412 
[March 14, 1908. 
ner of the inclosure. I have seen him walk the 
length of his chain, turn, reach out with a hind 
foot and pick up or drag to him some bit of 
food or trinket that caught his eye, and which 
he could see without trying was beyond the reach 
of his hands or front feet. 
When the other monkeys, in a moment of play¬ 
fulness and forgetfulness, got too near him, he 
would suddenly rush out to the full length of the 
chain and quick as lightening snap about and 
•grab blindly at them with a hind foot. Usually 
he failed in his object, but sometimes he suc¬ 
ceeded in catching one, when he would haul the 
screaming, struggling victim to him, and hold it 
firmly with his hind feet while he submitted it to 
a close examination for half an hour or more. 
No one is more thoroughly in favor of stamp¬ 
ing out the present epidemic of fake natural his- 
.tory than I am, and I agree with Mr. Burroughs 
that most of the so-called reasoning power of 
animals originates in the brain of the person who 
records it, and who too often substitutes his 
brain for that of the animal. At the same time, 
however, I must confess that I sometimes find 
an animal more intelligent than its neighbors, 
who by its acts proves to me at least that it 
possesses a certain amount of reasoning power. 
J. Alden Loring. 
A Boy Trapper’s Experience. 
Topeka, Kans., Feb. 15 .—Editor Forest and 
Stream: The skunk questions that have been 
under discussion in your columns for some weeks 
have greatly interested me, recalling the days of 
boyhood, when I was an amateur trapper on and 
about my father’s hillside farm, on the west bank 
of Cayuga Lake, four miles north from Ithaca, 
N. Y. 
In i860 and 1861 I had no interest in natural 
history, but great interest in the results of my 
trapping for fur-bearing animals, of which the 
chief ones, and the highest-priced furs were 
taken from minkg. and skunks. A prime mink 
pelt brought, from.$6 to $8, and a perfectly black 
skunk $1.50, while striped and white-faced ones 
sold for about $1.00. My traps were two flat 
stones, 2 to 3 inches thick and about 2 feet by 3 
feet, as I could find them, with a figure 4 de¬ 
vice holding the raised end in place, with the bait 
on the long end of the horizontal piece extend¬ 
ing back pf the center of the stones. With a 
jack-knife, five minutes’ work would whittle the 
parts of the trap. 
My most killing bait for mink was a piece of 
some kind of fish, but any kind of meat or a 
piece of hog’s liver made a first-class bait for 
skunks. 
I had a line of traps along the lake beach 
under fallen trees, piles of drift or old stumps, 
nearly three miles long, and a return line about 
a quarter of a mile back from the lake, along an 
outcropping limestone ledge. Visits to my traps 
were made each morning, before school time, 
and when there was no moonlight I carried a 
lantern, working out the lake line first and re¬ 
turning by the upper one; mink being caught 
along the lake and the skunks along the ledge. 
Few were the winter mornings that I did not 
bring home one mink at least, and one or more 
skunks, with their bodies flattened out and gen¬ 
erally frozen. The bodies had to be thawed out 
behind the stove while I was at school, so that I 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
could take the pelts off in the evening. Not one 
skunk or mink ever had any scent on it, and by 
being careful I never disturbed the scent sacks 
while taking the pelts off. 
In December, 1861, a neighbor had a horse die, 
and on my way home from school I gave per¬ 
mission for the body to be hauled down near the 
lake in my father’s wood lot. Two days after¬ 
ward there came a three-foot fall of snow, com¬ 
pletely burying my traps and putting me out of 
business. A crust that would bear my weight 
having formed on the snow, on the second Sat¬ 
urday after the storm I went to see if any woods 
dwellers were feeding on horse-beef, and found 
that the snow had been packed solid around the 
body, which was partially eaten. Securing an 
axe, I felled two young trees and from their 
bodies cut four poles about twelve feet long, 
which I placed around the carcass so as to form 
a pen, the ends just joining. Then two top pieces 
were cut for each side and placed in position; 
stakes were driven in the snow to keep the logs 
in place and a figure 4 trap put under the end of 
each top pole, two to each side, with a string 
from the trigger of the figure 4 to the end of the 
top pole. I had the carcass enclosed with eight 
traps, which had to be entered in the space be¬ 
tween the two logs. 
