Oct. 15, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
613 
in the netting, and finally he hopped from a chair 
to the table directly in front of me, helped him¬ 
self to the largest nut on the dish and fled. The 
next time he appeared I held a nut in my hand 
and he relieved me of the lure, scurried up the 
rustic seat and sat nibbling at the nut and turn¬ 
ing it around and around. The next time the 
squirrel raced down the table and mounted to 
the top of my head with one leap, perched on 
my shoulder and hunted for nuts in my pocket. 
He tamed fast, for he was young and the ani- 
ma’s. are never molested in the woods on the 
island. In the morning he is almost certain to 
awake me, coming in at the tent opening and 
barking garrulously from his perch at the foot 
of the bed. 
A Frenchman of my acquaintance who a year 
ago was in Belgium brought back with him a 
package of beans which he assured us were 
picked at the Chateau Carlos. He wanted to 
get seed from them and straightaway spaded up 
a patch of ground and planted them. When the 
beans broke ground the rabbits began operations. 
Early in the summer a number of cranes and 
herons began nesting on Crane and Dunlop isl¬ 
ands, and bird lovers of the Northwest came 
here to study their habits and take photographs 
of them and their nests. 
Robert Page Lincoln. 
More Forest Fires. 
Another terrible forest fire is raging along the 
international boundary between Northern Min¬ 
nesota and Ontario. Fierce winds carried the 
fires along from place to place at more than 
railroad speed. Several towns have been de¬ 
stroyed and many people have lost their lives. 
It is feared that the death list may run up to 
one hundred, men, women and children. 
Domestic animals turned loose by their owners 
to shift for themselves fled from the fires, some 
of vthem plunging into Rainy River and swim¬ 
ming across to unburned territory. It is re¬ 
ported that in a number of cases there were 
seen, mingled with cattle that were in flight, 
deer, moose, caribou, bears and wolves. 
The terrible effects of this fire and those that 
during the summer ravaged the Rocky Moun¬ 
tains must surely have an effect in arousing the 
public to the importance of giving to forest pro¬ 
tection an attention that it has never yet had. 
Force of Habit. 
The latter part of the following dog story, 
which comes from Wootton Warwen, may be 
taken cum grano salis, if desired: A wire-haired 
terrier was out rabbiting with his master and 
friends in Christmas week. A rabbit ran near 
a disused well, dry, 90 feet in depth, carelessly 
covered with an old gate and thorns. The dog 
in its pursuit after the rabbit fell into the well. 
A Mr. Joseph Yarwood (for his name is worth 
recording) volunteered to save the dog. 
Ladders were procured and securely fastened 
together, and Mr. Yarwood descended. His 
candle, owing to foul air, was extinguished; he 
lit it again. Lower down the air was purer. 
He secured the dog and brought him safely to 
the surface. Doggie at once picked up the 
scent of the rabbit, and followed in pursuit of 
the scent none the worse for his five hours* 
incarceration—it took that to prepare and get 
the ladders, etc. 
The Maori Hen. 
( Ocydromus .) 
[From the official report of Richard Henry, caretaker of 
Resolution Island, to the Government of New Zealand.] 
Among the many extraordinary forms of life 
found in New Zealand, one of the oddest is a 
rail known as the weka, woodhen or maori hen. 
It is peculiar to that region and is singular in its 
makeup, physical and mental. 
It will be remembered that the introduction 
into New Zealand of various predaceous animals 
has resulted in many localities in the extermina¬ 
tion of such extraordinary flightless birds as 
the kiwi or apteryx, the kakapo or ground owl 
and the maori hen. Since predaceous mammals 
were absent from New Zealand until after its 
discovery by the whites, many of its birds appear 
to have lost the power of flight and to have 
learned to escape from their enemies either by 
their swiftness of foot or by nocturnal habits 
loon’s nest at hogan's lake, june 4. 
which conceal them from enemies which seek 
their food by day. 
