June to, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
895 
to bury their dead, and a friend told of finding 
a number of skeletons there, some with the moc¬ 
casins fairly well preserved. 
At present there are but two or three living 
men in our country that have a clear remem¬ 
brance of the time when this historic ground 
was the scene of activity. All that I myself can 
do is to give the plan and measurements of the 
walls as I find them to-day. I wish to thank 
those who so cheerfully assisted me in procur¬ 
ing these plans, which so far as I know, are the 
only ones taken since the fort’s erection. 
Recently while riding in this territory I saw 
down the trail a coyote, and turning on the 
power soon overtook him with the machine. It 
was amusing to watch him as he buckled down 
to business, trying to outrun me. The cry of 
the present day is development, and where once 
raced the buffalo now speeds the automobile. 
The valley of the Arkansas will soon be as well 
known for its immense wealth of agriculture as 
in the past it was for its historic Santa Fe trail. 
[As stated in the third of the articles entitled, 
“When Beaver Skins Were Money,” this fort 
was built about 1853, and was leased to the Gov¬ 
ernment in 1858. It was at first intended to call 
it Ft. Fauntleroy after the colonel of the old 
Second Dragoons, but was finally called Ft. 
Wise, and when Governor Wise joined the Con¬ 
federates the post was called Ft. Lyon, after 
General Lyon, who was killed at the battle of 
Wilson’s Creek. —Editor.] 
Two Grouse Stories. 
Paterson, N. J., May 29. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: I was in Pike county, Pennsylvania, a 
few days ago when a resident, whose reputation 
for veracity is excellent, told me a peculiar story. 
I he narrator has been a resident of Pike county 
for a number of years and is fond of sport with 
gun and rod. One day he and a friend were out 
with their guns when their attention was attracted 
by what seemed to be a ruffed grouse—they call 
them pheasants in Pike county. The bird was 
sitting on the lower branch of a large tree and 
was turning its head about in a peculiar man¬ 
ner. I he two men approached cautiously and 
saw a fox under the tree. The fox was walking 
about in a circle, his path being well defined in 
the snow, sufficiently so to warrant the belief 
that he had been engaged in the circling about 
for some time. The eyes of the fox were fixed 
on the bird and the latter’s eyes followed the 
fox, this accounting for the peculiar motion of 
its head. The men made up their minds that 
they would shoot the fox and approached nearer, 
wholly unobserved by either bird or quadruped, 
the attention of both these being fixed on each 
other. Suddenly the bird, which had been posi¬ 
tively identified as a ruffed grouse by this time, 
dropped to the ground. The fox seized it and 
bounded away before the astonished men could 
bring their guns to the shoulders. 
The incident reminded me of a somewhat simi¬ 
lar occurrence some years ago. A justice of the 
peace came to my office carrying a pasteboard 
box, such as are used by dealers in shoes. The 
box contained a female ruffed grouse. Some 
boys had espied the bird sitting on a branch of 
a shade tree near the justice’s residence, and one 
of the boys was about to climb up the tree when 
the justice appeared. He did not interfere, pre¬ 
suming that the bird would make its escape, at 
the same time wondering what the bird was 
doing in a tree near the heart of a city. To his 
surprise the bird offered no objection to being 
captured. I he justice took the bird away from 
the boys. The eyes of the bird were bright, evi¬ 
dence of its good health, and a careful examina¬ 
tion of its body, to which it offered no objection, 
failed to reveal even the slightest wound or 
defect. I offered the bird food and water, but 
it declined both. I repeatedly took it out of the 
box and stroked it, to which it submitted with¬ 
out any manifestations of either pleasure or the 
contrary. On the following day the justice and 
myself took the bird to a bit of woods near the 
city. We placed it on the ground, walked away 
a distance and then returned. The bird had not 
moved and evinced no objections to being han¬ 
dled. We walked a few hundred yards further 
and again placed it on the ground. We walked 
away again, but as we again approached, it got 
up in the orthodox grouse fashion, and I have 
never seen a grouse go through the air more 
quickly than did this particular hen. It did not 
cease flying until it was out of sight. 
Are these two occurrences to be attributed to 
the sixth sense in animals we occasionally read 
about ? C. A. S. 
