CHAPTER IV. OHIO--HER BEASTS, BIRDS, AND TREES: AIDS TO HIGHER

CIVILIZATION.

BEASTS.

In the absence of native beasts, birds, and trees, a country is unfitted for the habitation of man. Nature had given to Ohio these supports to life and aids to civilization in great abundance.

The Indian was not inclined to improve his “talents,” still he was exceedingly kind, through instinct or wisdom, in preserving in nature’s superlative beauty things necessary for the coming man.

Of the various wild animals in Ohio, no one species has ever shown greater numerical strength than the gray squirrel. In the early settlements, he often annoyed his new neighbors with his mischievous habits and petty larcenies; nevertheless, the pioneer was generally pleased to see him, as at all seasons he was good for a savory meal.

At times these little animals became so numerous and destructive to crops they were more to be feared than is the rabbit in California or grasshopper in Kansas. For many years, settlers were obliged to guard their fields when planted with corn, or droves of foraging bands would dig up the hills and eat the growing grains; when the crops matured, they were still more destructive, and boys when quite young were taught to handle the rifle, and when employed as guards became expert marksmen. Most every one old enough to use a gun could put a ball through the head of a squirrel three times in five or better on the topmost boughs of the lofty hardwood timber which covered the face of the country.

The amount of forest was so extensive and undisturbed that the squirrel at times increased to a degree which made him disastrous to crops in spite of guards, guns, traps, and “deadfalls,” and caused him to become a subject for legislation, encouraging his destruction by obligations and rewards. When becoming too numerous, and subsistence scarce, they migrate to other parts, and often in numbers so great it would require many days for the marching column of several miles in width to pass any given point. The Ohio river was a favorable place to capture and kill them, as they arrived on shore weak and wet. Many were drowned in the attempt to swim. The inhabitants along the river at such times made it a business to kill them by wagon loads to feed and fatten hogs.

The country through which an army of this kind marched left nothing out doors in the way of subsistence. The first migration of this kind causing serious alarm occurred in 1807 directly after corn-planting; and in all the southern counties of the state, it became impossible to guard the fields, and continued so long that the corn crop was a failure over a large extent of country, and farmers were obliged to buy grain for bread.

The legislature was appealed to, and a statute enacted the same year, making it imperative for every person within the state, subject to the payment of tax, to furnish a specified number of squirrel scalps, to be determined by the trustees of the township, whose duty it was to give the lister the number required from each individual. This was intended as a tax in addition to other taxes, making the penalty for refusal or neglect the same as that of a delinquent tax-payer. And a non-tax-payer, and tax-payers furnishing scalps in excess of the required number, were entitled to two cents per scalp, to be paid from the funds of the county. But, with all the boys and guns and other devices for destruction to keep the number down to a minimum, the usual amount seemed but little changed, and squirrel raids continued, occasionally, all the same.

A good story is told by an old lumberman, who, in the early days of steamboating on the Ohio river, contracted to deliver on board of steamboat one hundred thousand shingles at a “wood-landing” of one of the river counties in Ohio. The shingles were stacked on the bank of the river ready for shipment. A few days after, the lumberman heard most of his “stuff” had been stolen, and that it was probable it had gone to Pittsburg. On receiving this unwelcome news, he drove down to the river to look after the condition of things. Before he reached the place he found the woods alive with squirrels marching toward the river.

On his return the workmen asked what discoveries were made. The reply was, “The shingles never went to Pittsburg;” “they all went down the river, and it is useless to look in Pittsburg or any other place for them.”... “I got to the river just in time to know all about it. You see, the squirrels are marching and crossing the river at that point; and the commanding general is not much on a swim, and he carried one of my shingles down to the water and rode over on it, and every colonel, captain, lieutenant and commissioned and non-commissioned officer did what they saw their general do, and finally the rank and file made a raid, and I got there just as an old squirrel came down to the water dragging a shingle, which he shoved into the river, jumped upon it, raised his brush for a sail and went over high and dry; and when near enough the other shore leaped off and let his boat float down the stream. As soon as these observations were taken in, I went up on the high bank where the shingles had been stored, and found there was not a shingle left--they are down the river, gentlemen--down the river, sure.”

This story receives a shadow of support from the learned and cautious Buffon, who observes: “Although the navigations of the grey squirrels seem almost incredible, they are attested by so many witnesses that we can not deny the fact.” And in a note on the subject says: “The grey squirrels frequently remove their place of residence, and it not unoften happens that not one can be seen one winter where they were in multitudes the year before; they go in large bodies, and when they want to cross a lake or river they seize a _piece of the bark of a birch or lime, and drawing it to the edge of the water, get upon it, and trust themselves to the hazard of the wind and waves, erecting their tails_ to serve the purpose of _sails_; they sometimes form a fleet of three or four thousand, and if the wind proves too strong, a general shipwreck ensues ... but if the winds are favorable they are certain to make their desired port.”[18]

The squirrel is an industrious and sagacious animal. He lays up stores of provisions for future use, and conceals them where others of his kind are unable to find them. And his memory is so perfect, and location of place so unerring, that in dead of winter, and short of a meal, he will quit his warm nest in the hollow limb of some tree, plunge into deep snow and go direct a long distance to the exact spot where months before he had buried a walnut or an acorn, and dig down and get the treasure and return with it to his home.

It was once said, “To number the Bison would be like counting the leaves of the forest”--so, too, the myriads of squirrels that inhabited the unbroken forests of Ohio evidently approached in number the incalculable hosts of buffalo that in the grandeur of their numerical strength swept over the western plains.

The rabbit multiplies six times as fast as the squirrel, yet he has never appeared in such multitudes as that of his bushy-tailed cousin. Happen what may he is, however, always on hand. He loves civilization and prefers the grassy fields, standing corn and sunny hillsides to the wilds of the forests, and is always as ready to care for the waste apples in the orchard as he is to bark around the young trees. He is an annoying tenant--timid by nature and easily captured. Millions are sold in the markets every year, but can not come up in numbers with the squirrel in his palmy days. The “one day’s rabbit shooting” at Lamar, Colo., by two hundred guns, December 31, 1894, resulted in the capture of five thousand one hundred and forty-two (5,142); but compared with a squirrel hunt in Franklin county, Ohio, August 20, 1822, it does not appear so large; when a less number of guns killed nineteen thousand six hundred and sixty; and evidently not a “very good day for squirrels to be out either.”