Some years ago the threatened extinction of 
some of these flightless forms led the New Zea¬ 
land Government to set aside one or more small 
islands off the coast as reservations where these 
endangered forms might be preserved. On the 
reservation as known as Resolution Island, Rich¬ 
ard Henry was stationed as care taker and he 
has reported to the Provincial Government many 
interesting observations on these flightless birds, 
some of which have from time to time been 
printed in Forest and Stream. His remarks on 
the maori hen are interesting and odd : 
We have cleared most of the little peninsula 
on which our house stands, and now it is a 
favorite place for the woodhens, but they do 
not like each other’s company, and there are 
seldom more than two to be seen at once, though 
there are half a dozen occasional visitors. They 
often treat 11s to some spirited races across the 
open, and are no mean runners when assisted 
by their wings, but all seem to be so well 
matched that they generally run dead heats. If 
there happens to be one a little slow, it is sure 
to be minus its tail, which is not of much ac¬ 
count anyway, yet they seem to think a great 
deal of it, for the pulling of a feather is sure 
to bring on a fight, very fierce at first, but quickly 
dying away into threatening attitudes and vari¬ 
ous grunts which may represent bad language. 
The championship appears to be awarded more 
for courage than muscle, because the smallest 
hen, when she was thinking of nesting, would 
hunt away all the others, both males and fe¬ 
males, except her mate, with whom she was gen¬ 
erally friendly, but not always so. Those were 
the only pair here mated throughout the winter, 
and the only pair that would sing in concert. 
The male is our pet, and we call him “Chicken.” 
Out of all the others we hardly heard a chir¬ 
rup until about the 16th of July, when several 
of the old widows became quite musical all at 
once and vied with each other in calling the 
loudest and the fastest. Then, to our surprise, 
we heard by the lower note and slower tune of 
one that it was a male. This one came to our 
place in a most disreputable rig-out of half- 
moulted feathers, so I called it “Scrag.” It was 
a weakly, poor thing, and one of the hens used 
to thrash it and hunt it away. That is why I 
thought it a widow, though it had the stronger 
beak and legs of a male. Llowever, I gave it a 
few good dinners of boiled fish, and it soon 
plucked up courage and learned to know the 
rattle of the lid on the dog’s pot, and would 
come up carefully for a share. The dog seemed 
to notice that they only took little bits and he 
soon disregarded them, so that now when I 
spread out fish on a stone it is common to see 
a weka on one side and a dog on the other and 
both quite contented. \ 
With better times and a grand new coat, Scrag 
actually captivated the hen that used to hunt 
him about so contemptuously. Then he started 
a series of fights with Chicken, and kept them 
up for several days, until both had lost nearly 
all the pretty feathers on their heads, and 
Chicken was obliged to give up part of his do¬ 
main, retaining the house and Sandy Bay, while 
Scrag has Boatshed Beach. The boundary is a 
bunch of fallen timber, and they keep it fairly 
well, only Scrag is tempted up to the house 
sometimes for scraps, when he knows he is 
poaching, and will run with whatever he gets 
and eat it on his own ground. Chicken often 
hunts him to the boundary, but Scrag will not 
run a yard past it, so that they often have a fight 
down there, but nothing very serious. They 
jump up and kick like common fowl, but the 
claws are very weak, and can have no effect 
on such tough hides as theirs, and their wings 
are soft arid fluffy, and only useful to hide their 
heads when down at the end of a round. The 
beak is the weapon, and the head the only place 
they aim at, so that there is a lot of shaping 
and fencing for very little bloodshed; in fact, 
their whole aim appears to be to disfigure each 
other by plucking the feathers that contribute 
most to personal appearances. At all events that 
is the result of their battles. If Chicken was 
fighting for a mate now, he would have no 
chance at all, for he looks so scrubby about the 
head that no self-respecting maori hen would 
look at him. The hens seem to have the same 
object in view when they fight, and it is equally 
effective. There was a pretty little hen here 
until she got her head plucked and lost all her 
good looks, and now she is always calling for 
a mate, but apparently cannot find one. This is 
{Continued on page 631.) 
