Junk i, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
857 
the war until now. The Michigan man, although 
broken in health, was looking forward to an old 
time hunt after partridges and squirrels that he 
and his friend intended to take in a few days. 
As we were chatting along a benevolent look¬ 
ing gentleman alone in a buggy drove up behind 
us and kindly offered to give the lady a lift to 
the village, and she remembering the long walk 
back thankfully accepted and we three trudged 
on. 1 was very much interested in the talk of 
these men bearing as it did on those days of 
forty years ago, when the now lovely drive down 
the east side of Hemlock was only a rough trail 
or bridle path, where one could steal down and 
shoot a bag full of grouse in half a day, when 
the lake was alive with fish and an occasional 
deer parted the underbrush and stepped into the 
shallows to drink. Coming to a place where a 
little gully left the hill at our left, suddenly a 
grouse sailed out followed by an excited little 
black dog. The bird, seeing us, turned abruptly 
to the left and dropped down beside a small 
cabin next the road. There were three or four 
men in the yard and my farmer friend, calling 
to them and explaining the situation, one rushed 
into the house and brought out his gun and see¬ 
ing the bird cowering down against the under¬ 
pinning, potted it at six yards. It was a young 
and foolish bird as I found by examining it, one 
of a late brood with very little flesh on it. 
A half mile from town I parted with my 
friends and hurrying in found my wife waiting 
for me at the store. To buy a few chops and 
other necessities took but a little time and we 
were soon on the back track. The cushions of 
our boat seemed very restful as we pulled away 
for home which we reached at 2 P. M. 
H. W. D. L. 
Mother Quail and Pointer Dog. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In your issue of April 20 you allude to the 
“oratorical. flight of Mr. Delmas,” in the Thaw 
trial, quoting his anecdote of the mother quail 
and pointer dog. 
Your allusion to the subject conveys to the 
reader (who may or may not be a sportsman) 
a rather vague impression as to whether Forest 
and Stream questions or indorses Mr. Delmas’ 
eulogy of the brave little bird. 
That the oratorical flight of Mr. Delmas is 
true to nature, so far as the bird is concerned, 
I desire to say that upon two occasions I have 
seen a California quail stop a dog in the road 
and drive him away from her brood. In both 
cases the dog seemed first surprised, next he 
appeared puzzled, and with the persistent attacks 
of the fluttering bunch of fury in feathers he 
“turned tail” and withdrew with considerable 
interest. Charles L. Paige. 
The Old Guard. 
Charlestown, N. H., May 20.— Editor Forest 
and Stream.: I answer “Here” to the call from 
an old correspondent, for recognition of the 
members of the Old Guard, or in other words 
those who have written occasionally for Forest 
and Stream for twenty-five years or more. 
I cannot claim to have “begun at the begin¬ 
ning,” but my correspondence commenced nearly 
thirty years ago, or soon after the meeting of 
fish and game commissioners at the Centennial 
Exhibition in 1876. 
Forest and Stream, as has been well stated 
in your editorial, has been the origin of many 
most delightful and much prized friendships, and 
I can claim among them those of men whom I 
never saw, though I have known them through 
your columns or through following correspond¬ 
ence like Rowland Robinson, A. N. Cheney, Ness- 
muk and Alex. Starbuck. Fred Mather and Robt. 
B. Roosevelt I met at the Centennial, as my 
memory serves me, and there are many more 
whose names and personalities seem familiar to 
me, though they have never come within range 
of my vision, and some of. them never will in 
this life. Didymus, Wells, Podgers, Piseco, O. 
O. Smith, H. P. Ufford, G. de Montaubau, King¬ 
fisher, have all crossed “the long divide” and 
Kelpie and Shoshone are seldom heard from. 
I have been silent myself, for a long time, for 
want of experiences to relate, for “three score 
years and ten” of tramping along trout streams 
and over rocky hillsides have enfeebled my loco¬ 
motive powers, so that I am content to sit in 
my easy chair and read of the exploits of younger 
members of the fraternity of anglers and gun¬ 
ners, watch for the weekly instalment of their 
adventures in Forest and Stream, and recall 
the many happy hours and long days I have spent 
by rippling waters, on quiet lakes, in the forest 
shades, or on sunny hillsides, where the fall 
flight of woodcock were resting in their southern 
migrations. 
Of the generation of sportsmen with whom I 
began to fish and shoot 1 am practically the sole 
survivor, and many of the next one have also 
passed away, yet “the spirit is willing if the flesh 
is weak,” and I enjoy the mental companion¬ 
ship of my old friends as fully as ever, and wish 
them all good success in their outings. 
We are to have an open season for deer in 
New Hampshire from the 1st to the 15th of 
December. There is no question but that they 
have increased rapidly. One of my farmer 
friends, three miles from the village, reports 
often seeing a head of ten or twelve in his clover 
lot. Von W. 
Hunting in the Yazoo Delta. 
Rolling Fork, Miss., May 4.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: As I had planned a hunt in the 
great Mississippi Yazoo Delta a few miles north 
of the scene of President Roosevelt’s bear hunt 
of a few years ago, I decided to look the ground 
over for game signs before my hunting com¬ 
panion arrived. Early on a Monday morning, 
therefore, I saddled my horse, looked over my 
hunting kit, selecting loads of No. 7 chilled shot, 
Nos. 3 and r buckshot, and .30-30 rifle cartridges 
for my combination shotgun and rifle, mounted 
and hit the trail for Little Sunflower River and 
Barge Lake, so named because of its being used 
to store baled cotton in barges during the Civil 
War, it being considered a safe place and almost 
inaccessible, and so it proved, the cotton being 
sold after the war, and the old barges, worthless 
from age, allowed to decay in and near the lake. 