Where all the skunks and coons came from 
that I caught about that carcass that winter 1 
never could determine, but after mild nights I 
sometimes found a victim in every trap, all caught 
with the top log across the small of the back, and 
not one skunk so caught did I ever find to have 
cast a scent. I accounted for this on the suppo¬ 
sition that the blow from the log across the 
back, or the crushing fall of the stone deadfalls 
paralyzed the animal so that it could not scent. 
The bodies of my victims were taken to the 
head of a ravine into which they were thrown, 
which gave it the power of loading the breezes, 
until they were not spicy breezes after spring 
was well advanced, and the crows and hawks had 
had their feasts for a few weeks. 
My fur trapping paid me a very nice sum 
those two winters, and while I caught fifty or 
more skunks each winter, I never knew one to 
be scented, nor did I get any scent -on my hands 
while skinning them. 
Not Now a Boy Trapper. 
About Right Whales. 
Something less than a year ago we printed in 
Forest and Stream an account of the adven¬ 
tures of two young men who went down to 
Amagansett, L. I., to recover the remains of two 
whales (Balcena glacialis). A report on the ex¬ 
ternal and internal anatomy of these specimens 
has just been printed in the Bulletin of Museum 
of Natural History, by Mr. Roy C. Andrews, 
who wrote the account for Forest and Stream. 
The two whales went ashore, one near the vil¬ 
lage of Amagansett, the other near the village of 
Wainscott. The Amagansett whale, originally 
reported as measuring 56 feet 7 inches from the 
tip of the snout to the end of the fluke, was 
measured by Mr. Andrews after the flukes had 
been removed and appears to have been about 
54 feet long, measured from the tip of the snout 
over the back to the notch of the flukes. The 
Wainscott whale, measured in a straight line 
from tip of snout to notch of flukes, was 40 feet 
3 inches. The length of the blow hole was 10 
inches in the Amagansett whale and 8 A inches 
in the Wainscott specimen, and the longest 
whalebone, excluding the bristles, was 6 feet 5 
inches in the Amagansett specimen. 
In the Wainscott whale the color was every¬ 
where dense ivory black, with no indication 
whatever of a lighter color on the fins or flukes, 
and, while the Amagansett specimen was chiefly 
of the same black, there were some streaks, 
patches and spots of white, on the flukes, flip¬ 
pers and in some other places. While the right 
whale is generally an unbroken black, there is 
testimony that they are occasionally marked with 
white below. Capt. J. B. Edwards speaks of some 
that he has seen that had the breast and throat 
nearly white, and similar specimens are,noted 
in the “Whalebone Whales of North America.” 
The eyeball of the Amagansett whale meas¬ 
ured on the preserved specimen after the eyeball 
had been trimmed of matter which had adhered 
to it. 3 l A inches from before backward and 3 
inches from above downward. The iris was clear 
brown, surrounded by a narrow, irregular ring 
of lighter color. The pupil is elliptical, its longi- 
tutidal diameter being iA inches. 
The osteology of the whales is described, and 
figures are given of many of the bones and of 
the wrist with its ossifications. 
It is interesting to note that the Amagansett 
whale exceeds in size the largest right whale 
ever recorded, and that its examination demon¬ 
strates that there is some color variation in the 
species. 
Wild Duck and House Cat. 
Owego, N. Y., Feb. 25. —Editor Forest and 
Stream: During the severe weather of the past 
month the Susquehanna River. at this place was 
completely frozen over from shore to shore, ex¬ 
cept where it runs through the center of the 
village, and here was quite an expanse of open 
water with ice out from the shore for about .five 
rods. A large flock of wild ducks of different 
varieties frequented this open water for nearly 
three weeks. 1 
One day recently a family living on the bank 
of the river were somewhat startled by seeing 
the pet house cat come marching into the kitchen 
with a live wild duck in its mouth. The duck, 
which proved to be a butterball, was' rescued 
from its captor and placed in a bath tub partly 
filled with water; here the duck stayed for the 
remainder of the day and took food from the 
hands of different ones who fed it. In capturing 
the duck the cat had bitten it through the neck, 
and it gradually became weaker during the day, 
and when it was liberated toward evening died. 
It is surmised that the duck was sitting on 
the edge of the ice which was covered with snow, 
when the cat, a light colored animal, carefully 
stalked the duck and caught it. 
Evidently the untimely fate of the poor butter 
ball alarmed the rest of the ducks, for they dis¬ 
appeared on the same day and have not returned. 
This is the first instance that ever came to my 
notice of a common house cat catching a wild 
duck. F. J. D. 
- i 
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