No part of the North-west, in a state of nature, was so well adapted to the propagation and preservation of game beasts and birds as that within the geographical limits of Ohio. To show the immense amount of large game which also existed long after settlements had been made, it is but necessary to give the results of a single day’s hunt, confined to one township of five miles square, in the county of Medina, December 24, 1818, and which is authentically described by Henry Howe in his “Historical Collections of Ohio,” Vol. II, pages 463 to 467, inclusive: “The accurate enumeration of the game killed at the center (of the drive) resulted as follows: _Seventeen_ wolves, _twenty-one_ bears, _three hundred_ deer, besides _turkeys_, _coons_ and _foxes_ not counted.” The wolf-scalps were good for fifteen dollars each, making a draw on the treasury for two hundred and fifty-five dollars. Many counties in Ohio were not formed nor settled for nearly a quarter of a century after becoming part of the state, and a few much later, the last being that of Noble, in 1851, making in all eighty-eight counties.

Consequently, game of all kinds remained in abundance in Henry, Hancock, Hardin, Lucas, Marion, Noble, Williams, and some others. As late as 1845 two men in Williams county made an effort to see who could kill the greater number of deer, each confining his operations to a single township of his own election. One selected Superior and the other Center township; the hunt to last sixty days.

At the expiration of the time, one had killed ninety-nine and the other sixty-five. The success of neither caused remarks of admiration among the “squirrel hunters,” a few of whom boastingly declared they could show a much greater list in the given time if they were inclined to hunt for quantity.

When the “Reports, Explorations and Surveys” were made to ascertain the most practicable and economical route for a railroad from the Mississippi river to the Pacific ocean, under the direction of the Secretary of War, in 1853 to 1856, the vast public domain was shown to be rich in herds of buffalo, elk, deer, and smaller game of both beasts and birds. It was at this time the bison swarmed over all the Western plains and hills, from the great rivers to the ocean and from Canada to the Gulf in numbers beyond the power of computation.

Of all the quadrupeds known to inhabit the earth, no one species ever marshaled such innumerable armies as that of the American bison. As late as 1871, it was estimated that south of the Union Pacific Railroad line there were between three and four million head. As soon as the road entered the territory the destruction began, and by the reports of the Smithsonian Institution, the miserable “pot-hunters” in 1872 killed over a million and a quarter; and during the first three years after the road was completed this band of thieves and murderers slaughtered over three millions of these valuable animals, taking the hides of some and tongues of others, but leaving untouched where they fell more than half of this immense number. As American game the bison exists no more. The only few remaining out of captivity are at Yellowstone Park.

It is to be regretted that the policy of the government in regard to the natural wealth of the “public domain” has ever shown such a lack of wisdom, forethought, and power as to permit the immediate exhaustion leaving nothing for the legitimate heirs. And it seems singular that such a well known and immense storehouse of national wealth, as that of the buffalo, the annuity of which supported more than thirty thousand natives of the country, should have been left unprotected against those who have destroyed the forests and killed the cattle on a thousand hills.

Governor Isaac I. Stevens, in his report of estimates of the Pacific Railroad in 1854 to Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War, says: “The supplies of meat for all the laborers on this line east of the mountains ... will be furnished from the plains. The _inexhaustible_ herds of buffalo will supply amply the whole force till the road is completed.”

There were at that time twenty-seven known tribes of Indians west of the Missouri river, of which the greater part subsisted by hunting the buffalo; and he says of the hunters from Mouse river valley to the Red river of the North: “They make two hunts each year, leaving a portion of their numbers at home to take care of their houses and farms: One from the middle of June to the middle of August, when they make ‘pemican’ and dry meat, and prepare the skins of buffalo for lodges and moccasins; and again from the middle of September to the middle of November, when, besides the pemican and dried meat, the skin is dried into robes.

“I estimate that four months each year two thousand hunters, three thousand women and children, and eighteen hundred carts are on the plains; and estimating the load of a cart at eight hundred pounds, and allowing three hundred carts for luggage, that twelve hundred tons of meat, skins, and furs is their product of the chase.[19]

“These people are simple-hearted, honest, and industrious, and would make good citizens. Each year they carry off to the settlements at Pembina at least two million five hundred thousand pounds of buffalo meat, dried, or in the shape of pemican.” Large tribes, as the Gros Ventres, Bloods, Piegans, and others, had hunted and feasted for ages without diminishing the number or strength of “the _inexhaustible_ herds of buffalo,” described by Governor Stevens in 1854.

This source of subsistence to a numerous and poor people, and immense wealth to the nation, was wantonly destroyed by the “_pot-hunter_,” who is in no way related to the “squirrel hunter,” but stands in about the same relation to the sportsman as does the “missing link” to the species he disgraces. He is a destructive animal, and it is as useless to hope any species of game, beast or bird, will ever exist in numbers too great for this wily loafer to destroy, as it is to expect legal enactments and penalties will ever prevent him doing evil.

The selfishness that exterminated the buffalo--“_might makes right_”--runs through the veins of the white man. In the same report to the Secretary of War in which Mr. Stevens calls attention of settlers to “many pleasant valleys” that are occupied by “friendly Indians--in some instances described with log houses, cultivated fields, barns, flocks and herds, mills and churches, with good morals and observance of the Sabbath day--that many tribes live in a rich and inviting country, and are wealthy in horses, cattle, and hogs.” He closes by saying: “Laws should be passed for the extinguishment of the Indian title. Posts are recommended with half regiments of mounted men, with a battery of horse artillery, and one of mountain howitzers; that all the Indians west of the mountains ‘should be placed in reservation,’ and the country opened to settlement.”

