
AUG. 3, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 

only place I ever found crinkle root was in a 
maple grove on the flats, but little above the 
river bottom. It grew along a rail fence which 
separated the grove from the cultivated fields. 
We only found it along this fence and in no 
other part of the grove and used to eat it with 
a relish. 
It had a peppery taste not unlike a radish, but 
was entirely different from the radish in form, 
it being white and sometimes as large as a lead 
pencil. We called it crinkle root because of its 
crinkly shape, each joint being about an inch long 
and taking a different direction from the adjoin- 
ing ones, and could be found as long as a lead 
pencil. I have not heard the name since those 
long bygone days, when all the woods, fields and 
fence corners were being explored by our boyish 
eyes, and supposed it was merely a local name 
' given it by the boys because of its peculiar form. 
The grove has long since been cuit away and I 
presume the crinkle root has ceased to exist in 
that locality, as.I never found it elsewhere. 
Louis F. DRAKE. 
A Plucky Robin. 
New York, July 17.—Editor Forest and 
Stream: Most of us who watth the birds, es- 
pecially in the cities, have seen the unspeakable 
English sparrow tagging about over the grass 
in the wake of the robin foraging for worms, 
and have seen the sparrow when the robin se- 
cured a worm, snatch the prey from him and 
fly off with it; the robin standing there ‘looking 
like a fool. There is, however, one robin in the 
world that has a little spirit, and this is how I 
know of it. 
The other night, sitting on the piazza, I saw 
a robin hop from the grass to the driveway with 
a small worm in its mouth, and almost imme- 
diately a sparrow flew down and alighted with- 
in a foot of the robin and hopped closer to it. 
Did the robin tamely submit to be robbed? Not 
at all. He put down his head, erected the feath- 
ers of head and neck and made a rush for the 
sparrow, still holding on to his worm. The spar- 
row dodged, but the robin turned and made an- 
other rush at him, and the sparrow flew off two 
or three feet, alighted and again advanced to- 
ward the robin. Again when he had come close 
to the robin the latter dropped his head and 
charged. the sparrow again. This happened a 
number of times, the sparrow being very per- 
sistent and the robin not less so. At last the 
sparrow gave it up for a bad job and flew away, 
This is the first time I have ever seen any ex- 
hibition of wit or courage by a robin. I have 
always felt sympathy for them when they were 
robbed by these little pirates, but they have 
always seemed so stupid about it that I felt as 
if they deserved to lose their property. 
OBSERVER. 

The Okapi. 
In June the London Field commented as fol- 
lows on a specimen of the okapi, then being 
mounted by Rowland Ward: 
“oD 
By the courtesy of Rowland Ward we have 
had the opportunity of inspecting a’ specimen of 
this very rare animal, the mounting of which 
has just been completed. The skin was obtained 
by native hunters in the Ituri forest, whence 
came the fine male presented by Major Powell- 
Cotton to the Natural History Museum. A 
somewhat different attitude has been given to this 
animal, the head and neck not being so much de- 
pressed. The specimen, as shown by the teeth, 
is quite adult, and the skull is of the wide type. 
The sex cannot be determined with certainty, but 
in the opinion of an eminent naturalist the animal 
was a female. There are no horns, but indica- 
tions of their position are present in the shape 
of small prominences on the face. The general 
hue of the coat is less bright than in other speci- 
mens which have reached this country, and there 
are slight differences in the limb and flank strip- 
ing. This makes the sixth okapi in Great 
3ritain; of these three (presented by Sir Harry 
Johnstone, Major Powell-Cotton, and Capt. Boyd 
Alexander) are in the Natural History Museum; 
the Hon. Walter Rothschild has one at Tring, 
and there is one in the Royal Scottish Museum 
at Edinburgh. Another, also mounted by Row- 

