ioi6 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June 26, 1909. 
served it was unanimously resolved that each 
club should be advised of the purposes and scope 
of the committee, and also should be invited to 
join in the movement. In particular each and 
every club is invited to be present at a meeting 
which should be held before the opening of the 
field trial season forthcoming, either by a regu¬ 
larly appointed representative or by proxy. The 
committee desires reports from each club as to 
the time and place it prefers for the meeting, so 
that the wishes of the majority may be known. 
As points for consideration in this connection, 
the committee suggests the following and invites 
the freest comment thereon: 
First—To promote a broader acquaintance and 
a better understanding among field trial patrons 
and supporters. 
Second—To eliminate from the sport such 
persons as are proven guilty of fraudulent prac¬ 
tices, or who may be undesirable for any other 
sufficient reason. 
Third—To disbar from all competition any 
owner or handler or lessee who defaults in his 
entry fees or other indebtedness. 
Fourth—To establish a uniform standard of 
field trial competition. 
Fifth—To so regulate the dates that a con¬ 
venient circuit will be formed, thereby avoiding 
a conflict of interests one club with another. 
Sixth—To arrange a form of credentials, to 
be issued by the governing body, without fee, to 
any handler in good standing, or who is not 
personally objectionable to the association. 
(This would give the association power to deal 
painlessly with the dishonest and the disturber.) 
Seventh—To hold bench shows in connection 
with field trials, so that type and character may 
be cultivated coincidentally with working merit. 
Eighth—To make such other regulations for 
the governing and control of field trial clubs 
and competition as may seem advisable. 
It is hardly necessary to add that this organi¬ 
zation will in no wise invade in the slightest 
degree the powers of the clubs as they are at 
present constituted, nor will it ever affiliate with 
any other governing body. 
The committee of the Continental Field Trial 
Club requests the secretaries, to whom these 
circulars are sent—should they approve of their 
substance—to sign and send them to the mem¬ 
bers of their clubs, and such other good sports¬ 
men as are interested in the welfare of the 
sport. The Committee. 
Udo M. Fleischmann, Chairman. 
B. Waters, Secretary pro tern. 
A Forgotten Tomb. 
Springfield, Mass., June 9. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: In your issue of June 5 there is a 
letter from Lockport, N, Y., descriptive of “A 
Forgotten Tomb” and containing the opinion 
that the skeletons are prehistoric. 
It may be of interest to some of your readers 
to know that it was the custom of the Indians— 
probably Iroquois—inhabiting that part of the 
country to “collect the bones of their dead and 
deposit them with great ceremony in a common 
place of burial” in a capacious pit. There are 
several good descriptions of this custom (E. G. 
Parkman) in “The Jesuits in America,” p. 
LXXXL, also (Brebeuf’s) “Jesuit Relations for 
1636,” pp. 128-39 (1858). G. B. Affleck. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
A CORRESPONDENT in the South has given me, 
in a recent letter, a graphic description of one 
of the dangers that one may encounter in the 
woods of Florida. I quote: 
“Yesterday afternoon Will and I drove out 
in the country a few miles. We carried Nellie, 
our bird dog, along to give her a run. 
“While we were walking over a farm Nellie 
came to a point in a thicket of briers and weeds 
alongside a ditch. Going up to her I expected 
to flush a quail, but nothing got up. I spoke 
to her, but she was frozen stiff. Stepping in 
alongside, I looked down under her nose and 
saw a rattler with a woodsrat in its coil. I was 
afraid to take hold of Nellie’s collar for fear 
the snake would strike, as it was within six 
inches of the dog’s nose, so I stepped back, 
and catching hold of her tail, jerked her back 
two or three feet, when Will got her by the 
collar. 
“It was a pretty close call for the dog, for as 
I pulled her back the snake threw up its head 
and began to rattle. A negro who was near by 
killed it with a pole. It was only about three 
and a half feet long and had but four rattles, 
which I cut off for Will to add to his collec¬ 
tion. As I have said before, it is a mighty poor 
plan in this country to try to flush game in 
front of a dog, especially in a thicket, by kick¬ 
ing it up. You might flush a big diamondback 
some time, and if you did, the chances are it 
would be the last thing you would ever have a 
chance to flush.” 
