

AvuG. 24, 1907.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 


_ An August Walk. 
Tue breeze that whirls down from the north, 
tossing the full-leaved branches of oak and 
chestnut and whistling about the house corners 
with the sound of a winter gale, has in it the 
sharp tang of September. Along the hedgerow, 
where commonly a tiny meadow brook pours its 
placid current, stand the tall spires of the 
gorgeous cardinal flower which tells us that 
summer is ended. Here and there the vines 
of the Virginia creeper are patched with red. 
Pastures and stubbles are sere and brown. All 
these are signs of autumn. It is the last of 
August—flocking time for the birds. 
For weeks the telegraph wires have borne 
rows of swallows which for most of the day 
circle unceasingly over the meadows in their 
search for food. Lately, too, the kingbirds have 
been flying about with the swift soaring sweep 
so characteristic of their last days with us. 
Robins and a horde of sparrows of many sorts 
are getting together in loose companies, and as 
you walk through the rye stubble they get up 
all about and scurry to the hedgerow where the 
naked limbs of some dead wild cherry are dotted 
with dark spots as if it were suddenly become 
loaded with some strange fruit. In the edge 
of the woods crows are loudly talking to each 
other, and perhaps two or three families may 
noisily sally out across the lots and alight in 
some great oak or elm that stands alone in a 
fence corner, and there continue their clamorous 
debate. 
Though the sun is fiercely hot, yet the breeze 
blows cool, and you may climb to the top of 
the hill from which the eye covers a wide’ pros- 
pect of familiar country, over which in days 
gone by you have tramped with rod or gun, 
alone or with some friend tried and true, who 
perhaps has gone on before, and with whom in 
this life you will not again look for the quail 
or try to circumvent the wily grouse. 
Away to the north is the strip of woodland 
through which flows the trout brook from whose 
dark waters you have taken many a noble fish. 
Alas, to-day, it would barely yield you a few 
fingerlings had you the’ heart to whip its al- 
most barren waters. Through those same woods 
in the heats of summer—in the old days -of 
summer woodcock shooting—in crisp November 
and in biting December weather, with a_ suc- 
cession of dogs many good, one or two worth- 
less, and one the best dog that ever was, you 
have worked and sweated and shivered and 
frozen and—forgotten weather and all other dis- 
comforts, in the tense excitement of the point, 
the approach, the rise and the shot. Many a 
good bird has fallen before you in that piece of 
woods and its swamps. Why, some seasons you 
knew just where each bird was certain to be 
found; yet often day after day went by when 
you would go after them without getting a shot, 
the cunning birds seeming to learn your ways 
as fast as you learned theirs. And even when 
your luck was best, you were always careful to 
leave in these woods birds. enough to insure the 
next season’s crops. 
From this hill, too, may be seen that other 
hill where, in the old days of night shooting, 
you used to go on cloudy nights when the moon 
was right, to wait for the ducks, and even the 
geese to fly over on the way to their feeding 
grounds. Sometimes you would get no shots 
at all, at others half a dozen in a night, and 
sometimes a shot was followed by the thump 
of a heavy body striking the ground, and then 
would come the long search for the fallen bird 
and the triumphant return home with a duck 
or two, or even.a goose. 
There, too, is the river, bordered by fresh 
meadows where once there were snipe, on 
which, too, we used to haul the shad nets in the 
days when there were shad, before the acids 
and other factory waste from the little manu- 
facturing towns had destroyed all fish life in the 
stream. A few rail still breed on these mea- 
dows and, when the first frosts come, are joined 
by migrants of their kind, so that some weeks 
hence, each day at the approach of high water. 
the river will be dotted with boats conveying 
gunners to the rail grounds. 
Familiar and beautiful the miles and miles of 
landscape stretch out on all sides of this tall 
| 

