892 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[June io, 1911. 
Do not allow loaded firearms in the camp and 
do not use the axe or allow others than the cook 
and guides to use it. 
Do not allow a member of the party to go 
off into the woods alone. He may get lost or 
get injured, and in either event should have 
company. 
When you go out for an all-day fish, take 
your sweater and a haycock cover for your 
knees, as it will be coid riding in the boat be¬ 
fore you get home. The haycock cover will also 
keep off the rain if you have no better article. 
Always have your cook know where to go to 
find you, as an emergency message may come in. 
Put out your camp-fire at night, as the wind 
may rise and burn your camp. Camp away from 
roads and trails so as not to be bothered by 
travelers. Put up a wash dish shelf with a rack 
for towels, etc. Make a cedar brush broom and 
insist on having a clean camp. 
If the sun is hot, wet your hat in the cool 
water, or put fresh leaves in it. If it is cold, 
put your handkerchief in your hat for warmth. 
In traveling the trail, the rear man should carry 
his firearms at safe, not ready to shoot. In 
shooting, do not shoot over or near anyone. He 
may make a motion and throw his hand in front 
of the firearm. Do not in any event shoot to¬ 
ward camp, nor at anything not clearly discerned. 
One of our guides once shot a pocket knife out 
of the mouth of his companion who was skin¬ 
ning a deer he had hung up. Better let your 
game move than take any chances. 
vii.—COMFORT. 
I now come to a most important matter in 
which our proficiency is the result of many at¬ 
tempts to keep warm in bed on cold nights with¬ 
out heavy and cumbersome bed clothes and with¬ 
out sleeping with our clothes on. 
Have blankets, or what is better, light quilts, 
large enough to cover your head and feet, say 
seven feet long and six feet wide. Two are 
enough where the temperature at night does not 
go far below freezing. Lay your quilts on your 
bed, one edge of the two quilts even with the 
edge of the bed toward which your face is to 
be when you are asleep, put them over your 
pillow, not under it, because the cold will then 
come in around the pillow and chill your neck 
and shoulders. Fold your quilts over the bed 
far enough to bring the fold close to your back, 
the fold being at the side where your back is 
to be. Fold the corners at the foot under the 
quilts, then fold the point made by folding the 
corners under the place where your feet are to 
be. You thus will have a protected pocket for 
your feet much like a sleeping bag. When you 
get into bed, slip your feet down into the pocket, 
gather the quilt closely around your neck, and 
pull the quilts over you toward the front. Feel 
behind and see that you have taken up the slack 
so that no cold air chamber will be between 
your back and the quilts, reach down in front 
and fold the quilts close to your stomach and 
then tuck the upper corners under your chin, 
drawing the quilts closely about your neck. You 
will thus keep out all the cold drafts that other¬ 
wise will find their way in through folds in quilts 
merely laid over you. 
If you are liable to have cold feet, take an 
extra blanket, quilt, haycock cover, or a rubber 
blanket and place part of it under your quilts 
at the foot and fold the balance over where 
your feet are to be and turn the sides under 
your quilts and your feet will keep warm. If 
this does not keep your feet warm, you will 
have to use an extra pair of wool socks and 
sleep in them. If you are too warm you can 
throw back one quilt and later if you need it 
you can pull it over you. Sleeping bags are not 
practicable if you have to get up in the night, 
as it is quite a job to get out and back again. 
Wet feet will do no harm if you keep walk¬ 
ing until they are dry or until you can change. 
If you get wet while in a boat, do not remain 
without exercise, but walk or pole the boat or 
use the oars until you are dry or can change. 