It is stated that with a small distribution of presents and “prudence, judgment, and _display of a small military force_, no difficulty will be experienced in accomplishing these arrangements so essential to the construction of the road.” And it does not appear that the government protected the rights of those in possession of the “fertile valleys” any more than it did the game it knew gave support to the people inhabiting the country. If the same careless indifference and love of greed that wantonly destroyed the game beasts which existed upon the vast unoccupied domain west of the Mississippi had in like manner forestalled the settlement of the “North-west Territory” by killing all the game, population and civilization would have been suspended if not made improbable within the past century.

The area of Ohio was well supplied with a variety of the most attractive game, fed and marked by Nature as her own, free for all--which made the early settlements contented, independent, and observing. No means of education gives the mind so much satisfaction and confidence in truth and reality as the study of the object lessons received while living in a garden of Nature, an invited guest.

“All self-educated persons,” says Doctor Newman, “are likely to have more thought, more mind, more philosophy, than those who are forced to load their minds with a score of subjects against an examination--who have too much on their hands to indulge in thinking or investigation.... Much better is it for the active and thoughtful intellect ... to eschew the college and university altogether than to submit to a drudgery so ignoble, a mockery so contumelious.

“How much more profitable for the independent mind after the rudiments of education to pursue the train of thought which his mother-wit suggests! How much healthier to wander in the fields, and there with the exiled prince to find

‘Tongues in trees, books in running brooks.’

How much more genuine an education is that of the poor boy in the poem--

‘As the village school and books a few supplied,’

contrived from the beach, and the quay, and fisher’s boat, and the inn’s fireside, and the tradesman’s shop, and shepherd’s walk, and smuggler’s hut, and the mossy moor, and the screaming gulls, and restless waves, to fashion for himself a philosophy and poetry of his own.” Sir Walter Scott long ago declared: “The best part of every man’s education is that which he gives himself.”

This was the nature of the school system in Ohio. The young population grew up among the beasts and birds and trees; each of which in turn served as teacher. Not only the burley bear and nimble deer, but even the pestiferous vermin, were aiders and abettors in education and the rise of the new civilization. The coons, the foxes, the beavers, the otters, minks, muskrats, and skunk, carried _legal tenders_ with them and furnished the chief circulating medium known to the country for many years.

With the trained dog, the boys in the wilderness were enabled to secure pelts to send to Boston for books, which erected the superstructure of more great men than can be found as the production of any other state or country in a single century. And to-day the intelligent squirrel hunter makes a respectful bow to the little animals for the honorable part they so successfully performed in creating the new species and placing Ohio permanently in the lead of a nation of the best informed people in the world.

BIRDS.

“For wheresoe’er your murmuring tremors thrill The woody twilight, there man’s heart hath still Conferred a spirit breath, and heard a ceaseless hymn.”

The number of species of birds found at various times in Ohio amount to two hundred and ninety-two; while the number breeding in the state is placed at one hundred and twenty-nine; and if the probable summer residents are counted the number would be increased to one hundred and seventy-one. An eminent ornithologist says in a recent work: “To cast the horoscope of the bird-life of the future is uncertain work, and perhaps without profit; but the stars certainly predict utter extermination of the finest of all game birds--the wild turkey--and the diminution to the point of extermination of the ruffed grouse, the quail, the wood duck and wild pigeon.”[20]

Game birds as well as song birds would from natural causes alone diminish in number, as their selected homes or breeding places become destroyed by clearing up the country. But in addition to this, the unseasonable and inhuman destruction by means of firearms has become so alarmingly great as to foretell that at no distant day most of the desirable species of birds that are permanent residents will have been destroyed.

It is generally known by the older “Squirrel Hunters” that from their first knowledge of the North-west to beginning of the railroad era, 1855, Ohio was a paradise for the sportsman with dog and gun. The fields abounded with covies of quail; the forests with wild turkeys, grouse, pigeons and squirrels; and the streams with ducks and geese. Up to the period named the conditions of the country underwent but few changes detrimental to the propagation and preservation of game, and the abundant supplies afforded amusement and subsistence equaled at present nowhere within the limits of the United States.

The settlements as yet contained many reservations of continuous tracts of undisturbed forest, wild ranges, islands along the larger water-courses, overflowing lands, unmolested parts of large estates, military and school reservations, etc., often embracing sections of rich soil heavily timbered and densely covered with an undergrowth of bushes, and in topography well adapted for resorts and homes of game birds and beasts.

Few, if any, of those timbered reservations failed to be occupied by every species and variety of nature’s household. Some locations from time immemorial had been the favorite and undisputed habitation of that most wonderful American bird, the wild turkey. For he is not migratory, nor an aimless wanderer of the forest. His instincts and attachments to place, the home of his ancestors, are so great that generations after generations live and die in the same selected site of wild territory. No persecution can induce him to abandon his accustomed haunts. Nothing but death or the removal of his forest ends his family.

The area of his home requires several square miles, and includes a nursery, feeding grounds, ranches, roosts and places of refuge in times of danger. And if by pursuit he is obliged to flee beyond the limit of his range, he returns to his associates, to his familiar trees, rocks and mountain streams.

The turkey is indigenous to America, and not found wild in any other part of the world. He resides in unsettled sections of timbered countries, from Mexico to the forests of Canada, and is the wildest, most intelligent and untamable of all the birds. When taken directly from the shell, and reared either by hand or with domesticated turkeys, he will, when grown, separate from friends and accustomed comrades, and instinctively seek the more attractive life of the forest. No care and kindness can in one or two generations overcome the fear of man and love for the wilds, and it requires many generations of skilled schooling to extinguish the desire for roving and give to him that contented and confiding disposition which characterizes the domesticated bird. The writer does not believe it possible for a bird that has been reared in a state of nature, and felt the charms of the wilderness, to ever become reconciled to any other conditions of life. He once brought down a young full-grown female bird and captured her. When she found resistance useless, she cried most pitifully. She had suffered no injury excepting a broken tip of one wing, which was amputated and dressed. The bird was kept in a large cage in the back yard for two years, remaining concealed during the day and partaking of food and water late in the evening, and then in the absence of every object of fear. In due time she was removed to a garden overgrown with bushes of currants, gooseberries, raspberries, etc., interspersed with strawberry plants, and with her a pair of tame turkeys. Here she remained over two years without manifesting the least indication of making the acquaintance of her civilized relations. A misplaced board on the fence gave her the boon so much desired--freedom. It was the beginning of summer when she escaped and was searched for, but seen no more until the following spring, when she was noticed several times near the tame turkeys, and this always very early in the morning.

