had a bullet through the ribs, one 
in the right shoulder, two in the center of the 
chest within an inch of each other, three in the 
head (one of them in the eye), all soft-nosed 
A SHEEP PATH. 
A BAD LAND ARROYO. 
LOOKING FOR SHEEP. 
From photographs in the Bad Lands by Lippincott 
bullets from high-power smokeless shells, and 
we could not tell he was wounded till the last 
shot but one was fired. What if the encounter 
had been at close quarters in thick brush? As 
Patsy Mooney said when we got back to camp: 
“He would have killed ye after ye had killed 
him.” * 
New Publications. 
New England Trees in Winter, by A. F. 
Blakeslee and C. D. Jarvis. Paper, 576 
pages. Storrs, Conn., the Connecticut Agri¬ 
cultural College. 
This bulletin (No. 69) has descriptions and 
illustrations of 111 of the common trees of New 
England as they appear in winter. A tree in 
winter is quite a different proposition from the 
same tree in summer when the branches are all 
hidden by foliage. This bulletin not only de¬ 
scribes the trees and their habits of growth, but 
the illustrations show the complete tree and its 
branching habits, the bark and buds and in many 
cases the seeds or fruit. All the illustrations are 
from original photographs of living trees. In 
the preface the authors state there is no general 
work upon American trees which combines illus¬ 
trations of the individual forms with keys for 
their identification based upon winter characters. 
The forester and lumberman, however, are more 
called upon to distinguish trees in winter when 
leaves and flowers are fallen than in summer. 
Trees, as the most conspicuous elements in the 
winter landscape, must also appeal to the student 
of outdoor life. The interest shown by classes 
of school teachers in the summer school in iden¬ 
tifying specimens of twigs collected the previous 
winter indicated that the winter study of trees 
can be taken up with enthusiasm by teachers in 
their schools. In our experience the winter iden¬ 
tification of trees has proven to students one of 
the most interesting subjects of their course. It 
is of decided value for its training in the power 
of accurate observation. The combination of 
keys, text and illustrations from photographs 
will furnish the assistance which the current 
texts fail to supply and render the identification 
of our common trees in winter a relatively sim¬ 
ple task. 
Upon request copies of this bulletin will be 
sent free to all teachers of Connecticut and to 
others who are specially interested in trees. Ad¬ 
dress, Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station, 
Storrs, Conn. 
Questions and Answers for Automobile Stu¬ 
dents and Mechanics, by Thomas H. Rus¬ 
sell. Flexible leather, 140 pages, $1. Chi¬ 
cago, the Charles H. Thompson Company. 
All of the questions likely to be asked by a 
beginner are given under numbers, and the an¬ 
swers appear in paragraphs correspondingly num¬ 
bered. The method is very simple and the in¬ 
structions easily comprehended by one to whom 
technical terms are at first meaningless. There 
are 600 questions and answers, and by this ar¬ 
rangement one who seeks information on a cer¬ 
tain subject need not search far for the solution 
of his difficulty. 
Books Received : “The Mammals of Colo¬ 
rado,” by E. R. Warren; Putnam. “The Dog 
Lovers’ Book,” by Edwin Noble; Dana Estes & 
Co. “The Life of the Common Gull,” by C. 
Rubow; Witherby & Co. “Partridges and Par¬ 
tridge Manors,” by Aymer Maxwell; Macmillan. 
"The People of the Wild,” by F. St. Mars; Out¬ 
ing. “The Life of a Foxhound,” by John Mills; 
Hodder & Stoughton. “Our Wildfowl and 
Waders,” by D. W. Huntington; Amateur 
Sportsmen Co. “Sea Fishing,” by C. 0 . Minchin; 
Macmillan. 
