292 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 19, iQ 10 - 
came the farewell views of Katahdin, around 
which hung great rolls of clouds that gave it 
the appearance of a volcano. Leaving the range 
the scenery became less mountainous, and the 
sameness of paddling was broken by several 
long carries, lugging as much of the camp dun¬ 
nage as could be handled each trip, the guide 
carrying the canoe on his shoulders. The night 
was spent at the Davis camp, a very fine col¬ 
lection of log cabins, and near which starts the 
Abol trail, the favorite route for reaching 
Katahdin. 
The last day of paddling ended early at Am- 
bajejus Lake, where there is another steamboat 
to take the tourist through the series of last 
lakes, including Pemadumcook and' the North 
Twin Lake to Norcross, where the railroad is 
reached. Just before turning into the North 
Twin Lake the traveler gets his final view of 
Katahdin. standing like a pyramid in the hills 
of Maine. As he hears a locomotive whistle the 
city man realizes that with the appearance of 
railroads and pulp mills he is once more into 
man’s civilization, and has left behind Maine’s 
beautiful woods, mountains, lakes and rivers to 
return to the brick walls of the town. 
A Sprig of Pine. 
I bold it fondly in my hand, 
And turn it o’er and o’er, 
And press it to my willing lips, 
My faith and love adore. 
My heart is stirred with memories 
Within this breast of mine, 
’Tis not a maiden’s dainty hand, 
But just a sprig of pine. 
Just a little sprig of pine, 
And such a simple thing, 
Why do I murmur gratefully, 
Why do I lightly sing. 
Enraptured soul, speak out, be true, 
And tell in language fine, 
Of how my heart was wooed and won 
By just a sprig of pine. 
My heart yearned for the perfumed breath 
Of balsam, pine and spruce, 
That sweep a-down the forest aisles, 
Where roams the monarch moose. 
Oh! shall I leave this worry 
And journey o’er the line, 
Into the wilds of Canada 
Whence comes this sprig of pine. 
I waste no time in vain regrets. 
For now my soul grows stronger; 
I leave behind all idle cares, 
And worry now no longer. 
Ah! give me freedom, all I crave, 
The only state that’s fine, 
And strand me in the forest 
Amid the sprigs of pine. 
Robert Page Lincoln. 
Economic Value of Hawks and Owls. 
Okanagan Landing, B. C., Feb. 1.— Editor 
Forest and Stream: In a recent number of 
Forest and Stream Manly Hardy discusses the 
above subject, and while his condemnation of 
such hawks as the sparrow hawk and the buz¬ 
zards ( Buteo ) may be hardly just, still there is 
a great deal of truth in his deductions. 
After thirty years of continuous observation 
in the field, during which time I have had ex¬ 
ceptional opportunities to study practically all 
the northern raptores from golden eagle and gyr- 
falcon down to the smallest species, I am forced 
to the conclusion that the generally accepted idea 
that there are only three or four harmful species 
of hawks is erroneous. 
Take, for instance, the marsh hawk or harrier. 
To properly understand this bird one ought to 
study the stomach contents of birds taken dur¬ 
ing the breeding season. Only about sixteen of 
the 124 records in Fisher’s “Hawks and Owls” 
are of birds killed at that time of the year, say 
from May 1 to Aug. 20. A large portion of the 
food of the marsh hawk at this season consists 
of callow young of various species of birds and 
the eggs of same. It would be very difficult to 
recognize either in the partially digested mass in 
a marsh hawk’s stomach. In Europe the species 
of this genus are looked upon as among the worst 
of game-destroying hawks. 
In this connection I will specify one instance: 
In the foothills about a mile away from my pres¬ 
ent home is a little lakelet that used to be the 
resort of quite a nice little colony of waterfowl. 
For many years I noted the birds that bred on 
or near it, and the average for a year would be 
as follows: Mallards, one pair; Barrow’s gol¬ 
deneye, one pair; Holboll’s grebe, one pair; 
ruddy duck, three pairs; coot, six pairs. 
Three years ago a pair of marsh hawks ap¬ 
peared there very late in the season and nested 
in some scrub bushes about 400 yards from the 
lake. Within three weeks not a single water 
bird remained; even the coots and grebes re¬ 
alized that there was very little chance of rais¬ 
ing a brood—there was very little cover—and so 
they all decamped. Among the rushes I found 
some broken egg shells, but nothing else, and no 
waterfowl have since bred on this lake. 
Last week I watched a female marsh hawk 
making repeated attempts to clutch a prairie 
chicken among dead cat-tails, and what surprised 
me most, it finished up with a most determined 
stoop at three chickens that flushed about one 
hundred yards away. It overtook them easily 
and barely missed clutching one in mid air. 
In regard to the amount of good that the dif¬ 
ferent species of hawks do in keeping in check 
such animals as field mice, I am forced to the 
conclusion it is of a doubtful quality. 
A certain number of enemies to these mam¬ 
mals may keep them just sufficiently in check so 
that the killing off of the weakly and diseased 
ones as soon as they appear keeps the pests in 
a good state of general health and in fair abund¬ 
ance. Remove, this check, and disease soon 
makes a clean sweep, and even with the normal 
amount of enemies, the different species of 
Microtus (voles) seem to. have periodic cycles 
of abundance and scarcity. 
Twice I have seen a clean sweep made by 
disease. In one case the species was Townsend's 
vole (Microtus tomnsendi), which became very 
plentiful in the valley of the lower Fraser about 
1895-96. Hawks did not follow the increase in 
numbers; in fact, both hawks and owls were 
scarcer than usual, yet the following year the 
voles had become almost extinct. 
Again in 1900 a large species of vole (Micro¬ 
tus arvicoloides) had become extraordinarily 
abundant at timber line in the Cascade Moun¬ 
tains. Under twenty feet of snow a perfect net¬ 
work of their runways tunneled through the 
rank herbage in all directions and no enemy, 
save weasels, could molest them. Yet in July, 
when the southern slopes became bare, their dead 
bodies strewed the grass in all directions, and 
every one of their little domed nests of grass 
contained a corpse. 
This timber line country is far better supplied 
with hawks and owls than the lowlands. Swain- 
son’s and Western red-tailed buzzards are both 
common there, while they are as a rule very 
scarce in the valleys. Sparrow hawks or kes¬ 
trels are also numerous, and the marsh hawk is 
common in the fall, but seems to prey mostly 
on the flocks of pipits, horned larks and spar¬ 
rows. 
Among the hawks and owls mainly injurious 
I would class the goshawk, Cooper’s hawk, sharp- 
shinned hawk, marsh hawk, all the falcons (duck 
hawk, pigeon hawk, etc.), except the sparrow 
hawk; golden eagle, great-horned owl, hawk owl 
and I think the pigmy owl. 
Where they get too numerous the bald eagles 
should be shot off, as they are then a menace to 
wildfowl, and in districts where cottontail rab¬ 
bits and the larger squirrels are reckoned as 
game, the redtail does considerable damage. But 
the great enemies to bird life are the crows, 
magpies and red squirrels. The two former are 
the great robbers of all game birds’ eggs and 
young, while the squirrels here in British Colum¬ 
bia destroy fully 70 per cent, of the small birds’ 
nests. Allan Brooks. 
More White Robins. 
Milford, Conn., Feb. 14 .— Editor Forest and 
Siream: About ten years ago on the farm of 
E. G. Mills, Gulf street, from six to a dozen 
white robins were seen. They nested near his 
barn and raised their young for two years and 
then suddenly disappeared. They were quite 
tame and were commonly seen flying from tree 
to tree by those who passed by. F. S. D. 