That she could get there at that hour, or get there at all from the timbered land near a mile distant, through farms and fences, seemed remarkable, as she could not fly. After harvest of that year she frequented the stubble fields near the timber, with four well-grown half-breeds, as wild as herself. The next spring she commenced visiting her old acquaintances again, but, unfortunately, fell in sight of a pot-hunter, and was brought in as a great prize. But those who had kindly cared for the misfortunes of the bird, and now looked upon her lifeless form, had feelings which the word indignation failed to express.

The turkey propagated in foreign countries soon becomes degenerated, and in every way much inferior to the American type, the high standard of which in this country is kept up by infusion of wild blood and liberal forest ranges adapted to the nature of the bird.

The wild turkey has many peculiarities not found in any other species. Other birds elect certain localities to spend their nights, while the wild turkey puts up wherever night overtakes him; for his range is his home, and he is at home any-where in his range. When roosting in considerable numbers, the flock is dispersed over an extensive area of forest. He seldom, if ever, roosts two consecutive nights in or near the same place. When the leaves are on the trees he goes to the topmost twigs of the highest trees, and lets his heavy body down upon the foliage and small branches, and fixes himself for the night so he can not be seen by enemies from above nor from below. When the forest is bare he is still more careful to withdraw from observation, and for this purpose selects large, rough and broken trees--trees with ugly, crooked limbs, with knots and deformities--and places himself near some bump, crook, or place where the addition of his body will be readily overlooked; for well does he understand that the ordinary pot-hunter expects to see him perched upon a small limb far out from the body of the tree, standing on his legs, with outstretched neck and elevated head. But, instead of making a show, he always does the best he can to conceal himself, and if nothing better appears at hand, he will take to a large horizontal limb, and near the trunk of the tree flatten his body down on the upper part and stretch out the neck and legs on line with the limb, so to resemble closely a slight enlargement on that part of the growth.

He knows so well how to conceal himself when roosting that he laughs at the possibility of being seen and captured by the marvelous hunters who have _killed so many by moonlight_! The arrival of man and gun in his forest is scented and signaled at once. The birds most exposed fly far in advance of the hunter, and those that feel safe keep still and are safe from observation.

The writer admits, after testing this mode of hunting after night, many times, many seasons, and with many persons, that he has never been able to find a turkey on a tree while roosting. He has seen, however, and measured the credibility of the individual who insists that he has captured a great many snipe in cold, dark winter nights, by holding a light at the open mouth of a bag while other persons drive them in, but has never been able to find the individual who shot a wild turkey while sitting on the roost.

A friend who had become infatuated with the idea of night-hunting, insisted that turkeys could be seen on bare trees when the moon was as light and bright as then; and the reason he had not been heretofore successful was owing entirely to the “if.” As soon as the moon was declared all right we were on the grounds; could hear birds flying off the trees in advance of us as soon as we entered the border. Every tree in our pathway was scanned, without seeing an object resembling a turkey. The writer soon tired of the amusement and retraced his steps some distance, and sat down upon an old log lying on the sand in the deep-cut bed of a creek.

After waiting a reasonable time and hearing nothing from the friend, the writer called--waited and called a number of times; but all remained silent. Thinking the hunter had become bewildered and wandered beyond the range of vocal sounds, fired one barrel of the gun off, pointing it in the direction of the moon, which was partially obscured by some of the small branches of a large sycamore tree, standing on the bank of the opposite side of the creek.

The gun made a loud report, and so did a large gobbler as he came flapping down through the branches into the creek, having received a mortal charge of shot. The signal gun soon brought in the absent member of the expedition, who, on feeling a twenty-pound bird and hearing the explanation, moved it be made unanimous, as the only successful way to shoot wild turkeys by moonlight.

Another peculiarity of this bird may be mentioned. In the spring of the year the female birds straggle long distances from the flock, and seek temporary separation in the more open but unfrequented parts of the forest, where the male birds seldom, if ever, resort. Here they nest and rear their young. When the offspring is well grown the mother birds, with young, return to the flock, after which old and young, male and female, remain together as one family during fall and winter.

In-door naturalists and authors have given to the world many singular and absurd statements respecting the habits, sagacity and instincts of the wild turkey, since the truthful descriptions penned by John James Audubon, F.R.S., S.L. and E. And it is singular that the eminent naturalist, Thomas Nuttall, A.M.T., L.S. and C., should say he is not gregarious.

Charles Hallock, the able editor of “Forest and Stream,” author of “Camp Life,” “Sportsman’s Gazetteer,” etc., states that in the spring wild turkeys “pair off” (like blue-birds), “and after the young are hatched both parents take great interest in the growth and progress of the young family;” that they are “easily tamed; are slaughtered by moonlight while roosting; that it is rarely a wing-shot can be procured; that they are killed by sportsmen in various ways,” most of which is not much less at variance with facts in nature than the statement of Mr. Burrell Symmes, who claimed that he had outwitted the sagacity of the bird, and killed at one shot, with a rifle, a large flock that infested a wheat-stack near their range. “The turkeys would gather around the stack, every few days, as close as they could crowd their bodies, pulling out wheat-heads to eat;” and, taking in the situation, says he bent the barrel of his gun to the segment of a circle corresponding to the diameter of the area of the base of the stack. And well loaded with powder and leaden ball, concealed the weapon at the proper adjustment, placing himself in view of the situation, with a cord attached to the trigger. The turkeys came, and unsuspectingly crowded around the stack, and began their accustomed repast. Now was the moment for action--“the cord was pulled, and the gun fired, which sent the ball round and round the stack, until it mowed down every last turkey in the flock.”

