Fez. 17, 1906. ] 


the aid of his marvelous bill—an instrument as 
sensitive as a tooth though hard as a nail, that 
clips like shears, and, as a probe, is unapproach- 
able by the surgeon’s best tool. It is true that 
he sometimes takes account of things hot through 
the medium of his feet, as when once he flew into 
the kitchen, alighted on the range, and then 
went hurriedly out at the window with melan- 
choly cawing; but with one more item of wisdom 
to his credit. 
Holes, holes, holes; these are the objects of 
his deepest and most constant inquiries. Is it a 
hole in a stump, the mouth of a bottle, a rent in 
a handkerchief, a buttonhole, a fissure in a rock, 
a crack in the earth, his owner’s nostrils or ear 
orifices. Any solution of continuity in the face 
of nature is enough to suggest hidden mysteries 
that Jim must discover, else he may be noting 
these crannies in provident moments and days of 
plenty as suitable places for storage against bit- 
ing times of scarcity and want. A handkerchief 
with a hole in it spread upon the ground will 
furnish him long and serious employment in pull- 
ing bits of grass, stones or roots through the 
hole, and each piece he will hold up for a mo- 
ment with a grave and satisfied air of “how is 
this for a successful find.” 
Of some of the holes that he has explored 
round about the premises he makes frequent use 
for hiding the treasures that come in his way; 
and I may add that as a collector, he is not a 
specialist. In a stump in the back yard hé stored 
the following objects: A bit of white china, sev- 
eral pieces of colored glass, a horse’s tooth, a 
gumbo fruit, a white necktie, bits of paper and 
a butter ball. Single articles are often stuck 
about in secret places apparently for the purpose 
of affording him pleasant surprises upon refind- 
ing them. Jim and I were once standing on a 
large rock near the house when I espied a safety 
pin that he had doubtless stolen and carried to 
the spot. He saw me pick it up and at once flew 
to my hand, seized the pin and with a very guilty 
air hastily passed it into his pouch out of sight. 
He then tried to hide it in several different 
cracks in the rock, moving away a few steps each 
time only to return and try a new place, and, as 
no crack was to be found quite to his liking, he 
carried it off to a tuft of weeds nearby into 
which he thrust it deep down and then tearing 
off mouthfuls of grass, leaves and small sticks, 
covered it all over and returned to my hand con- 
tented and ready for new diversions. 
B. W. Barton. 
[TO BE CONCLUDED. | 
Natural Enemies. 
WHAT is a natural enemy? Is the hawk the 
natural enemy of the sparrow? A _ philosopher 
might say no, since the hawk desires to eat the 
sparrow and that shows love; moreover, that it 
is good for the sparrow to be eaten. 
This would certainly be a specious defense of 
the alleged cruelty which prevails so generally in 
the realm of nature. However, it is pretty certain 
that the motive of the so called natural enmity 
among birds and animals is nothing more than a 
lust of appetite. But there is at least one notori- 
ous exception. It is the case of the dog and the 
cat. Now the dog does not desire to eat the cat 
and yet he cannot behold her without immediately 
going on the warpath. Can anyone explain this? 
Some people, perhaps, will say that it is because 
the nature of the dog is so radically different 
from that of the cat; in other words, because the 
honesty and faithfulness of the one is so antipa- 
thetic to the slyness and fickleness of the other. 
But this will not do, for we cannot suppose the 
dog, with all his intelligence, to be a reader of 
character. 
Other people, perhaps, will say that because of 
the extra attention which is shown to the cat in 
the domestic circle the dog has grown jealous. 
There is, indeed, no doubt that the cat is the reci- 
pient of favor to which the dog is a stranger. A 
seat by the fireside, to mention nothing else, is 
ever open to the one, while the other is only too 
familiar with the inhospitable injunction “Get 
out!” (Such is the advantage of being on the 
right side of the women). Here again, however, 
we must demur We do not believe that the dog 
PORE SteaeaND SEREAM. 