Do not sit or lie on the ground or on a damp 
log, as you are quite sure to get dysentery. If 
you do get a bad diarrhea or dysentery, eat soda 
crackers and picked-up codfish. Do not eat any 
H AWKS and owls seem to have no friends 
among men. Sometimes it almost seems that 
man is jealous of their success as hunters, 
and wishes to destroy them in order to save for 
himself the prey that they would capture. Such 
scientific investigations as have been made point 
to the conclusion that a large proportion of the 
American hawks and owls are rather useful than 
injurious. It is to be remembered that the 
prosperity of our country is founded on the suc¬ 
cess of its agricultural population—the crops that 
they grow. Of the enemies of the farmer few 
are so injurious as the field mice, which by hun¬ 
dreds of species and millions of individuals are 
scattered all over the land. The food of a large 
number of hawks and owls consists chiefly of 
these small rodents. Except for the goshawk, 
Cooper’s hawk and sharp-shinned hawk, there are, 
according to the conclusions of the investigators 
of the United States Biological Survey, hardly 
any of the hawks that destroy much bird life, 
but it must be remembered that these inquiries, 
while useful, so far as they go, did not extend 
over a great length of time, nor cover a very 
large number of specimens. One hears frequently 
of the killing of hawks or owls whose individual 
stomach contents quite contradicts the general 
conclusions drawn by Dr. Fisher in his “Hawks 
and Owls.” Not very long ago, in fact last 
summer, an individual who examined the nest 
of a sparrow hawk—thought to be one of the 
most useful of our little hawks-—discovered in 
the nest eight pairs of the feet of small song 
birds. A friend has told us of accidentally kill¬ 
ing two short-eared owls and finding in the 
stomach of one great fragments of a meadow 
lark, and in the other feathers of another bird; 
yet the short-eared owl is supposed to be, above 
all things, a mouser. 
Wilbur F. Smith, the game warden of Fair- 
field county, Connecticut, made perhaps last 
spring an interesting observation on the habits 
of the sharp-shinned hawk. Hearing that a boy 
had found the nest of a pair of these birds, he 
bread or fresh fish or fresh meat. Use Hum¬ 
phrey’s Marvel of Healing by drinking a good 
mouthful two or three times daily while the dis¬ 
order lasts. It is also splendid for piles, used 
internally as above and externally. It will also 
stop the common stomach ache if taken as the 
ache comes on. Nux vomica is also good for 
the latter. Camphor pills will cure a bad cold 
if taken early. Guides are quite apt to overeat 
in your camp, as the food is better than they 
usually have, and your Humphrey’s and laxative 
pills are quite necessary to enable you to get 
adequate service out of them. 
Take in a few old blankets or quilts for your 
guides, as they will not bring enough and will 
complain of the cold and get ill. 
William H. Holden, 
[the end.] 
visited the locality and saw the nest. The boy 
then pointed out to him a tree about a hundred 
yards distant where he said the hawks always 
stopped before coming to their nest. Visiting 
the place, Mr. Smith found the ground posi¬ 
tively strewn with the -feathers and wings of 
birds that the hawks had captured, and after 
watching a little was convinced that the birds 
stopped there to pluck and prepare the food for 
the young that were then in the nest, and a 
little later his companion shot one of the birds 
as it was going to the nest, and it fell to the 
ground still clutching in its talons a neatly 
picked flicker—a bird almost as large as the 
hawk. 
This habit of the sharp-shinned hawk appar¬ 
ently protecting the location of its nest from ob¬ 
servation by leaving the debris at a distance is, 
we think, not generally known. If its purpose 
is protection of the nest from observation, the 
act is one of extraordinary interest. 
Cooper’s hawk breeds over much of New Eng¬ 
land and undoubtedly does much damage in the 
way of destroying poultry and game birds. We 
have known on two occasions where it broke 
through a wire netting to get at some fancy 
pigeons, and being unable to escape was killed 
in the one case with a stick, and in the other 
with a gun. Now and then there are migra¬ 
tions of goshawks in winter, which carry with 
them much destruction to all bird life. E. H. 
Forbush, the State Ornithologist of Massachu¬ 
setts, in his report for the year 1909, gives such 
a migration of goshawks a year or. two before 
as one cause for the scarcity of the ruffed grouse. 
During that year it was our fortune on three 
occasions to find in the woods complete skeletons 
of ruffed grouse, whose bones had recently been 
picked clean by some bird. On another occas¬ 
ion we found in the snow the bones of the trunk 
of a quail which had just been devoured by a 
hawk, probably a goshawk, though its species 
could not be definitely determined. 
That snakes destroy small birds and their eggs 
Nature’s Disturbed Balance 
By W. G. DeGROOT 
Concluded from page 852. 