TThe Pennsylvania tale recalls that of the owl 
about which the man walked followed by the 
eyes of the owl which constantly turned its head 
until it wrung its own neck and fell down dead. 
The capture of the grouse on the limb of a tree 
is something that has more than once been re¬ 
ported at the “running or crazy season,” and we 
believe is quite true.— Editor] 
National Beagle Club of America. 
Camden, N. J., May 29.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: At a meeting of the executive commit¬ 
tee of this club it was ordered that the Twenty- 
second Annual Field Trial of this club start op 
Nov. 9, 1911, and that the Fifth Show of Hounds 
be held on Nov. 12, 1911. 
The place of holding the trials was not deter¬ 
mined upon, but referred to a committee con¬ 
sisting of Messrs. T. Dudley Riggs, Baltimore, 
Md.; LePage Cronmiller, Laurel, Maryland, and 
Raymond Belmont, 23 Nassau street, New York. 
The feature of the coming trials of this club 
will be the addition of another class, to be known 
as Class “H” to consist of eight couples or six¬ 
teen beagles, the prize to be a sweepstake, win¬ 
ner to take all. 
Another innovation to the trials of this club 
is the division of the derby class into two classes, 
one a fifteen-inch class, and the other a thirteen- 
inch class with the prizes as follows: First prize, 
$40; second prize, $25; third prize, $15. 
At a meeting of the committee there was quite 
some favorable comment on the part of the mem¬ 
bers upon the trials held in the West, and a 
number of the members of this club will make 
every effort to plan either a trip to the Western 
trials or to make entries at these trials or both 
if possible. From the expressions of those pres¬ 
ent at the meeting the indications point to quite 
a representation from the National Club at the 
trials of the Central and Western Clubs. 
Chas. R. Stevenson, Sec’v. 
California Deer Enemy. 
In April we printed an account, received 
through the kindness of John P. Babcock, Chief 
Deputy of the California Fish and Game Com- 
sion, of the reported killing of deer in California 
by wolves hunting in packs over the snow. Just 
what these animals are is entirely uncertain, for 
no skulls to identify them have yet been secured, 
some skins throwing no light on the question. 
Mr. Babcock sent us some declarations recently 
and affidavits as to the damage done by these 
wolf-like animals. Benj. F. Addis, of Confidence, 
Tuolumne county, California, a miner and trap¬ 
per, says that during the months of January and 
February, 1911, he counted the carcasses of 
seventeen different deer along the main Stanis¬ 
laus River beginning at the Russian Place and 
extending up it for a distance of twenty miles. 
With two companions he came upon a large buck 
struggling with seven “wolves” with its throat 
torn open but still alive. He believes that these 
wolves, or coyotes, destroy from ten to twenty 
times as many deer as the California lion kill 
These animals were at work in snow more or 
less deep. S. L. N. Ellis, the Deputy Fish and 
Game Commissioner, of California, says “soft 
snow of eighteen inches depth or more will tend 
to render the deer helpless; in fact, in snow two 
or three feet deep the deer move very slowly 
and would prove an easy prey for a pack of 
coyotes.” Mr. Ellis believes that coyotes do kill 
many deer in the snow, and as the winter just 
past was extraordinarily severe, the snow fall¬ 
ing low in the mountains, and so forcing the deer 
low down, they became easy prey for coyotes. 
He does not doubt the ability of a single coyote 
to kill a deer, instancing the killing of a lone 
male antelope by a single coyote which he wit¬ 
nessed several years ago. In that instance the 
coyote crouched near an old and deeply worn 
cow path leading to the water and as the ante¬ 
lope came within reach he sprang cat-like and 
caught the antelope by the throat, cutting it 
quickly. This antelope was not in prime con¬ 
dition, but did not appear to be crippled. 
Waterfowl Epidemic in Utah. 
It will be recalled that last year there was an 
apparent epidemic disease among the duck, geese, 
snipe, herons and some other water birds sum¬ 
mering on some of the large lakes and streams 
of Utah. Efforts were made to learn the nature 
of the disease and to combat it, but with what 
success was not known. 
From Dr. M. R. Stewart, of Salt Lake City, 
it is learned that the disease still exists among 
these waterfowl. Dr. Stewart inclines to the be¬ 
lief that it is some form of coccidosis, a trouble 
which as yet it seems impossible to combat. 
