208 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. g, 1907. 
THE TOP RAIL. 
Of all the strange and mysterious things in 
nature, none is quite so thoroughly fascinating 
as the tides, at least in my humble opinion. We 
who fish now and then in salt water or haunt the 
seashore, never tire of watching the tidal cur¬ 
rents as the water rises and falls, as regular as 
clock work. If the tide is high to-day at noon, 
we know that six days hence at about the same 
hour it will be low, and high again in a fort¬ 
night, but the charming uncertainty of how high 
or how low the water will go, all dependent on 
storms, the moon’s phases, etc., keep one guess¬ 
ing. Hence the matter is always one of interest. 
In inlets and estuaries, however, local conditions 
affect the regularity of ebb and flow at times, and 
it is of one of these I mean to tell. It happened 
in a rather small inlet from a bay. Several per¬ 
sons were camped there and all were prepar¬ 
ing dinner. The tide had been coming in 
strongly, was nearly up to normal high-water 
mark, and as usual I was watching it closely to 
time its highest point. Off the camps some large, 
smooth stones lay, and all of these had been 
covered but one, about six inches of whose top 
shone white and clean above the water. Later 
I noticed that the water had begun to fall, as 
indicated by a wet mark an inch in width be¬ 
tween the white top of the stone and the water. 
Noting the time, I turned to the dinner in course 
of preparation, and did not look toward the 
stone for several minutes, but when I did, the 
wet mark had increased materially in width. 
Then I sat down to dinner and watched the 
water mark widen slowly and other stones ap¬ 
pear above the surface. With pipe lighted, I 
surveyed the scene calmly for awhile, then cleared 
up the camp ware and took a seat beneath a 
sycamore tree at the water’s edge. Suddenly it 
dawned on me that the water was rising, and 
looking out, no stones were visible. I had to 
shake myself to be sure I was awake, but others 
in the party had noticed the strange thing and 
were commenting on it. Altogether the water 
rose nearly a foot, not at once, but gradually, 
and then it receded more rapidly than usual. 
We have never been able to account for this 
phenomenon, as the only plausible one (heavy 
wind) was out of the question, the day being 
almost calm. 
The following testimony to the queer antics of 
the ruffed grouse is contributed by a correspon¬ 
dent in Springfield, Mass.: 
‘’While hunting ruffed grouse the last week of 
the season in western Massachusetts, I flushed 
a bird at the bottom of a steep hillside covered 
with small spruce and hemlock. The bird flew 
up the hill, and as is usually the case under 
such conditions, flew low, probably not more 
than three or four feet above the ground. At 
a range of about thirty yards I fired, and the 
first of the (to me) unusual events took place; 
namely, the bird came promptly to earth. As 
I was leisurely loading, while watching the 
gyrations of the partridge (subsequent examina¬ 
tion showed the bird was hit only in the head, 
and she acted like a hen with her head cut 
off) I chanced to look up the hill about fifteen 
feet, and noticed feathers strewn along the 
ground from under a low growing hemlock. 
Upon parting the branches I found another par¬ 
tridge still feebly fluttering. Two at one* shot, 
one flying and shot at, one sitting, and not seen 
until going to pick up the first bird. This 
seemed all the more strange to me as I saw 
but three others in the entire afternoon during 
a tramp of four or five miles through the best 
of cover.” 
Mr. John P. Lower, the veteran sportsman of 
Colorado, has sent me the following clipping 
from one of the Denver papers: 
“While Captain C. V. Noble, of Debeque, was 
participating in the annual shoot of the Denver 
Rifle Club on New Year’s day, the coyotes came 
over from the mountains and broke into his 
hennery, eating up 45 of his fancy chickens and yes¬ 
terday he received a letter from his wife in which 
she told him that he had better be at home shoot¬ 
ing coyotes than in Denver shooting at a bulls- 
eye. Although Captain Noble had expected to 
remain in the city for several days, he imme¬ 
diately packed his knapsack, and took the first 
train home, hoping that he might arrive in time 
to save the feathers. If his hens are not classed 
among the entries at the poultry show soon to 
be held here, his Denver friends will know the 
reason why.” 