Respecting the habits and peculiarities of the wild turkey, the author turned up a slip from the lips of an old North Carolina negro, who gives the best pen-picture of the home-life of the bird that has fallen to the notice of ornithologists. The authography is somewhat objectionable, but the whole story is well told. Among other things he says the wild turkey is a “mighty peert fowl;” that he can sometimes teach a fox how to be smart, while at other times a sucking calf is not half so big a fool as he makes of himself; that he had known gobblers to outwit all the hunters in the country, and then walk into some ordinary colored man’s “pen” and stay there, “a cranin he neck, an’ tryen to get out at de top w’at been all roof over, wile de hole in de groun’ w’at he came in at stans wide open.”

The “pen” was a fatal device, capturing annually thousands of those birds during early settlements. Before the extensive forests disappeared turkeys lived well in the fall and winter and fattened on the mast. But owing to the love for Indian corn they were by a moderate display of this food easily enticed into traps, called “pens,” when placed in secluded sections of forest where the birds were known to seek subsistence.

Pens were usually constructed of windfalls--old limbs of various sizes--making an inclosure of ten or twelve feet square, four feet in height, and covered with similar limbs weighted down with other limbs placed across the covering. A trench, eighteen or twenty inches deep and about the same width, cut to enter the pen two feet, terminating abruptly slanting upward. Over the part of the trench next to the wall were secured a number of small poles forming a bridge a foot wide. Outside of the pen the trench extended, rising gradually, until it reached the level of the surrounding ground.

When finished, the trap would be well-baited with corn in the center and in the trench. Small quantities were scattered off in different directions from the pen, and a few grains here and there for a mile or more. After the birds would find a few grains, the entire flock would engage in search for more, and soon the trail of corn leading to the pen would be discovered, and rushing along in haste would enter the trench unawares, and forcing the front birds in the trench under the bridge and up into the pen before danger was suspected. As soon as those in the inclosure discovered the situation, they would try to force their way through the openings in the pen, passing and repassing around and over the bridge with heads erect, never observing the opening by which they entered--their comrades would soon disappear, leaving the unfortunate birds to be taken out by the trapper.

In a good location a single pen would furnish one hundred or more turkeys during a winter. One year, J. J. Audubon kept an account of the produce of a pen which he visited daily and found that seventy-six had been caught in it, in about two months. Seven was the highest number he had ever succeeded in taking from a pen at one time, but knew of as many as eighteen being captured by others. The average success of a pen, per capture, ranged from four to five. The writer has known fifteen to be the fruits of the first visit, and no more caught that season.

To make the pen a success, required great care and attention. The timber necessary for the construction was gathered from windfalls showing woodland decay; any marks of the axe, or civilization were considered objectionable. The earth taken out to make the trench, leading to and into the pen, was carefully removed to other parts; old leaves were thrown into the trench and about the pen, making every thing in the vicinity look ancient and accidental.

In many settlements the success of trapping pens was of short duration. As the country soon furnished easy access of the birds to large fields of their favorite food, they no longer could be induced to enter the baited pens. Notwithstanding the number captured by means of pens--“slaughtered by moonlight”--“by baiting”--“by treeing with dogs,” turkeys remained quite plentiful for more than sixty years after the settlement of Ohio. They were to be found in the woodlands all over the state, and for half a century remained the king-bird of the sportsman. When frightened, he seeks cover and lies well to a point. Early in the morning is the most propitious time to find him. When a flock is flushed and frightened by the rapid motions of a dog, some will fly and others run in the direction of security and cover; it may be a mile or more distant, and if so the sportsman will most surely pick up a straggler or two on his way, if he and his dog understand their business.

If any have taken to the trees, it will be lost time to look after them--they have made another fly in the direction taken by the leaders, who prefer the use of feet to wings. The dog must now keep close to his master, who moves so cautiously and quietly, that he talks to his companion by signs and motions altogether. The birds are so wonderfully fearful of a dog, and are now so frightened that some, while on the way to the place of refuge, will drop down in a secure looking spot to regain composure or to await till all is quiet. It is these the sportsman is after. Old logs, fallen tree-tops, piles of old brush, blackened limbs, tufts of weeds and spots of dead prairie grass grown in small openings among timber, afford attractive points for concealment, and are all remembered with reverence and respect as monuments of departed birds, at the death and obsequies of which the writer had been present.

The hunter must be prepared to find a bird anywhere on the line of march. The dog carries the scent and his every movement determines the distance the birds are off. Now he moves with cat-like stealth--he stops with tetanic muscular tension, quivering in every fiber, stands elongated--a fixed immovable figure--his marvelous nose has caught the image and measured the distance, which in silence says, stop!--move not, as eyes and nose direct to the place some twenty or thirty yards distant. The bird is there, and the canine head knows the result of another step in that direction--the hunter summoning all his skill and coolness, takes a step or two forward, and the bird is flushed, and starts off with the velocity of a grouse, testing sporting ability and rapidity of motion that rewards in hearing the monster fall; and a second later the quiet salute by the faithful and well-trained dog, showing he is elated equally with his master.

Quite often a turkey will carry a mortal charge a long distance and drop dead. Remains of dead birds are so frequently found during the hunting season, that there can be but little doubt many shot at and get away, die from their wounds. And the hunter should not despair of success if his shot on the wing does not come to the ground immediately. Instances in great numbers are before the writer, some of which are marked by more than ordinary singularity, where the recovery of the bird has taken place, quite unexpectedly, after a pronounced miss. One bitter cold afternoon, while out with a friend, who shot at a bird as it was flying through the timber; it continued on its course and was observed for a long distance to fly naturally but to go down too abruptly. The locality where observation ended was hunted closely and easily, as there was a crusted snow on the ground, but without finding as much as a feather. As we were returning, and within a few rods of the spot where the bird we had been searching for was shot at, another turkey came sailing over with tremendous velocity, going in the direction taken by the first one. It was given a barrel loaded with Ely’s Green Cartridge, No. 5 shot. The bird went on and down, but this time we marked the locality more accurately and were soon at the place and found two turkeys, dead and warm, within a few feet of each other. Some years before this, while standing in a little opening, early in the morning, listening for turkey sounds, the report of a gun was heard near half a mile distant, and in a moment a large gobbler fell dead at the writer’s feet.

