796 
FOREST AND STREAM 
A Virgin White Page for the Wild Folk to Write Upon. 
tance; the shriek of the blue-jay; and the tap¬ 
tapping of the spotted woodpecker, as he sidles 
up a rotten stub. On the next page, is seen 
where the farmer has bridged a small run with 
planks. Also a tile drain comes out near, water 
running merrily from the red tunnel. About is 
the deep snow; but close to the run is figure 
after figure showing the wild folk have found a 
non-freezing fountain, and have taken advantage 
of it. Rabbits have tramped the place like a lot 
of sheep in a barn yard. Crows have stalked 
about, dragging their claws, and making minia¬ 
ture troughs in the snow with their tails. In 
places their breasts have hollowed the white, and 
then come the cuts in the virgin covering, show¬ 
ing that wings have been resorted to, since Jim 
hates to get in “over his boot tops.” A fox 
squirrel has signed the trail book here, with his 
four dot manual and has gone back to the nest 
in a big hollow walnut, after washing his face 
and paws, and drinking his fill. 
A small flock of turtle doves, wintering where 
the stock is being fed, whistle down to slake 
their thirst, and then dart away, fearful of the 
C OLONEL ROOSEVELT in the current 
Scribner’s, tells us about that Quebec 
moose hunt and his unusual experience 
with a big bull which persisted in charging him, 
and which had to be shot in self protection. A 
mighty good hunting story it is, too, with the 
added reflections and observations of an accom¬ 
plished field naturalist. The writer happened 
to be in Northern Quebec himself at the time 
of the Colonel’s encounter, and the news of it 
soon reached us, via the grape vine telegraph 
that transmits news in the wilderness. I believe 
that every Indian in Quebec knew of the cir¬ 
cumstances before the story leaked through to 
civilization. Dave Howe was out with me— 
Dave, a mighty moose hunter of Maine, who has 
been in at the death of a hundred or more of 
these animals, but who, now transplanted, is act¬ 
ing as the warden for the Bras Coupe Fish and 
Game Club. “How about it, Dave?” I asked 
watching man. That explains some unfamiliar 
foot-prints about the laughing water. 
Another page shows a regular rabbit highway; 
a beaten path going toward a definite goal. There 
is nothing in this highway that shows the rather 
erratic movements of Bre’r Rabbit when he is 
just “Projectin’ around.” The tracks prove that 
there is some business mighty urgent, somewhere 
at the end of that trail. Following, one sees an 
old hay-bailer; in it is the last bale of alfalfa 
the farmer did not think to remove. The track 
ends here, and beneath the hay, the little busy 
feet have trodden the snow into icy hardness, 
and the bale has a great semi-circular hollow 
gnawed into it. Poor little cotton-tails; they 
have had to stand on their hind legs to feed. 
Some of them have jumped for mouthfulls! 
Then, branching from the main line, the furry 
little scamps have written “good-bye” as they 
hopped away to holes under the hay stacks, or 
snug retreats beneath the friendly barns. 
A small, dark object, rapidly moving over the 
snow from the cover of a fodder shock proves 
to be a mouse, writing his short letter in the 
when the narrative had been told us. Dave 
thought a moment, then visibly and perceptibly 
reduced the supply of choice plug which a de¬ 
parting affluent fellow club member had be¬ 
stowed on him, and replied, “It may happen— 
once in a life time. I had the same experience 
and wrote it up for Forest and Stream a couple 
of years ago.” When I returned to New York 
I went through the files and sure enough he 
had, in the issue of February 21, 1914. 
Dave’s theory is that an unwounded moose 
which will charge a man is crazy—“plum bug,” 
as he expressed it, or locoed, as they say on the 
plains. But the loco weed is not indigenous to 
Quebec, unless we put the habitant’s home grown 
tobacco in such botanical classification. 
The moose has always impressed people by 
reason of his bulk, if nothing more. Away back 
in seventeen sixty something the Duke of Rich¬ 
mond imported several moose to England in the 
snow. A swoop, a squeal, and a sparrow hawk, 
that has been hovering above, sails away, his 
warm victim clutched close to the feathered stom¬ 
ach of the captor. Still another tragedy! 
A gray mass slowly turning and drifting, 
proves to be a bundle of tumble weed on the 
march, and looking across the field one sees the 
beautiful traceries of the weeds against the 
white. 
Along the brook, the ice has been deftly mould¬ 
ed by Jack Frost. Of one foot log, he has 
fashioned a giant’s comb, by means of pendant 
icicles. Jack’s borders of lace and filigree are 
superb! 
And now, fat pointer Queen comes galloping, 
quartering a field covered with low blackberry 
bushes. The wind has swept most of the snow 
away, but in a grass clump, hide six Bob Whites. 
See, the pointer has winded them; she slides 
into an awkward “set.” The man approaches, 
stirs the grass with his foot, and follows, a roar 
and six little chaps burst from cover and dart 
to safety in the far away tangle. 
The book is closed. 
hope of perpetuating the species in the British 
Isles. Gilbert White, in his Natural History of 
Selborne records having examined the dead body 
of one of these specimens, and among other 
things writes : “What a vast tall beast must a 
full grown stag be! I have been told some ar¬ 
rive at ten feet and a half.” And if you happen 
suddenly to see one towering over you while you 
are seated on the leaky bottom of a bark canoe 
some dark afternoon of a Quebec fall day, you 
are apt to agree with the estimate of the good 
Vicar of Selborne. - 
The catalogue of a Fifth Avenue book dealer 
just out contains an interesting item in the form 
of the first edition of the first English sporting 
work, printed in i486. It is known as the “Book 
of Saint Albans—The Bokys of Haukyng and 
Huntyng with other plesuris dyverse as in the 
Boke Apperis and also of Cootarmuris, a Nobull 
Werke,” and described as the first edition of the 
rarest and most interesting book in the English 
language, and the first of the very long line to 
English sporting works. It is also the first 
printed English Armorial, and the first printed 
(Continued on page 799.) 
A Few Shots at Random 
By an Occasional Contributor. 