WILD 
DUCKS ON 
Picture by Miss 
hill, and call up to the mind a thousand memories 
sad and sweet—of scenes and associations of 
long ago, which, by as much as they are more 
distant, seem by so much to be better than those 
of to-day. 
The homeward way leads through a swamp 
where now all the brooks are dry, save one, near 
whose banks, as we approach them, rises a par- 
tridge, and then another and another, until the 
mother and ten or a dozen well grown young 
have taken wing and swiftly scaled off through 
the tree trunks. At an open spot where two 
giant chestnuts, overthrown by some hurricane 
of bygone years, have carried down with them 
all the smaller growth, there is a scene of active 
bird life above the tangle that grows about the 
fallen tree trunks. A sound of rapping on wood 
tells that a woodpecker is somewhere near, and 
presently a downy comes into view on the up- 
right stem of a birch, and after a few inquiring 
taps passes on to another tree. From a nearby 
water hole two young catbirds, lank, draggled 
and wet, mount one of the branches of the fallen 
trees and sit there drying themselves and ar- 
ranging their plumage. A flash at one side 
shows a redstart darting about the prostrate 
trunk, her yellow and olive plumage and _ her 
never ending activity making her conspicuous. 
Without warning a black and white striped bird 
flashes out of the forest, alights sideways on a 
maple, and begins to work its way upward and 
around it. It is a black and white creeper, 
familiar enough during the migrations, yet not 
so often seen in summer. 
And so home again. On the close-shaved 
meadows near the house the barn swallows are 
still swinging in wide circles, and the pup runs 
mad races in his endeavors to overtake them 
as they pass close to him, almost—but never 
quite—within seizing distance. 

‘ American Arms Collection. 
GrEAT interest is being taken in the Boone 
and Crockett Club’s collection of American hunt- 
ing weapons and paraphernalia now being gotten 
together, and not a few articles have been of- 
fered to it, which, to the average sportsman of 
to-day, will seem most curious and antiquated. 
Mention has already been made of an old Hud- 
son’s Bay fuke, whose flintlock is still in such 
good condition that when snapped it showers 
about sparks worthy of a Fourth of July ex- 
hibition, and of two or three old Hawkins rifles, 
which go back to the earlier half of the last 
century. 
An interesting though more or modern 
arm is a heavy Remington target gun forwarded 
to the collection by Mr. Frederick J. Davis, of 
Owego, N. Y. Of it Mr. Davis says: “This 
gun was used by my father in his life time at 
turkey shoots, and he was usually successful in 
winning the greatest number of turkeys with 
it, so that he and the gun had the reputation 
hereabouts of being the crack shot and the crack 
gun respectively at all turkey shoots, I well 
less 
LAKE 


) 
WORTH, 
Bie. 
FLORIDA, 
Reber. 
remember that in order to shoot it my father 
would first strap it down to a long plank that 
had an iron crook on the end of it which he 
would hook over another plank which was sta- 
tionary and then fire. This precaution was 
necessary, for if fired from the shoulder it would 
probably amputate that part of the anatomy from 
the body, the recoil being so great. I never 
have had the temerity to shoot the gun, and 
im glad if it can find a resting place in this 
laudable collection.” 
Another arm offered is a squirrel rifle, one 
of those which has the straight hammer, and 
with hammer and nipple both on the lower side 
of the barrel. Besides this there is a variety 
of obsolete breechloading guns, each one no 
doubt in its day capable of efficient work, but 
all now superseded by arms of greater precision 
and greater power. 
A collection such as this when completed will 
show the evolutionary steps by which firearms 
have been improved from the old bell-muzzled 
musketoon of our ancestors three hundred years 
ago to the modern arm which sends a piece of 
metal thick than a lead pencil a mile or 
a mile and a half to the mark. Such a collection 
will contain, too, those primitive arms used by 
our Indian predecessors which in their day of 
sparse population and enormous abundance of 
game fulfilled their owners’ needs, but which 
were hopelessly inefficient when compared with 
the noisy firearms of the white invaders. 
It is to be hoped that readers of Forest AND 
STREAM will be moved to contribute to this col- 
lection such obsolete firearms and such other old 
time hunting relics as they possess. All of them 
should have a place in such a collection. 
As has been said before, the collection is not 
confined to firearms. One contribution that has 
been made is a complete old time suit of buck- 
skin clothing, consisting of shirt, trousers and 
coat, elaborately fringed and beaded and trimmed 
with red cloth and beaver fur. This clothing 
was made for the donor by a Snake woman in 
the Rocky Mountains nearly forty years 
Two sportsmen, each of whom has in his 
session a beautiful powder horn carried 150 or 
200 years ago by well known Indian heroes, have 
expressed a willingness to loan these horns to 
the collection. 
The object of this collection is so good a one 
that it ought to appeal to every reader of Forest 
AND STREAM, and it may be hoped that each 
one who possesses any object that might fitly 
be exhibited here will feel disposed to donate, 
or at least to loan, the object to the collection. 
less 
ago. 
pe S- 
The Wild Ducks of Lake Worth. 
West PAaLtm BeAcH, Fla., has a law protecting 
the game of Lake Worth within a mile of the 
town limits. The wild ducks, the pelicans and 
other birds have become very tame, and are an 
attraction to resident and tourist alike. The 
photograph is by Miss B. C. Reber, 