is jealous of the cat. A dog may be jealous of a 
dog but never of acat. Finally, people of a scien- 
tific turn of mind, who have read Darwin, may 
say that the natural enmity of the dog for the cat 
is only the survival of a primitive congenital con- 
dition, or that being by instinct a hunter he sees 
something to hunt about the house and hunts it. 
But he doesn’t hunt the goat, nor the pig, nor 
the calf when these happen to be about the house, 
too. And if not, why not? 
The fact seems to be this. The dog is the 
enemy of the cat because the latter can escape 
from him so easily. -It is not at all certain that 
before their domestication they were enemies, for 
what dog that could feast on a nice fat buck or 
rabbit would care to eat a cat? No, but of course 
there was no love lost between them, and when 
chance brought them together in the human habi- 
tation their lack of sympathy displayed itself. If 
then, however, the cat had been unable to escape 
when pursued, the dog doubtless after his good- 
natured fashion would have made friends with 
her and all would have been peace between them 
thenceforward. But as according to the Spanish 
proverb the ant has wings to its sorrow, so the 
cat has a capacity for climbing which has se- 
cured for her the perpetual enmity of the dog. It 
exasperates him to the highest pitch to find that 
his quarry can elude him so easily and effectually 
by running up a tree or a wall. If the quarry 
then were invisible, like a rabbit that takes to a 
hole, the dog’s rage would not be near so great. 
But there sits the cat in full view, perfectly as- 
sured of her security. However loud or violent 
the demonstrations made against her, she moves 
not, but merely spits and makes faces, exhibiting 
contempt if ever an animal did. We can under- 
stand the dog’s feelings. Nay, we can even sym- 
pathize with him and say that here surely enmity 
is a most natural thing. FRANK Moonan., 
The Woodcock Carrying its Young. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
I have been much interested in reading in 
ForEST AND STREAM about the carrying of their 
young by woodcock. This brings to mind that 
eight years ago, as I was kneeling down in the 
woods a couple of miles from Raleigh to drink 
water from a stream, 1 saw what seemed like a 
lightwood knot on the ground move a little bit, 
and then holding myself very still saw it was a 
woodcock, which, with a rather quick motion, 
after having turned its head right and left, so 
that the light fairly glinted upon its protuberant 
eyeballs, gathered a youngster between its thighs 
and went down the branch, probably fifty yards, 
though perhaps not quite so far, and _ then 
dropped. I watched the whole proceeding with 
a great deal of interest. Thé bird flew slowly 
and was, at the time of starting, certainly not 
over twelve feet from me, so that I could see the 
whole proceedings. The little bird was like a 
little ball of fluff and of a rather different color 
from its mother. It understood how to obey or- 
ders and to be carried without making a_ kick, 
which is a good deal more than a lot of human 
youngsters know how to do. I would not trou- 
ble the mother bird by going up to the _ spot 
where she had alighted, and so saw her no more. 
Frep. A. OLDs. 
Ways of the Weasel. 
New York, Feb. 10—Editor Forest and 
Stream; May I contribute almost my only ob- 
servation on the weasel to the interesting notes 
on this animal which you are printing? 
A good many years ago I resided in the town 
of Milford, Conn., and often having business in 
New Haven, frequently rode over on horseback. 
Trolley cars had not then been invented. 
One afternoon in summer, while riding west- 
ward, I saw a half-grown rabbit cross the dusty 
road ahead of me and disappear in the bushes 
on the other side. This was almost at once fol- 
lowed by a weasel, which, after running part way 
across the road stopped and turned, running first 
in one direction and then in another, as if uncer- 
tain what to do, or as if looking fot a trail, as 
he undoubtedly was. By this time I was quite 
close to the animal, and realizing that he was 
263 
hunting the rabbit that had just passed, I stopped 
a moment to watch him. 
The weasel did not waste much time trying to 
puzzle out the trail on the light dry dust, but— 
just as a hound would have done—made several 
casts about the point where he had lost the trail, 
each one being a wider circle than the one before. 
Finally he disappeared on the side of the road to 
which the rabbit had gone, and almost at once I 
heard a rustling in the grass and the rabbit 
darted out and recrossed the road. I watched it, 
and it seemed to me that it had gone only eight 
or ten feet into the bushes when it stopped. AI- 
most at once the weasel reappeared at the edge 
of the road and again huntd for the trail, as he 
had done before, again found it, and presently 
I heard and saw the rabbit start off, but, of 
course, pursuer and pursued were almost at once 
lost to sight and hearing. 
Whatever small point there may be to this tale 
of mine lies in its confirmation of the already 
generally acknowledged fact that weasels follow 
their prey by scent. If the weasels do this, why 
not all the other members of the weasel family? 
MILForp, 

Conjugal Fidelity of the Moose. 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
In Mr. E. T. Seton’s excellent and fascinating 
article on “The Moose and his Antlers’ in this 
month’s Scribner’s, which is full of information 
but wisely avoids dogmatic pronouncements, he 
SAVS toe ely moose that is mated will rarely reply 
to a calling cow,’ It is possible that this state- 
ment, taken broadly, is correct, but I would like 
to say that I know a number of well authenti- 
cated instances where the bull not only answered 
a cow-call but came to it followed by his “old 
lady” and one or both of her spring calves. One 
of these instances took place last October near 
Milford, in Annapolis county, Nova Scotia. Sam 
Glode, a Micmac, was calling for his party in the 
evening when a bull answered and came to the 
call. It was rather dark when the sportsmen saw 
a moose entering the water some sixty yards off 
and opened fire on it. Simultaneously they heard 
the renewed answer of a bull behind them, that 
went crashing off to one side. The first animal 
felleasait left the water on the other side of an 
arm of the lake and proved, to the disgust of the 
huntsmen, to be a cow, while the bull had cir- 
cled slightly and thus avoided death, the cow hav- 
ing come straight down to the shore and not fol- 
lowing her lord when he turned. It was evi- 
dently a case of a harum-scarum young husband 
running off after another girl, while. the “old 
cae followed, either from habit or to defend her 
rights, 
“Although I have heard of several such cases I 
am unfortunately not able to say what happened, 
or would happen, at the meeting of the bull and 
the two cows, but my confidence in the marital 
fidelity of Alces americanus is somewhat shaken. 
EpWArp BrEcK. 
Feb. 4. 
Was it a Wolf? 
Mito... Jan. 27. —Editor Forest and Stream: 
In your Jan. 27 number is a picture of a gray 
wolf killed in Alaska, that reminds me of some- 
thing that happened when I was a boy of seven- 
teen years. 
My brother and a youngster named Jennings 
came home with what they said was a dog, lead- 
ing him by a stout twine. Young Jenning rs kept 
that dog, as he called it, for two or three weeks 
tied in a coal shed. He was a gray animal and 
his upper jaw protruded about one and one-half 
inches over his lower jaw, if I rightly remember. 
I never heard the animal bark, but he would 
fight a dog and go after him without any other 
noise than a fierce sort of a growl. I know this, 
as we boys tried to get him to fight any dog we 
saw. Some he would fight and others he would 
have nothing to do with. 
He got away one night and a few days after he 
was shot by a man by the name of Hunt, who 
said it was a gray wolf. I understand it was 
skinned and mounted. This picture reminded me 
of that animal, and I thought I would tell you 
about it. Wake 
Boston, Mass., 