As day began to break the call of the hoot 
owl could be heard in all directions from the 
different lakes and Big and Little Howlett 
Bayous. Birds of many kinds were calling and 
flitting here and there. Mallards, squirrels, 
black, red and gray, could be seen in all direc¬ 
tions. Wild turkeys, deer and bear I knew to 
be around, with a few panther. After securely 
tying my horse, gun in hand I slipped up to the 
bank of the lake, crossing a low damp spot in 
which could be plainly seen among the cypress 
knees the fresh signs of bear, deer and turkey. 
Sitting with my back against a giant cypress 
on the bank of the lake, I took my field glass 
and carefully looked the scene over. Feeding 
in fancied security after their long journey 
south, were perhaps one hundred or more big 
mallards in small parties over the lake, all mak¬ 
ing lots of noise, feeding, playing and seemingly 
as care free as a lot of school children in a romp. 
In the timber on the north end of the lake were 
a small gang of turkeys, and walking majesti¬ 
cally on the east bank of the lake and headed 
directly for my place of concealment was a big 
eight point buck. Knowing the wind was right, 
and thinking myself alone in the big woods, I 
carefully noted his every move and the leisurely 
way he picked up acorns. He was following 
a trail that would bring him within fifty yards 
of where I sat—a sight to make glad a hunter’s 
heart, and already in anticipation I could see 
the startled look as he would stop and throw up 
his head when he would hear the shrill whistle 
that would cause him to- stop. He had come 
within sixty yards when, with my eye sighting 
along the barrel and my finger on the trigger, I 
waited for the next few steps to bring him out 
of the buck vines into the open, when suddenly 
the boom of a heavy charge of black powder 
broke upon the still frosty air. The buck sprang 
as only a startled deer can and was out of sight 
in tall timber before I could draw a bead. He 
ran through and flushed the flock O'f turkeys-— 
ducks, turkeys and deer were all gone in an in¬ 
stant. 
I then noted what had escaped my attention 
before. A smoke several hundred yards away 
and a negro squirrel hunter who shot for the 
market, not more than thirty yards from where 
the buck stood when'he fired, picking up a squir¬ 
rel killed by his shot. In deep disgust I walked 
over in the direction which the turkeys took, 
waited perhaps thirty minutes, and gave the low 
call and cluck of the hen and was almost in¬ 
stantly answered by a young gobbler that came 
straight for the call. I saw a brown body in the 
frosted undergrowth and I waited for the object 
to get clearly into view when what should I see 
but my same squirrel shooter crawling in be¬ 
tween, as he supposed, two- turkeys, and scaring 
the gobbler away. I cautioned him not again to 
interfere and to stay north of the bayou, then 
went south and saw several deer and fresh bear 
signs, but did not get a shot, but about one-half 
mile south of Long Lake I found a nice bunch 
of mallard ducks and got ten, using No. 7 
chilled shot, and sixteen squirrels on my way 
back to my house. I could have made it fifty 
had I wanted to. 
On Wednesday my friend and I went into 
the woods, killing a fine buck and doe; Thurs¬ 
day, two nice wild turkeys, and Friday morning 
a fine buck, when Arch Walker, one of the noted 
Walker brothers, left for old Kentucky and so 
the hunt closed. R. E. Stratton. 
Timber Tests. 
Extensive tests to determine the strength of 
the commercial timbers of the United States are 
being made by the Forest Service. Such in¬ 
formation is of great value to architects and en¬ 
gineers in that it enables them to use more 
economically the products of the forest. The 
tests are made on large beams. The material is 
generally tested while green, since timber is 
weakest in the green condition. The strength of 
a beam is indicated by the greatest fibre stress 
developed during the test. Technically speak¬ 
ing, this breaking strength is termed the modulus 
of rupture. By using it the load that any beam 
will carry can be calculated. In the table below 
the first column gives the green breaking strength 
of our principal commercial timbers. The second 
column gives the greatest load that a timber 5 
inches wide and 12 inches high, with 15 feet be¬ 
tween the supports, would hold if the load were 
concentrated midway between the supports. 
. Breaking 
load concentrated 
Breaking midway between 
strength support, for a 
in bending. beam 5"xl2"xl5'. 
Species. Pounds per sq. in. Pounds. 
Longleaf pine . 7,772 20,700 
Douglas fir . 7,500 20,000 
Western hemlock . 5,783 15,400 
Loblolly pint’ . 5,5S0 14,900 
Tamarack . 4,502 12,300 
Norway pine . 3,975 10,600 
If instead of being concentrated at one point 
the load were uniformly distributed over the en¬ 
tire length of the beam the beam would hold 
twice as much. In order to insure safety, in 
practice beams are seldom allowed to carry more 
than one-sixth of their breaking loads. 
Legislation at Albany. 
The Knapp concurrent resolution, which passed 
the Senate, was killed in the Assembly May 22. 
It provided that the State could sell land outside 
the Adirondack and Catskill parks, but inside the 
forest preserves. In short, another effort of the 
lumber and power interests to grab more lands. 
Assembly bill 2783, by Mr. Cobb, provides for 
a close season in certain counties for plover and 
other birds. It is in committee. 
Senate bill 976, by Mr. Agnew, relating to the" 
closed season for fish, is up for third reading. 
Assembly bill 1643, by Mr. G. H. Whitney, re¬ 
lating to a close season for deer in certain coun¬ 
ties until 1912; third reading. 
All the game lazvs of the United States and 
Canada, revised to date and now in force, are 
given in the Game Laws in Brief. See adv. 
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