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FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Jan. 18, 1908. 
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• f r . tt j y > ' •; 
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or nearest the body; this to temporarily check 
the return circulation. Next freely incise the 
wound, to allow the accumulated blood to pass 
out and to carry with it considerable of the 
poison. After the first flow of blood is over, 
inject the potash solution as advised; apply a 
clean cloth, if no drugs are at hand; a cloth that 
has been well soaked in cold running water. 
Next give your patient an ounce of whiskey. 
Next loosen your constricting band, just enough 
to allow the circulation to slowly be re-estab¬ 
lished. Now if your patient feels no ill effects 
you can afford to wait a half hour, when, if his 
pulse has become rapid, and he complains of 
nausea, dizziness or vertigo, give another ounce 
of whiskey, and continue its use until the patient 
is either feeling remarkably improved, or is in 
the hands of a physician. The only thing to re¬ 
member is that you are safe in pushing your 
whiskey until the patient begins to show some 
signs of its effects—which symptoms are rather 
familiar to most men—and you will be surprised 
to find that men who never have tasted whiskey 
can bear large quantities very well when thus 
afflicted. 
I wish to congratulate Mr. McCandless upon 
his very good article, and also to assure him that 
if he ever has the misfortune to be bitten by a 
rattler on the brushy mountains of Pennsylvania 
he will need more than his hypodermic of per¬ 
manganate if he ever desires to again see 
Nebraska. H. J. Donaldson, M.D. 
Seasons Out of Joint. 
Hudson, N. Y., Jan. 6. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: Very peculiar things are happening 
nowadays up Columbia county way, and the 
oldest inhabitant has lost faith in his farmer’s 
almanac, which about this time of year presents 
advice about “looking for snow storms.” 
Within a few days dandelions have been picked 
on various lawns about the city, and visitors 
to Second Hill last Sunday afternoon were sur¬ 
prised to see large numbers of caterpillars sun¬ 
ning themselves. Robins and bluebirds have been 
seen in the vicinity of "the city up to the present 
time, but unusual winter residents were a flock 
of jacksnipe that have been living for a week 
past up the Bay Brook. The people who saw 
these snipe also saw on the same day a huge 
bullfrog who was blinking in the sun on the 
muddy bank of the creek. 
Another winter resident is a white heron 
which has taken up its abode in the high grass 
of the South Bay. It can be seen every , even¬ 
ing returning to its resting place after a hard 
day’s work spent in making a living with the 
thermometer at just about freezing point. 
Henry Con, the local fish and game protector, 
found an injured sora rail about two weeks ago 
along the bay road near the soldering works. 
As it was unable to fly he took it home where 
he now has it thoroughly domesticated. It seems 
to take kindly to confinement and is rapidly put¬ 
ting on flesh on a mixed diet of rice, wheat and 
cracker crumbs, and will be ready for the north¬ 
ern migration in the spring. Columbia. 
Pigeon History. 
Saginaw, Mich., Dec. 19 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: Here is a little bit of passenger pigeon 
history that just came to me from a gentleman 
who has been kind enough to write me from 
St. Paul about my book. In speaking of Mr. 
Tom Morley, who died many years ago, he says 
he was a good shot and a great sportsman, and 
adds: 
“I well recollect when he was an invalid, re¬ 
siding in Painesville, Ohio, and I as a little boy. 
probably seven or eight years old, would watch 
the wild pigeons come in for red cherries in the 
orchard, singly and several at a time. Then I 
would run to the house and tell Mr. Morley 
about them, and he would come out and shoot 
them and go back to the porch and wait for the 
new arrivals. He was so weak and feeble at 
that time he could scarcely handle a gun, but 
in an afternoon he would get ten or fifteen 
pigeons in this manner. 
“I killed my last wild pigeon in Minnesota 
in 1885, for I moved to this State in 1880. We 
used to buy them for trap shooting at about $70 
per thousand, but after 1886 they were positively 
unknown. I have had a standing offer in one 
of the sportsmen’s papers for the past five years 
agreeing to pay $25 for a pair of freshly killed 
passenger pigeons. I do not think there is a 
wild bird in existence to-day. 
“There was a family living just outside of 
Toledo by the name of Searles, a father and two 
sons, who made a fortune netting wild pigeons. 
At the big shoot, which occurred in Cleveland 
in 1875, we used 15,000 wild pigeons. This was 
at the meeting of the first sportsmen’s conven¬ 
tion ever held in the United States. We really 
were not guilty because we did not realize that 
this bird would be exterminated. God forgive 
us.” W. B. Mershon. 
The Ruffed Grouse Scarcity. 
Brewer, Me., Dec. 16 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: I am a constant reader of the Forest 
and Stream and with my wife and dog roam 
the woods and lakes continually. Together we 
have killed this season eighty-seven game birds 
of which only seven were ruffed grouse. We 
found not more than three birds in any one 
place, and many times only one old bird, and 
this where we knew they had bred, for our 
pointer Rex found them while we were trouting. 
I call it the fox’s fault in the year’s run of 
plunder, for our covers are small trees with few 
large evergreens, and I have found many places 
where they roosted on or within three feet of 
the ground. 
Can a grouse brood be killed by some kind 
of lice? One year ago, while driving the coast 
line of Maine near Gouldsboro, three ruffed 
grouse ran into the road ahead of the team and 
I killed two of them. They were small with 
poor plumage and the head and neck of one 
was covered with a red tick, or louse, many as 
large as a kernel of wheat and full of blood. 
There were very few feathers on the neck. I 
am positive there were a great spoonful of these 
on this one bird. I took a piece of road mud 
and rubbed them off, but some hung on and 
could not be removed. The other had some but 
not so many. I circled and hunted, but these 
three were all there were. Did these lice kill 
this whole brood? What were they? I spoke 
to Mr. Manly Hardy once about this, but he 
could not place this insect. 
I say do something for the grouse, for there 
is more fun in him than the deer. 
Cannot Maine have the elk in the Mt. Katah- 
din region, and the pheasant as they have this 
bird in Oregon? Ernest M. Gross. 
Further testimony as to the scarcity of ruffed 
grouse in Michigan during the shooting season 
just ended is offered by the following cutting 
from the Detroit Free Press, Traverse City 
correspondent: 
“The partridge season which closed Saturday 
has been the poorest in the memory of local 
hunters. Sportsmen have considered two or 
three birds a good bag, .while last year that was 
counted as nothing. Many days during the 
season, those who have gone out have returned 
empty handed. 
“There was something peculiar about the 
birds, too, as even the best dogs have fre¬ 
quently fallen down, and no matter how hard 
and conscientiously they worked, they didn’t 
seem to be able to achieve results. In one 
case, a hunter shot a partridge and it fell into 
an open field. The dog was sent after it, and 
several times passed within two feet of it but 
failed to pick it up until he happened to sight 
it. 
“Old hunters, who have followed the north 
woods for years, say that nature takes this 
means to protect the birds, that the length of 
last winter killed the younger birds and de¬ 
pleted the numbers, and for that reason the 
birds this year have no scent. They say that 
when rabbits multiply too rapidly in this region 
that an epidemic takes them off, and then for 
several years those remaining have no scent, and 
for this reason they maintain that the partridge 
is similarly protected.” 
FOX TRACKS. 
Photographed when there was a light crust on two feet of snow on an Adirondack lake. 
