>CT. 16, 1909] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
Oil 
vas hat descended and I had one pinned to 
ground. 
V'hat a change! Lifting the corner of the 
and getting him by the back of the neck I 
;d up the maddest and wickedest looking 
e of animal life I had ever seen and dropped 
into my creel, covering the hole with the 
The others fled back to the wall, but im- 
liately returned and made such a war-like 
lonstration that I thought for a moment they 
ild really attack my legs, some standing like 
nated sausages, upright on their hind feet 
squeaking viciously. 
11 thought of the big trout was gone and 
an hour later I was back at the house mak- 
a cage for my now bloodthirsty looking little 
nd. Upon entering the cage he attacked the 
; screen with all his might, and from his ac- 
s I know he would have eaten alive the St. 
nard that stood watching the performance 
occasionally sniffing at the cage. He was 
ig and thin, but a few days’ feeding made 
fferent beast of him. 
1 a week I could put my hand in the cage 
fondle him like a kitten and he would curl 
ind use his feet exactly like one at play. He 
Id actually take my finger in his mouth and 
gently in the most playful way, being care- 
nob to hurt me. 
t the end of the two weeks I thought him 
2 enough to take from the cage, and after 
ing him one day and fondling him for a 
minutes I lifted him carefully out and held 
in my hand against my breast. Almost im- 
iately there came a change, the little eye 
.n to blaze and the little body stiffened in 
grasp, then he made for my shoulder, and 
tried to restrain him, like a flash the sharp 
1 sank first into my finger and then into the 
of my hand as he curled around. 
did not let go, however, but grasping him 
he neck with my other hand, squeezed until 
et go to squeal, when I dropped him back 
his cage. 
lat was the end. No one could put a finger 
ae cage after that, and though I tried for 
2 time to win back his good opinion of me, 
d to give it up as hopeless. 
jiere was nothing wildly exciting about this 
I episode, and the most vivid and lurid thing 
•lation to it was the smell of my creel after 
weasel was removed, but it was interesting 
perhaps unique, for I have never heard of 
easel being taken alive with one’s hands 
re. 
other anglers, we should go a-fishing for 
lealthful recreation to be derived from the 
, for the upbuilding of tired brain and 
, not solely to catch fish. Let not our eager 
isiasm blind us to one of its chief charms. 
' on e eye on the bank. 
Edward Baldwin Rice. 
A New Fossil Man. 
IE daily papers report the discovery of a 
1 human skeleton at Ferrassie, Depart- 
of Dordogne, in deposits said to be of 
r middle Post Tertiary age, and dating 
at least twenty thousand years. A simi- 
liscovery was made in France about a 
ago, and was noticed at the time in 
ST AND Stream. Details of these finds 
lf >t yet accessible. 
Winter Butchery of Robins. 
Salem, N. Y., Oct. 9. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: I am inclosing you a copy of a letter 
from a friend of mine who had occasion to be 
a good deal in the South, together with the 
newspaper clipping he speaks of. The two may 
be of some use with the work of stopping the 
wanton destruction of game and song birds. 
Mud Hole. 
The letter says: 
In New Orleans last winter I cut the in¬ 
closed from some paper. It tells it own story. 
Some years ago I was in Mobile, and went 
with the city engineer twenty miles into the 
country to look at a water supply. All during 
the day I heard guns in every direction. Re¬ 
turning in the evening, we took the trolley from 
a point several miles out and the car was 
loaded with negroes, every man jack of whom 
had a cheap single-barrel shotgun and a string 
of robins—from ten to a hundred each. Every 
negro in the South has a gun and shoots robins 
all winter. 
During the last two years so many instances 
of the awful destruction of game and song 
birds in the South have been brought to my at¬ 
tention, that I have seriously thought of trying 
to collect statistics and making it a hobby to 
get the game and bird associations of the North 
and South together. Some one ought to do it. 
There are game laws in the South, but they 
are not properly framed, nor is there any proper 
effort to enforce them, save in a very few in¬ 
stances members of a “sportsman’s club” of 
Birmingham, Ala., were arrested and fined this 
winter in Louisiana; but it was shown they had 
slaughtered over five hundred ducks each. Does 
not this read like the slaughter of the first 
born by that king chap who went for the Jews? 
