212 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. ii, 1911. 
not in the habit of immersing its entire body, 
yet he has occasionally seen one or two birds 
in a squad of four or five plunge and remain 
so long beneath the surface that this had be¬ 
come smooth before they emerged. “This is 
frequently done by one individual while the 
others by its side are engaged in picking from 
the surface.” 
John Bartram, in a letter to Alexander Wil¬ 
son, says, “It swims remarkably well, and when 
wounded will dive like a duck. They are lo¬ 
quacious and noisy, talking to one another 
night and day, and constantly on the water, the 
broad lobated membranes on their toes en¬ 
abling them to swim and dive like ducks.” Wil¬ 
son further says that “Buffon describes the 
mode of shooting coots in France, particularly 
in Lorraine, on the great pools of Tiancourt 
and of Indre; hence we are led to suppose that 
they are esteemed as an article of food. But 
with us who are enabled by the abundance and 
variety of game to indulge in greater luxuries 
in that season when our coots visit us, they 
are considered as of no account, and are sel¬ 
dom eaten.” 
Dr. Cones says, “I do not recollect when, if 
ever, I have seen coots fly up into the air and 
away. * * * As an article of food they may 
take fair rank, though they are considered on 
the whole as inferior to most ducks.” He says 
nothing about their food or their diving. 
Maynard says, “They not only swim and dive 
well, but make their way through the grass 
with ease and swiftness.” Wheaton says, “It 
is more aquatic in its habits than the others of 
its family, being better adapted for swimming 
and diving than for locomotion on land. They 
are considered a nuisance by sportsmen and a 
fraud by amateurs, who sometimes mistake 
them for ducks.” 
Nuttall says, “They are nocturnal in their 
habits, the old birds being rarely seen by day. 
* * * With us they are very taciturn, 
though tame, and appear to have no voice but 
for the exciting period of the nuptial season. 
* * * They swim and dive with the utmost 
facility. * * * They are habitual divers. 
* * * They do not appear to dive with the 
same promptness as the European species.” 
Some of these statements are entirely at vari¬ 
ance with my observations. 
At Lake Maxinkuckee the coot is as thor¬ 
oughly a water bird as any species of duck. I 
never saw them walking on shore as mentioned 
by Cooper, but observed that they might be 
found in any and all parts of the lake, though 
they were more apt to occur in large numbers 
nearer shore than most other species. I think 
the helldivers and horned grebes came, as a rule, 
somewhat nearer shore than the coots; and 
small flocks of butterballs and whistlers and 
solitary ruddy ducks were also disposed to stay 
quite near shore. Bluebills (both large and 
small) were usually a little further from shore 
than the coots, while the redheads, mallards 
and canvasbacks were still further out. How¬ 
ever, it often happened that nearly or quite all 
of these species would be mixed together in a 
single flock, the coots and bluebills constituting 
the shore side of the miscellaneous group. 
When the coots first arrived in numbers in 
the fall, they were not wild and came nearer 
shore than they did later, after they had been 
hunted. One of their favorite feeding grounds 
was in front of my cottage, where, if not dis¬ 
turbed, they remained day and night; and as 
we were careful to disturb them as little as 
possible, they were usually there in considerable 
numbers until that part of the lake froze o\er, 
which occurred about the middle of December. 
They never left except when disturbed by some 
one, or when that part of the lake was made 
rough by winds, when they would fly to some 
protected corner of the lake. 
The depth of the water in this locality varied 
from four to twenty-five feet, and the bottom 
everywhere was well covered with various 
species of Potamogeton, Myriophyllum, Toly fella, 
V allisncria, and perhaps others. The Chara and 
Nitella grew in the more shallow water, and 
Tolyfella in the deepest, while the tape grass 
or wild celery (Vallisneria spiralis) grew at all 
depths from four up to twenty-two feet. 
Barton Warren Evermann. 
[to be concluded.] 
Curled Tooth. 
In “Gnawed Horns,” published in Forest 
and Stream, Sept. 24, mention is made of the 
curious deformity occasioned by the accidental 
loss of an incisor tooth in gnawing animals 
WOODCHUCK WITH CURLED TOOTH. 