While out with two young dogs, a bird was flushed on the bank of the Scioto river, and received a shot when near the opposite side, which so injured and confused him that he came back and fell upon the side of the stream from which he started. The heavy body came down with a thud, close to the shore, among some weeds and bushes near a large pile of drift-wood. The dogs were at the place in quick time, but could find no turkey. Thinking it had crawled into the drift, we tried to have the dogs hunt the drift. But they knew better and took no heart in spending time at that point, and required constant restraint to prevent them from taking the forest. After an ineffectual examination of the cover afforded by the drift, the superior judgment of the dogs was taken, and with management, their noses kept the course of this wounded bird and followed his meanderings one and a half miles in an air line from the drift to the point where they came to the bird on a stand. Walking up, expecting a flush, I was surprised to find a dead turkey, warm, muddy, and wet with the dew of the morning.

While it is quite common for a turkey, when mortally wounded, to continue his flight considerable distances before falling, and equally, if not more so, to fall dead at once from the shot, it is not often one will, while on the wing making his escape, change his course of conduct and come down and give himself up without being touched by shell or shot. Still, it is not impossible, for he has been known to do so, but not, perhaps, for the reason said to be entertained by Captain Scott’s coon.

One still, warm afternoon in December, 1860, with dog, the writer visited the “Fenced-in Wilderness.” On arrival in the woods a concealed position was selected and the dog sent out to look up the birds. Soon a large male bird came so near, on foot and unseen, that he scented the hunter, and rose within less than twenty yards of the writer, who fired after him one of Ely’s green wire cartridges, one and a half ounces No. 5 shot, driven by three drachms of Hazard’s electric powder. The bird was up in the air about thirty feet, going off directly in line with the shot. When the gun reported the turkey did not limber nor tumble like a bird shot, but came down precisely like a paper kite--full spread of wings and tail, with outstretched neck and legs. When the writer came up he was lying upon the ground, spread out like a bat, and the captor placed one foot and weight of the body on his neck, and commenced reloading the empty barrel. Before this was half accomplished it became necessary to suspend reloading and attend to the customer by changing his neck from the foot to the hand, in order to keep him long enough to cut his throat. During the time required to open the knife and perform this little surgical operation he used his legs and toenails most vigorously and effectively, and the operator came out of the fray bleeding and lacerated, with loss of the greater portion of coat, vest, shirt and pants. The wounds, however severe, were as nothing compared with the knowledge demonstration revealed--that this turkey was knocked down by the generation of some force, without making a scar, mark, or sign of traumatism, external or internal. A critical examination revealed no injury whatever, except the cut made by the knife. The explanation is for the scientist.

It requires a good gun, a good load and a good shot to bring down a full-grown, well-feathered turkey. Seldom they rise short of thirty yards distant; then, by the powerful motor assistance of the legs at the start, the next thirty yards are made with such velocity that by the time the gunner has “spoken his piece,” the bird is off so far that loose No. 5 shot and a fair charge of powder will not be effective unless by mere accident. This became manifest at the beginning of the Fifties. Having flushed a very large flock of turkeys near town by means of a little cocker, that made a terrible ado after them in the standing cornstalks, near the Scioto river--after hunting them unsuccessfully in the timber, a strip of prairie grass was entered, full of “nigger-heads,” extending parallel with the river for a full half-mile. The grass was tall, and the freezing weather had stiffened the ground and frozen over the pools, so it could be walked over with safety. As the grass was entered the little dog became invisible; but it was soon discovered where he was by the flight of a turkey out of range, and before the cocker could be brought under control he flushed several more. It was not long, however, before a good wing shot was obtained, and the writer started home with a load. This success and the close proximity to town induced a number of amateur gunners to try their luck, and they were directed to the locality; for it was certain, if the turkeys were concealed in the grass, they would remain there if undisturbed until their time for moving--the dusk of evening.

From what was subsequently known, it would appear that the whole flock, consisting of forty or fifty birds, still frightened, had found their way back to this place of security and concealment, and, without the aid of dogs, were walked up and shot at by the party, but without capturing a single bird.

The hunters returned with sorrow and disappointment. One of their number, a prominent lawyer and ex-member of Congress, came in with the loss of one eye and otherwise disfigured for life by the explosion of his gun.

At the close of the War of the Rebellion a large amount of uncultivated, wild land, owned by non-residents, was sold in small farms to settlers; and a general disposition prevailed, from high prices of produce, to improve much of the better class of timber lands every-where, underbrushing for pasture, or deadening the large timber for corn, and this had some influence in decimating game. Still the game resorts, uninhabitable in this way, amounted to little compared with influence and facilities increased railroads gave the pot-hunter to go on with his work of extermination in those mammoth parks of forests in the eastern and southern borders of the state, where the deer, turkey, grouse, and wild-pigeon should have found protection and a home to the end of time.

And with a diversified and wild section of country large enough to accommodate and furnish annually thousands of game, beasts, and birds, some are entirely extinct, and others scarcely known within the limits of the state. Such destruction is truly an injustice to a beneficent creator that fed the hungry, clothed the naked, made pioneer homes happy and a savage wilderness a desirable habitation for the pilgrims of a better civilization.

It is more to be regretted that in the general destruction the grandest bird in the world--indigenous alone to America--and whose love for “liberty” exceeds all other species, should be denied room enough among a liberty-loving people for a home. It seems a pity Benjamin Franklin had not been more than “half in earnest” when he suggested this bird as the emblem of our national independence. But as it is, in other ways he has advanced civilization and been a benefactor to the human race. His surpassing size, tender, juicy, and gamey-flavored flesh, places him far above all other gallinaceous birds; and his goodness and greatness are known over the world, and those who occupy his native country have secured for his name a _place_ among the saints, to be chanted annually on a day set apart for _thanksgiving and praise_.