A WEASEL 
WITH 
A curious case of a stoat which, while young, had 
behind, but judging from its condition the stoat was evidently able to capture a 
of game to keep it well supplied with food.— Fro 
purchased for an American 
Continental museums are in- 
debted to the King of the Belgians, and the finest 
collection of these animals is to be seen in the 
Congo Museum at Tervueren, near Brussels.” 
In a more recent issue the Field gives this ad- 
ditional informatien: 
“The Natural History Museum has just received 
a third mounted specimen of the okapi, which was 
exhibited for the first time at the conversazione 
of the Royal Geographical Society on June 14. It 
was obtained during the Alexander Gosling Ex- 
pedition on the Welle River, at Angu, in the 
land Ward, was 
museum. Various 
Rubi district of the northern frontier of the 
Congo Free State, and was presented to the 
museum by Mr. Boyd Alexander. It has been 
mounted in a posture to display to the best ad- 
vantage the enormous ears, which are such a 
characteristic feature of the genus. The speci- 
men is a male, and exhibits the small bare. tips 
to the antlers, which are not developed in the 
one presented by Major Powell-Cotton. As re- 
eards markings, the new specimen differs from 
both the others in the museum, which also differ 
inter se. In the original specimen presented by 
Sir Harry Johnston there are large white ‘knee- 
caps’; these are smaller in the Alexander okapl, 
and are altogether wanting in Major Powell-Cot- 
ton’s example. From both the others the new 
specimen differs in that the black stripe down the 
front of the fore cannon-bone stops short of the 
black hoof-band. The importance to be attached 
to these and other differences, and likewise their 
local constancy or otherwise; still awaits deter- 
mination, Alongside the animal was exhibited 
specimens of the leaves on which it is reported to 
feed. These leaves, which are very large, are re- 
ferred to two'species of Phrynium, a genus of 
the Marantacee, or arrowroot tribe. It may be 
mentioned that in ‘The Treasury of Botany,’ 1876, 
Phrynium is stated to be an Asiatic and Ameri- 
can genus of plants, although it is represented by 
some thirty species in tropical Africa.” 

A Bird Census. 
Tue State Laboratory of Natural History has 
lately issued a bulletin under the title “An Orni- 
thological Cross Section of Illinois in Autumn,” 
written by its director, S. A. Forbes. It gives 
the kinds and numbers of birds found by two 
expert observers, Mr. A. O. Gross and Mr..H. 
A. Ray, in crossing the State on foot in Sep- 
tember and October from the Indiana line to 
Quincy, on the Mississippi River. The data of 
these observations are so tabulated and dis- 
ONLY TWO LEGS. 
been caught in a trap by its forelegs. These it left 
sulfrcient amount 
m the County Gentleman. 
cussed as to present a complete summary of the 
total bird population of a strip 150 feet wide and 
192 miles long, amounting to about five and 
one-half square miles in total area and taken as 
a sample cross-section of central Illinois. ; 
Forty-eight hundred birds were tound on this 
sample strip, two-thirds of them English spar- 
rows and about one-sixth of the remainder crow 
blackbirds. The next most abundant species 
were meadow lar crows, cowbirds, horned 
larks and mourning doves, ranging in the order 
named from about Io per cent. to 6 per cent. Oo! 
the whole number of native birds seen on the 
trip. 
Ninety-three kinds 

<S, 
of birds were identified in 
all, but 80 per cent. of the individuals yelonged 
to only fifteen of the. species. These fifteen 
species taken together numbered 728 birds 
the square mile, while the other seventy-e:ght 
species numbered in all only 130 to the 
mile.—From fhe University of Illinois Bulletin. 
to 

square 

Fly-Catching Woodpeckers. 
In Forest AND STREAM of May 9, 
printed a note from our old correspondent, Mr. 
J. L. Davison, now summering in Norway, which 
answers a question recently asked by Mary Bae 
Samuels. Mr, Davison’s note was written from 
Lockport, N. Y., and was dated April 20. He 
says: \ 
‘During the past week while standing in front 
of my house I saw a bird fly from the trunk of 
a tree a few-feet and return. At first I thought 
it was one of the fly-catchers, but.on walking up 
within twenty. feet of the tree I saw that the 
bird was a hairy woodpecker (Dryobates vil- 
losus), and to my surprise it went through the 
game motion as at first attracted my attention, 
qgeain returning to the same tree. I saw that 
it had caught an insect of some kind and after 
eating, it again repeated the performance, only 
that it few much further than a rod to 
its prey and alighted on the next tree beside the 
walk. In trying to get near enough to see what 
it had caught I frightened him (it was a male 
bird)’ and he took his captive to other fields to 
1896, was 
secure 
devour. I have often seen the English spat 
rows imitate the fly-catchers by taking small 
moths on the wing. I have never before seen 
one of the Picide family in the fly-catcher role.” 

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supply you regularly. 