My correspondent, George A. Irwin, some time 
ago told, in Forest and Stream, of a number 
of cases in which bird dogs have pointed or at 
least stopped in front of rattlesnakes, and of 
the risk one runs in walking ahead of the dog 
at such times. 
* * * 
Mr. Irwin also tells of a curious hybrid which 
was sent from North Carolina‘to a relative. He 
says: 
“It is said to be a cross between a wild turkey 
and a guinea fowl. It was bought from a moun¬ 
taineer who said one of his guineas came to the 
place with it one day after being gone some 
weeks. It was a little thing and grew up with 
the barnyard fowl, but would fly to roost in a 
tree, and when Will first got it at dusk it would 
fly up in a large oak tree to roost. It is marked 
between a guinea and turkey and is larger than 
a guinea. It has never laid and herds by itself.” 
* * * 
Inventors have designed a number of collap¬ 
sable, sectional and knockdown boats, the inten¬ 
tion being to render them more portable than 
craft of full length, and a great deal of inge¬ 
nuity has been shown in their construction. In 
most of them their inventors have been content 
with reducing length and bulk, but a French¬ 
man has gone a step further. The boat he has 
designed is made in two sections, one of which 
is placed inside the other for transporting, but 
he naively explains, and demonstrates with illus¬ 
trations, how the two sections are to be dis¬ 
posed to provide a shelter tent on occasion. 
In these days of compact outfits some genius 
might go a step further and make a boat in 
two parts, hinged at the gunwales, to provide 
a place to sleep and a cover therefor as well. 
Then the owner could pull his craft ashore at 
night, make his bed down in one end, crawl in, 
turn the other end over all, and go to sleep 
secure against moisture from below and above. 
There is no charge for this hint, or for the sug¬ 
gestion that it might well be called a box bed 
boat. The box feature would probably prove 
to be a bit stuffy on a warm night, but would be 
proof against rodents. I well remember how un¬ 
comfortable I was one night while sleeping in 
a decked canoe. A big rat got into the cockpit 
with me and could not climb out, but that did 
not prevent it from running back and forth over 
me. For a while we were both distressed, then 
I vacated. 
^ ^ 
Another person was not so fortunate in a 
rat episode. He left some provisions in one of 
the compartments of his canoe, and like the 
safe owner—who neglected to leave the door 
open, so that burglars might examine its con¬ 
tents without damaging it—left the deck hatch 
closed. A rat investigated, located the find, and 
gnawed a hole through the planking. 
Still another canoeing yarn. This time the 
owner was poking about a compartment in his 
canoe when his hand touched an object foreign 
to duffle. He pulled it out and found it to be 
an onion with sprouts a foot long. Others fol¬ 
lowed. He then remembered missing the bulbs 
a long while before. They had rolled back to 
the stern, and as the canoe leaked a little, they 
had attained nearly full growth. 
* * Ht 
A correspondent has brought to my notice a para¬ 
graph in one of the Washington papers in which 
is recorded the marriage of Miss Ethel Denver 
Pike and Dr. Spencer Pippen Bass in Leesburg 
on June 2. He asks, “What will the offspring 
be?” As he comes of a family famous for their 
ichthyological knowledge and achievements, he is 
better qualified than I to furnish the answer, 
but judging from the names, the possible off¬ 
spring should be good fishermen for either bass 
or pike. Certainly if the future Basses take to 
fishing naturally there will be those who will be 
ready to affirm that fishermen are born, not 
made. 
* * * 
There are two sides to the question whether 
fishermen are born or made, and the advocates 
of each are equally positive their theory is the 
correct one. Certainly fishermen are born, and 
it is equally certain they are made, for few of 
us equipped ourselves with bent pin, thread and 
osier wand before the trick was shown to us 
by some older brother or boyhood comrade. As 
for the rest, much depends on our early environ¬ 
ment. Some of us began to fish at the age of 
five; others caught their first trout after reach¬ 
ing man’s estate. In either case the theorists 
regard the fact as proof of their side of the 
ancient argument. 
Grizzly King. 
