Sept. 3, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM 
375 
Sportsmen’s Cameras.—VII. 
The sportsman camera user, in his study of 
the subject of picture making, will do well to 
avoid everything which smacks of the fuzzy 
school of photographers. There are times for 
fuzzy photographs, of course, if you like them, 
just as there are seasons for making cloud pic¬ 
tures, sunsets and snow scenes, but where pic¬ 
torial records are sought, they are out of place. 
Records should be accurate, hence clearly de¬ 
fined pictures are the thing. 
Even if you are fortunate enough to have good 
eyesight, it will be worth the extra bother to 
carry a small magnifying glass and employ it as 
an aid in focusing, either with a reflecting or a 
folding camera. If you doubt the need of a 
glass regularly, try one, just to be convinced 
that it will assist you with pictures about which 
you wish to be very particular. One of the little 
botanical glasses, magnifying two or three dia¬ 
meters, in which the lens is hinged in metal 
covers, will answer; in fact, such a glass is a 
handy thing in the pocket at any time while you 
are abroad. I have seen them carried by rough- 
and-ready men of the old Southwest, ostensibly 
for the examination of various geological, botan¬ 
ical and other specimens, but equally as aids to 
poor vision in extracting cactus spines from their 
hands or legs. 
The image thrown on the ground glass screen 
appears to be sharply defined, but in reality it 
only seems so, taking the average vision as the 
standard. Too many of us need glasses for 
such close work, but do not wear them, while 
others who wear glasses for reading think they 
can get along without them in the woods. To 
prove any failing you may have in this respect, 
focus on the ground glass in your accustomed 
manner, some view in which there are trees and 
other objects, both near and far, then examine 
the image with a glass. Often you will find, 
by racking the lens in or out slightly, that your 
unaided vision is not to be depended on for very 
accurate focusing. If you wear eye glasses 
which magnify, the little magnifying glass will 
not, as a rule, be needed, and it of course cannot 
be used for hurried work, while your eyeglasses 
can be so used. 
The sportsman who wishes his series of out¬ 
door pictures to be records which he shall pre¬ 
serve and exhibit to his friends with pride, 
should follow many of the rules laid down for 
newspaper photography, in which softness and 
all fuzzy effects have no place. Instead, sharp 
definition and contrasts are sought, both in the 
negatives and in the prints. It is possible to get 
fairly soft effects from a hard negative through 
the medium of some of the carbon papers, but 
after all clear detail is not objectionable in the 
average picture which tells a story. 
Ther6 are dozens of good developers for nega¬ 
tives of this type, but I will confine my remarks 
to one because of its great range of usefulness, 
and its simplicity. This is ortol-soda. It costs 
thirty cents at the supply houses, and comes in 
two little tubes. You dissolve the contents of 
each tube in a bottle containing twenty ounces 
of water and put these away as stock solutions. 
They will keep a long time if tightly corked. In 
preparing for development you take one ounce of 
each solution and two to five ounces of water, 
according to the season—less water in winter and 
more in summer, of course. If fair density is 
desired, take V / 2 ounces of each solution and 
three ounces of water. This works slowly and 
it is especially good for over-exposed negatives. 
An alternative plan is to make the solution as 
just described, but have a weaker solution at 
hand, and if you come to an over-exposed nega¬ 
tive, put it in the weak solution while you pro¬ 
ceed with negatives that are normal. 
This developer gives excellent results when 
used with gaslight papers, too, and is used by a 
great many of the expert photographers. In 
some respects I prefer a metol-hydrochinon de¬ 
veloper, or the old-time pyro developer, l)ut if 
you are not a dyed-in-the-wool enthusiast on 
photography, the fewer elements that enter into 
your occasional use of developers the better off 
you will be. 
For newspaper work, and for first proofs from 
negatives, there is nothing, better than the glossy 
printing-out papers that must be exposed to day¬ 
light or sunlight and afterward toned. The finest 
half-tone engravings can be made from these 
prints, especially if they are printed in the shade 
and toned to a brownish-red, rather light than 
dark. Purple effects are not so good as reddish, 
although purple is the desired tone for perma¬ 
nent pictures as such. 
Next to the reddish prints for half-tone work 
come pure black-and-white prints, and in some 
cases these give beautiful half-tones. In any 
event the blacks must be pure or with a slight 
bluish cast, while the whites must be white and 
not gray. A great deal of the glossy gaslight 
paper gives greenish-black prints which, while 
they are handsome as pictures, are worthless in 
the making of half-tone cuts. In the language 
of the engraver, they will not reproduce. The 
darker details are retained, while those that 
shade off to faint greenish-gray are lost en¬ 
tirely. 