Railroad facilities enabled pot-hunters to flood the country, to shoot for eastern saloons and cold-storage houses, until the rapid decimation of valuable game gave reasons for serious apprehension that both birds and beasts will become exterminated or taken from the sources of food supply. An annual depletion of the quantity of game in a given locality is generally borne well, and is, to a limited extent, beneficial. They usually stand assessments of numbers much better than encroachments upon their borders. And it is sometimes singular where they all go to, when the woods in which they have always lived become cleared up, so they are obliged to transfer their possessions. An estate in the Military District, consisting of two thousand acres, remained wild until 1862. The agent at this date had the land cleared of the young growth of trees and bushes and put in grass.

Two years after, while riding along a road that led through this piece of timber, the writer saw a stately wild turkey, with head erect and measured steps, marching through the open timber, occasionally stopping, as though looking and listening for former companions. On the same road, after several hours, we again saw the disappointed bird on his way back to tell the sad story.

The wild turkey is now exterminated in Ohio, and the indications are he will soon be as little known as the Dodo. During his stay in the aid and interests of civilization, thousands of Squirrel Hunters were made happy, and for nearly three hundred years he has been placed at the head of the feast with all the compliments bestowed upon him in 1621 by Priscilla Holmes: “The foremost of all delicacies--roast turkey--dressed with beech-nuts.”

The quail, another valuable game bird, has, until within a few years, been an abundant, permanent resident of the state. It is scarcely necessary to say a word in his praise, for Bob White is a smart little fellow, an early riser, and worth millions to agricultural interests while living, and unequaled on toast when dead.

At the date of the first settlements in the territory the bird was undoubtedly very retired, as well as few in number. The extensive and dense forests, covering almost the entire country, made it ill adapted to his nature; and those which were enabled to perpetuate existence occupied some of the limited open tracts of land found here and there over the country. Bob White is really a bird of civilization. He flourishes most near the abodes of man. The cultivation of the soil and settlement of the country increases his numbers. In support of these conclusions we will here refer to the fact contained in a statement made by a gentleman who, with family, settled in Ohio in the spring of 1798, and located on the border of a small prairie--seemingly a favorable situation for the bird. He resided several years in that locality, raising wheat, corn, and other kinds of produce, without hearing the voice of the quail. He had about abandoned the anticipation of quail shooting, and questioned if it would ever be recognized as a sport in Ohio.

One day in early summer of 1802 he thought he heard the recognized though suppressed sound, “Bob White.” Somewhat doubting the sense of hearing, he immediately made observations and procured additional evidence--that of sight. Yes, he actually heard and saw the bird for the first time in Ohio. Elated with the good news, he proceeded to the cabin and told his discovery with so much excitement and enthusiasm that it created a laugh at his expense. He excused his manner, however, by saying, “It was sufficient to excite any one to know that a highly-esteemed and familiar friend had found the way through such an interminable wilderness, and announced his arrival in that modest and meaning way, ‘Bob White.’” Since then he has been known as a permanent resident.

The greater portion of the year the old birds, with the family increase, remain in coveys. In early spring this general attachment is broken up by pairing, each pair selecting a locality, where they remain during the breeding season. When mating and selection of locality has taken place, it is known by the demonstration of the male, who gives the whole neighborhood due notice of his domestic intentions by frequent repetitions of his cheerful and well-known notes, “Bob White! Bob White!”

When paired the two are constant companions, ever watchful and devoted to the welfare of each other, sharing equally the duties and responsibilities of wedded life; and from the appearance of the first offspring to their settlement in the world, as faithful father and mother, remain unceasing protectors and providers for the family. This extraordinary strength of attachment and exhibition of natural affection has attracted the attention of all their friends.

While living on a farm the writer discovered a nest, nicely concealed by tufts of grass after being constructed, under the projecting end of a fence rail. At the time there were in it five eggs. This number increased daily until twenty-three eggs filled the nest, and incubation began. All went on happily, until one morning there was evidently great distress in that little household. The male bird was sounding his anxious alarm--going hurriedly from one part of the farm to that of every other--sometimes flying, sometimes running; stopping a moment here, a moment there; calling at the top of his voice for his mate, in his peculiar tone of distress. His unanswered cry soon told the tale--some accident, some ruthless hawk, some sneaking cat, or some other enemy, had captured and destroyed his faithful companion.

He kept his calling for several hours, sometimes coming quite near, making a low chittering noise, as if suspicious something could be told--that the writer could tell him where his love had gone. Far from it, he too was in search of anything that could give a clue to the whereabouts of the unfeeling wretch that had done the bloody deed--he too was excited, and would have executed the severest penalty known on the guilty one, if found.

The nest was occasionally observed during the forenoon, with merely the thought she might be testing the affection of her lord, or playing him a practical joke; but no, the eggs were, at each visit uncovered. About noon-day, his lamentations ceased, and hoping his mate had returned, the nest was again visited, and was surprised to find Bob on the nest, keeping life in the prospective family.

For several days he left the nest frequently to make further search for his missing sweetheart. One morning, as usual, I called to see how the little widower was getting along, and found nothing but a bundle of shells--every egg had been hatched. Not far from the nest was heard a crickety sound--“chit, chit, chit”--and soon discovered Bob with his brood. He continued to care for the motherless young, as the writer can testify from frequent meetings, and reared a fine, large covey, which received protection and sympathy during the following fall and winter, of all the farm hands and sportsmen, who knew him and his well-behaving family.

