Aug. 13, 1910-] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
255 
All sorts of pictures can be made with this 
stand. The chief advantages are that focusing 
with the ground glass in a horizontal plane is 
much easier than with a tripod, the object will 
stay where it is put and the stand can be moved 
about at will. You can cover the base board 
with cloth or paper of the desired color, or sup¬ 
port the object to be photographed on a needle 
or a small block of wood, so that the background 
can be thrown out of focus. For photographing 
flowers, insects, small specimens, game, fish, etc., 
the scheme is a simple one and requires much 
less preparation than if the object to be photo¬ 
graphed were supported on an upright. It is 
difficult to attach an object in an upright posi¬ 
tion by means of putty, nails or cord, not to 
mention the care necessary to center it with the 
camera, but on this baseboard the object can be 
shifted about or raised in various ways so that 
shadows will be largely eliminated. 
In making the baseboard, select it with care. 
A plank of Texas or North Carolina pine, ash 
or chestnut will answer, as the idea is to get a 
piece with good grain, to utilize as a background 
for the pictures you will make. Chestnut makes 
an excellent background, for the grain is marked 
and the pores open, giving marked contrast. 
You can also make other backgrounds, as pieces 
of birchbark, strawboard, burlap, cotton duck, 
or some regular design on paper. These can be 
laid on the baseboard or secured with tacks at 
the corners. There is nothing handsomer than 
a strip of oak bark on which there are lichens 
or patches of moss. 
The board I use has two lines drawn across 
it at right angles, their intersection being at that 
point which coincides with the intersection of 
the vertical and horizontal lines on the ground 
glass screen of the camera. This method is an 
invaluable assistance in centering, as it is in 
leveling when the camera is used on the tripod. 
The lines are drawn with India ink on the 
screen, infinite care being taken to true them 
perfectly. The first thing I do with a new 
camera is to draw these lines, and I find that 
I employ them unconsciously in making pictures, 
so that they are a great help. 
You can hardly find a subject for an exposure 
where there is not some thing that will serve 
as a guide in leveling the camera. Outdoors the 
horizon line is the guide, but in hills, woods and 
mountains it is not always possible to see the 
horizon, so you must depend on a vertical guide. 
A tree is nearly always a help, but if you utilize 
it, scan it carefully before you focus on it, to 
make sure it does not lean away from the per¬ 
pendicular. The little levels with which cameras 
are often fitted assist materially, but with tripod 
cameras which are used as hand cameras, the 
so-called gunsight finder is an excellent one. 
The worst feature of the ordinary small finder 
is that you must look down and away from your 
object, and the finder being so small, motion is 
not depicted sharply in it, hence you do not al¬ 
ways get what you expect, as a change often 
takes place while you are centering the object in 
the finder and making the exposure. The gun- 
sight finder consists of a crystal properly ground 
to reflect the image, fitted with black cross lines 
and an upright like a pinhead front sight on a 
target rifle. The base is metal, with the disc 
hinged on one end and the pinhead on the other, 
so that both fold down when not in use. The 
device when folded down on the box occupies 
a space of about i^xijAxy^-inch. It does not 
cost much. In use the camera is held up before 
your face, you center the picture in the crystal, 
then bring the cross lines and the pinhead into 
perfect alignment, and make the exposure. 
There is no looking away from the object at 
a critical moment. This finder can be fitted on 
THE CAMERA STAND IN USE. 
A 5x7 camera with bellows draw of 27 inches. Small 
objects placed on a ground glass screen on the base¬ 
board give excellent negatives. In this case the stand 
was in a strong light in the shade of a building. The 
photograph was made with a reflecting camera, the ex¬ 
posure being a slow instaneous one. 
any camera, it being merely necessary to ad¬ 
just it so that its field and that of the lens will 
coincide. Perry D. Frazer. 
Shooting Prospects in North Dakota. 
Galesburg, N. D., Aug. 4 —Editor Forest and 
Stream: Prairie chicken season opens Sept. 7 
and from all reports this will be a good chicken 
year in North Dakota. My friends among the 
farmers report seeing many good sized flocks 
and nearly full grown. They ought to grow 
and be fat on grasshoppers, for the whole coun¬ 
try is overrun with them, and they have done 
some damage in the gardens and the grain. This 
is the dryest season ever known here; in fact, 
we have only had one good rain in this vicinity 
this season. All the sloughs are dried up and 
very few ducks have bred here. The duck 
shooting will amount to very little in conse¬ 
quence. Everybody approves the law against 
spring shooting, and there is no doubt of its 
beneficial effect on the amount of game in the 
fall. There was more game—ducks, geese and 
snipe—around here last spring on their way 
north than I remember to have seen for many 
years. 
In 1878 to 1881 Forest and Stream records 
that there were many migratory quail imported 
into Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire and 
Massachusetts. I wonder if the experiment was 
a success, and if there are any in those States 
now. It seems strange to me that some enter¬ 
prising Southerner does not import some night¬ 
ingales to grace his estate. They are an insec¬ 
tivorous bird and the sweetest singer known, are 
they not? 
Your Top Rail column is always interesting to 
me. Seems to me a “thirty years ago column 
devoted to sporting items from Forest and 
Stream and other publications would be worth 
while. 
This summer has been very hot as well as 
dry, but the weather is now cool and fall-like. 
The nights are always cool. Better come up and 
share with us the prairie chickens, mushrooms, 
green corn and the rest of the good things of 
the hunting season. We will make you we'come, 
for while we may be a trifle dry, we are very far 
from starving and the latch string is always out. 
J. P- ft- 
New Publications. 
My Friend the Indian, by James McLaughlin, 
United States Indian Inspector, formerly 
agent to the Sioux at Devil s Lake and 
Standing Rock Agencies, N. D., with illus¬ 
trations. Boston and New York, Houghton. 
Mifflin Co. Price $2.50 net. 
In this very interesting book Colonel Mc¬ 
Laughlin has given us a record of some of the 
most striking events of nearly forty years in¬ 
tercourse with the Indians. The men of to-day 
can hardly realize the changes which have taken 
place in the old West and have transformed the 
Indian country of that time into the productive 
farming district of to-day. 
When as a young man Colonel McLaughlin 
went to St. Paul, that city was the frontier of 
the Northwest, and in 1871 when he started for 
Devil’s Lake Agency, he navigated a bull train 
of twenty yoke of cattle through the streets of 
St. Paul. From that time to this he has been 
saying “How” to the Indian. 
Few men understand Indian character so. web 
as does Colonel McLaughlin. His long sojourn 
at Standing Rock, where for fourteen years he 
was Indian agent—the father and the friend of 
the people—gave him extraordinary opportunities 
for learning how the Indians think, for gaining 
their confidence and for penetrating the inmost 
secrets of their lives. At the time when he en¬ 
tered the Indian service the wars upon the plains 
were still in progress. In those early days most 
of the Sioux and other Indians were “out as 
it used to be said; in other Words., were on the 
buffalo plains away from the agencies, still living 
much as they had -liyed ever since that earlier 
time nearly a hundred years before, when they 
first crossed and began to wander beyond the 
Missouri River. Among the Sioux the author’s 
dealings were with men famous as chiefs, leaders 
in battle and medicine men. Gall, John Grass, 
Sitting Bull, Crow King, Spotted Tail and Rain 