Many of the amateur’s developing troubles are 
due to one fault which is not apparent to the eye, 
but which affects disastrously the sensitive nega¬ 
tives and prints. This is unclean developing 
utensils. By this I do not mean to imply that he is 
careless with his graduates, developing trays and 
solution bottles, but they are not chemically clean. 
A two-ounce bottle of nitric acid saves dollars if 
its contents are used systematically. Every now 
and then clean all the utensils with water con¬ 
taining a few drops of nitric acid, and in this 
way keep them chemically clean, which it is dif¬ 
ficult to do otherwise. Perry D. Frazer. 
Bears and Birds. 
Linville Falls, N. C, Aug. 25.— Editor Forest 
and Stream: The farmers here in the moun¬ 
tains are complaining bitterly of the attacks of 
the little cousin of the bear, the ’coon, upon 
their cornfields. The rascals wait till the corn 
is just turning from the milk, or well formed, 
and then they go for it with amazing appetites 
and capacity. They make such trodden trails 
through the fields that one must conclude they 
are very numerous, and the destruction they ac¬ 
complish is very disheartening to the farmers. 
They usually work in the night, but on cloudy 
or rainy days they often come out in the day¬ 
time, they are so fond of the young corn. From 
now until January, the natives spend a good deal 
of time hunting ’coons and possums, and with 
success, but still the number does not seem to be 
appreciably decreased. 
A very heavy mast is already assured, both 
■chestnuts and acorns, so the bears, ’coons and 
'possums will fare well and stay with us, for 
the law now forbids the running at large of hogs 
to fatten on the mast. The mountaineers tell me 
that the bears are already climbing the chestnut 
trees to cut off the branches to examine the burrs. 
This I cannot vouch for, however. 
I have found a mountain farmer a very pro¬ 
gressive and prosperous man, who is an intelli¬ 
gent and effective bird protector. He will not 
permit a song bird to be killed on his large 
place, and he does all be can to encourage them 
to make their homes there. He knows why 
every bird is his friend and takes pains to tell 
every man he can how it will pay him to protect 
the birds. “It looks to me,” he says, “that when 
a bird works for you all the year, killing worms 
and insects that would destroy your crops, you 
ought to be willing to feed him for two or three 
weeks on the best you have. 
This man, Gus Childs, of Ingalls, N. C., will 
not allow a quail to be shot on his place because 
of the good they do him. I heard a man arguing 
with him the other day that catbirds should be 
killed, and it was then that he made the remark 
quoted above, explaining that catbirds destroy 
the cutworms that would otherwise prevent many 
things from growing. Mr. Childs has nests all 
about his place, and is rewarded by having every 
kind of bird that comes here; even bluebirds 
nest in his farm yard. His disgust was inex¬ 
pressible when a man told him of killing over 
three hundred birds in his two cherry trees this 
summer. “I hope I have raised more than that 
many to take their places,” he said. The killing 
of birds is not so bad as it was a few years ago, 
for the people are learning that the birds are 
their friends. Frank W. Bicknell. 
W. E. D. Scott. 
W. E. D. Scott, well known as ornithologist 
and author, died Aug. 21, at Saranac Lake, N. Y. 
He was born in Brooklyn in 1852. He was a 
graduate of Harvard University, where he was 
a pupil of Louis Agassiz. He had been a student 
of birds all his life, had traveled over much of 
temperate North America in his ornithological 
studies, and during these travels had done work 
for museums here and abroad. He was author 
of many technical papers and had described a 
number of new forms of bird life. Among his 
books are “Bird Studies,” “Story of a Bird 
Lover” and “Birds of Patagonia.” Until about 
1883 he was Acting Curator of the Museum of 
Biology at Princeton, and during that time laid 
the foundation of Princeton’s Collection in Orni¬ 
thology. Later he traveled through the South, 
spending much time in Florida and the West 
Indian Islands, and in the Southwest, Colorado 
and Arizona, working on the birds of the desert. 
In 1897 he was again made curator of the Orni¬ 
thological Department at Princeton, and held the 
position until recently, when obliged to give it up 
on account of ill health. For some time he had 
charge of Mr. C. S. Worthington's bird laboratory 
at Shawnee-on-the-Delaware. 
For many years Mr. Scott had suffered from 
ill health, but this never interfered with his en¬ 
thusiasm for his work, and he was always cheer¬ 
ful. Indeed, his work was no doubt the best 
medicine that he was able to take and often 
drove away his physical pain. 