The newspaper cutting follows: 
“Laurel, Miss., March 10.— Picking birds off 
the bushes with the fingers and knocking them 
over with a stick forms the nocturnal diversion 
of the farmer youth of this country just now, 
and the sport is so fascinating that town people 
are going out in parties to indulge in it. 
“The birds that are sought are robins, which 
this year are unusually plentiful, flying in such 
dense masses that it is not unusual to bring 
down a score of them in one shot. The catches 
that have been made by some of the hunting 
parties are of incredible size. One night re¬ 
cently, in a reed brake six miles east of this 
city a hunting party divided into several squads 
and when they met again in the morning it was 
found that their aggregate catch amounted to 
over 6,000 birds. One squad alone bagged 1,600 
of them, and this is the 1 record catch, so far as 
heard from, for the season. 
“The birds perch in myriads in the reed 
brakes, where they sleep over night. The perch 
is low and the hunters, who go equipped with a 
sack thrown over the shoulder, are able to 
pick them off with both hands. The birds es¬ 
pecially take to the holly bushes, and some 
times they are found so thick on the branches 
that they can be stripped off like picking cur¬ 
rants from a bush. 
“The skulls of the birds are very thin, and a 
slight pressure thereon with the thumb suffices 
to extinguish life instantly and painlessly. 
Practiced hunters become quite expert at this 
style of execution. 
“The robin is a harmless bird in this part 
of the country, for it is here only in the winter, 
returning North with the first signs of spring. 
They are regarded as great delicacies in the 
way of food, the flesh having a savor of quail.” 
Black Ducks in Central Park. 
New York, Oct. 9.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: A few weeks ago your paper con¬ 
tained a short article which told of wild ducks 
breeding on one of the ponds of Central Park. 
Having noticed there a wild black duck with 
her young, and later in the same season, to¬ 
gether with these, some very much younger 
ducks of the same species, your correspondent 
concludes that both broods were hatched by 
the same mother. 
I am surprised that no one has come for¬ 
ward to challenge this view. For a number of 
years, I have followed the breeding of wild 
ducks in captivity with absorbing interest. I 
have watched many ducks of several different 
species in their attempts—mostly unsuccessful 
—to rear young, and have also seen a goodly 
number of such ducklings develop into full- 
grown birds. My attention is always held by 
the watchful care of the mother duck, which 
shows itself not only in warning her young 
of danger, but in various other ways, and 
chiefly in seeking food for her offspring. For 
weeks, yes, months, she carries her young 
hither and thither, never weary, ever watch¬ 
ful, ever with them. As a result of my ob¬ 
servations, the statement that such a duck 
could raise a second brood in the same season 
seems glaringly incorrect. That this bird 
would leave her thriving young or even the 
last one of them all, again make a nest, lay 
egg for egg until it is filled, hatch the re¬ 
quired days, and then leave her nest with 
younger children to meet the older ones—alive, 
is a statement which, of that I am absolutely 
sure, can never be made by one who has 
looked into this matter with more than idle 
curiosity. 
The burden of proof lies on your contrib¬ 
utor, and let him harmonize his story with 
the calendar. Nat. Libbers. 
A Fake Bear Story. 
Helena, Mont., Sept. 28. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: A short time ago I sent you a clipping 
from a local paper, giving in some detail an 
account of a bear’s attack on a man named 
Doolittle, near Nyack, in this State. The story 
was circumstantial and was printed in a 
paper usually reliable. Since sending it, I have 
learned that there is no foundation whatever 
for the account, and that no one in the vicinity 
of Nyack knows anything about it. I therefore 
offer my apologies for having misled you, 
though I did it in entire good faith. 
Correspondent. 
[We are informed also by Dr. C. Hart 
Merriam, Chief of the Biological Survey, that 
he sent recently a man in the employ of the 
Survey to Nyack to inquire into the alleged oc¬ 
currence, and that it was found that no man 
named Doolittle was known in the neighbor¬ 
hood, and no one knew anything about the cir¬ 
cumstance.— Editor.] 