Fifteen years ago the vicinity of the Denver 
rifle range was fair coyote ground. I have fired 
at the targets and at coyotes on the same day 
from the club’s old shooting house in winter, 
varying the programme in summer by shooting 
prairie dogs, which lived in a town within a 
stone’s throw of the mid-range targets. And 
one day just as some one was firing on the 200- 
yard range, Baron von Crater, the marker, tossed 
a cottontail out of the pit and the bullet, ar¬ 
riving at the same time, seemed, to those look¬ 
ing on, to have killed the rabbit; but it did not, 
as bunny proved by annihilating space in rapid 
fashion. Another time one of the markers found 
a rattlesnake lying on a timber just over his 
head in the pit, apparently fascinated with the 
peculiar sound made by the bullets as they popped 
through the paper targets and sang each a dif¬ 
ferent tune on its way up the slope and into 
Table Mountain, the natural backstop. 
For sale advertisements in the daily papers, if 
they have to do with articles with which printers 
are not familiar, contain many laughable blun¬ 
ders. One in which the advertiser seeks to dis¬ 
pose of a camera through exchange for either one 
of two types he endeavors to describe contains 
the following: 
“Will exchange for four by five rifle or four 
by five grafle with high grade lens.” 
In his description the printer makes him say 
that a “tripod ray-filter,” which is a part of the 
outfit, is "fitted with a double anastigmat lens.” 
* 
The champion bear story of the winter has 
been sent the New York Times by its corres¬ 
pondent at Afton, Va. He says a Mr. Ingra¬ 
ham of that town, on going away from home one 
day, agreed to meet his wife at a certain fence 
that evening, and go with her to a neighbor’s 
house, where a dance was to be held. It was 
dark when the wife arrived at the fence, but 
seeing her husband waiting on the other side, 
as she supposed, lifted their little child over to 
him and then climbed oyer the fence herself. 
But the form she mistook for her husband dis¬ 
appeared with the child. Her screams brought 
her husband and other persons, and bear tracks 
were found leading from the fence into the hills, 
but no bear or baby. The correspondent says 
the cold weather has been driving wild animals 
to the villages, but leaves to the imagination of 
his readers the fact that news was as scarce as 
food. 
Some one who claimed that squirrels fre¬ 
quently lose their tails in fights has inspired the 
following notes, written by G. W. Cunningham, 
of Portland, Ind., a gentleman who was taught 
to shoot squirrels in the old-time way—in the 
head. He says: 
“Twenty-five years ago when squirrels were 
plentiful in this section and I hunted whenever 
I could spare the time, I made many a chance 
shot at a gray squirrel away up in the topmost 
branches of some tall tree, and a gray tail came 
sailing earthward while its erstwhile owner 
hugged his hiding place all the closer. It is 
seldom I go out for squirrels now; but two 
years ago I took my little boy and my .38 
caliber rifle, drove out four miles, tied the horse 
and entered a woods where there was yet some 
shelter for squirrels. I had three fine young 
fox squirrels (all but their heads) and a fourth 
one was hidden in an old hollow oak that stood 
about fifteen feet from another oak. I stepped 
between the trees to get a view of the squirrel’s 
probable hiding place, when it became fright¬ 
ened, ran out on a projecting limb and made a 
jump for the other oak. I took a snap-shot at 
it as it went over my head about fifty feet from 
the ground and clipped its tail off close to its 
body. The tail lit at my feet, but the squirrel 
hid among the branches, or in a hole, and 
possibly ere this some more fortunate hunter 
killed a squirrel with no tail.” 
To persons accustomed to tramping in the 
woods at all seasons the pussy willow is per¬ 
haps the first thing to indicate that the winter is 
passing. Generally the first of these are to be 
seen in the hands of persons returning to town 
from excursions into the country about the 
middle of February or even earlier. This year a 
friend of mine, who had been abroad every Sun¬ 
day, gathered a bunch of pussy willows on Jan. 
17, and judging from their size, the buds were 
probably quite large the first week in that month. 
This is the earliest I have ever seen pussy wil¬ 
lows in the vicinity of New York city; and by 
this I do not mean merely the half-starting buds 
that are seen late in the fall, but the full size 
ones. Placed in water in the house, a bunch of 
pussy willows exhales the fragrance of the woods 
and reminds one that the trout fishing season is 
but a few short weeks in the future. 
* 
If any of your friends asks you, “Have you 
had an attack of fever yet?” don’t think of sick 
rooms and hospitals, but of trout rods and days 
along willow-fringed brooks. This fever is likely 
to attack you while you are looking at the 
pictures you made in other years, while passing 
a fishing tackle shop, or in talking with friends. 
It may be incurable, but at least will not leave 
you until in April. Grizzly King. 