Photograph by E. E. Tolies. 
when “the opposing tooth, not receiving any 
wear, and not being worn down, keeps on 
growing, curls about within the mouth, and 
perhaps penetrates the flesh or skull of the 
owner.” This is not a reproduction of a de¬ 
generate Machairodus, but the photograph of 
a woodchuck’s head, showing a fine specimen 
of curled tooth. The head has reposed among 
my curios for several years, and I was unable 
to account for the deformity until I read your 
article. Will W. Christman. 
American Conservation. 
The new illustrated monthly magazine of the 
National Conservation Association, whose edi¬ 
torial policy will be conducted by Gifford Pin- 
chot, president of the association, will make its 
first appearance next week. The first number 
will give special attention to the natural re¬ 
sources of Alaska. The A’askan article is by 
James Wickersham, delegate in Congress from 
Alaska, who writes of “Alaska, a Land of Op¬ 
portunity.” The article will be illustrated by 
many Alaskan pictures never printed before. 
Robert G. Valentine, Commissioner of Indian 
Affairs, discusses the Indian from an entirely 
new viewpoint. Accompanying Mr. Valentine’s 
article will appear for the first time in any maga¬ 
zine some of the celebrated Indian pictures by 
Throssel, the half-breed Indian artist. 
Dr. Joseph A. Holmes, director of the new 
National Bureau of Mines, tells of how his 
squads of life savers and “mine divers” rescue 
men in underground disasters, and of the plans 
to reduce the loss of lives in mines. 
In the “High Cost of Hauling,” Logan W. 
Page, director of the Government Office of Good 
Roads, tells why it costs the farmer more to 
haul a bushel of wheat from his farm to the 
market than it does to transport that bushel of 
wheat from New York to Liverpool. 
The editorials, most of which will be from the 
pen of Mr. Pinchot, will discuss current con¬ 
servation issues. 
Pheasant-Bantam Hybrid. 
In the last number of the American Breeders 
Magazine is described by H. J. Wheeler, of 
Kingston, R. I., a pheasant-bantam hybrid. The 
specimen partakes of the characters of both 
parents, but is of large size, weighing three 
pounds three ounces, while the father weighed 
two pounds ten ounces, and the mother one pound 
fourteen ounces. During the first few weeks of 
its life the hybrid resembled the chicks of the 
ring-necked pheasant, but as it grew older it 
lost some of this resemblance. 
Hybrids in which the pheasant has a part -are 
not very unusual, and in the recently published 
“American Game Bird Shooting” is a figure of 
a hybrid between a pheasant and the dusky 
grouse. Such cross-bred birds have a certain 
interest as curiosities, but nothing more. 
That Long Island Flamingo. 
Floral Park, N. Y., Feb. 3. —Editor Forest 
and Stream: I notice in this week’s issue of 
Forest and Stream an item entitled, “Flamingo 
on Long Island.” I have to say that about the 
middle of November a young man at Centre- 
port, on the Long Island Sound, caught alive 
a flamingo which had flown against a telephone 
wire and fallen exhausted in the snow. He kept 
the bird alive for about three weeks in a cage, 
when it died. The skin is now in my posses¬ 
sion. It was a young male, just beginning to 
develop color. John Lewis Childs. 
Buffalo for Topeka. 
Joshua Hill, of Pontiac, Mich., has given 
seven buffalo to the city of Topeka, Kan., and 
these were transported safely by rail and wagon 
under the care of expert cowboys, to Gage 
Park, in Topeka, where they are now, appar¬ 
ently in good condition and contented with their 
surroundings. 
For a Derby Eland. 
F. C. Selous, the well-known African hunter, 
has been commissioned by the British Natural 
History Museum to go to Africa and secure a 
specimen of the Derby eland. This animal has 
been known to naturalists and big game hunters 
for some time, but no complete specimen has 
yet reached England. The Derby eland is found 
on some of the Nile tributaries where Mr. 
Selous will go to look for it. 