Quail are not strictly granivorous. In autumn and winter they subsist chiefly on grain, berries and weed seeds. But in the spring and summer their food is almost exclusively composed of worms and insects. While Henry William Herbert extols the benefits the agriculturist derives from the consumption of weed seeds by these birds, he does not seem to have been aware the quail is the greatest worm and insect enemy of all the birds of North America, and are of more valuable service to crops and trees than all other birds combined. A few coveys carefully preserved would protect the farmer against the ravages of many destructive insects, which are more to be feared than the “rag-weed, the dock, or the brier.” The writer examined one accidentally killed, several years ago, in the month of June, and its crop contained seventy-five “_potatoe-bugs_,” besides numerous smaller insects. And, if for no other reason, the farmer should protect the bird as his best and most reliable exterminator of worms and insects, which, if undisturbed, accumulate to the great detriment of growing grain and grass, and to orchards and gardens. The quail regards man as his friend, though a stranger to his sympathy and protection. If not for ill-treatment and general manifestation to exterminate his species by those whose friendship he courts, he would soon become quite as domestic as the barnyard poultry. In fact, he frequently presses his claims perseveringly in this line by establishing partnership and social relations with domestic fowls. It is not uncommon to find a hen and quail occupying the same nest, until the complement of eggs are deposited by each, at the end of which time the quail usually submits the incubation to her partner.

Quail are pursued by man, beast, bird, and reptile; but with a fair opportunity and timely warning they manifest a wonderful faculty for evading their foes; and, excepting the “pot-hunter,” they are provided with ample means for self-preservation. He who steals upon a covey while enjoying the sunshine by some stump, log, or fence-corner, seated in a space less than the circumference of a half-bushel measure, and betrays a confidence by firing upon them in this unsuspecting attitude, filling his bag with the dead, and marching off with the brand of “sneak-thief” upon his brow, is a “pot-hunter.” He, too, who, with a show of indifference, rides about, pretending to be overseeing his own affairs, whistling around until the poor unsuspecting birds, in order to get out of his way, unconsciously walk into a net prepared for them, and as a reward for this confiding friendship triumphantly mashes their heads, is a pot-hunter. Against such the bird has no protection.

When coveys have warning of danger, and wish to evade detection, they will conceal themselves from their enemies, in a most magical manner, by a singular concerted action, seemingly, withholding their “scent,” so it is often impossible for the best dogs to detect them, even in the most favorable cover. It is quite amusing to witness the changes that come over the amateur sportsman when he fails to put up his birds. He knows where they are, at least he thinks he does, for he “marked them down” in the meadow of short grass within a few yards of a stump or tree. Then, it is such a commentary on his dogs, for he knows they are all right--never better, truer noses; still they go over and over, round and round, without winding a bird, or coming to a point. There! that dog has flushed a bird! Now he is assured the whole covey are within twenty feet of that spot; and he renews his search, and keeps his dogs going over and over the same locality, until both dogs and gunner, disgusted, quit the place.

How they got away, and where they all went to, and why that single bird remained where the covey went down, and why the dogs did not point that bird, all passed through the mind of the hunter, as he marched on in search of better luck.

The amateur perhaps meets his experienced friend, to whom he relates his disappointment, and who in reply proposes to return to the meadow of the “marked down” covey. After a time they do so, and every dog at once winds his bird; and each come to point--these are flushed and shot at. The dogs are made to move cautiously, and again the trio stand, each having a bird under point. This is repeated until every bird has gone the gauntlet.

Quail shooting has been, but is no longer, an interesting field sport in Ohio. Wing shooting, while diminishing the aggregate number, by subtracting from each covey, does not often destroy the entire family, and under proper legislation, has its benefits and advantages, and generally insures the preservation of an abundance to propagate another season. The sport, also, to some extent, draws from the destructive spoils of the pot-hunter and trapper, making the birds coy, suspicious and not easily seen. True, there is a possibility that the sportsman with dog and gun may destroy a whole family by shooting on the wing. A chapter of this kind occurred to the writer. While riding along the road in a buggy with a friend, our pointer companion came to a stand some distance in front, with nose and tail paralleled to the line of fence. The birds rose by concert in line along the fence, while the rear bird, or first to rise was covered and fired at. The atmosphere was so the smoke obscured results, excepting that of a wounded bird crossing the road for a sorghum field. An effort was made to intercept and capture it, but failed. The friend who sat in the buggy and had a good view of the situation, declared every bird fell. A walk over the ground proved it true, as from the first to the last in the distance of about twenty yards or more, eleven dead birds were picked up. The next day on passing the spot, the dog came to a point on a wounded bird, which was captured and killed as a kindness. Here the whole covey was exterminated; but as the perpetrator felt “sorry” for the act, and did not intend it, and would never do it again, it should not be considered unpardonable.

The quail is a bird favorable to the happiness of man and advancement of civilization, is of inestimable value as a permanent resident, for the reason he is independent of forests for the maintenance of existence and perpetuation. He is the bird of field and farm and the only one from which a single pair can produce and rear to maturity more than half a hundred young in one season, to present as choice morsels of food for the weary farmer and protector.

It is comforting to the sportsman to feel assured there is one resident game bird the iniquity of the pot-hunter can not exterminate. So long as forests and mountains last, the Ruffed Grouse will be able to maintain an abiding place. And many are the pleasant reminiscences of the hunter connected with the pursuit of this wary bird; it is a sport once enjoyed can never be lost from among the sunny associations of the past. Even the name brings to view the ragged mountains, rocky ravines, shady dells, babbling brooks and quiet streams in forests, ripe with every shade and tint of autumn colors, quiet secluded places where nature reveals her sweetest charms in inimitable splendor that mocks the artist’s pencil and poet’s pen--the home and haunts of this beautiful bird.

It does not seem reasonable that the indifference of the people should permit the depopulation of the earth of all its birds! It is sorrowful to contemplate a place where no bird exists excepting the “English sparrow.” Of the known species, amounting to over five thousand, that once glorified the life and beauty of the earth, more than one-half the number has already disappeared forever.

The Chicago Tribune, of August 11, 1895, on the “Destruction of Birds,” tells the truth, a horrible truth, when it says: “If masculine greed and cruelty, and feminine vanity and thoughtlessness, are not in some manner restrained or punished, it is only a question of time, and very short time at that, how soon the earth will lose its birds.” That the Seattle Argus called attention to the danger of the utter extermination of game birds by the destruction of their eggs on the Alaska breeding grounds--ducks, geese, swans, and other migratory birds, seek the low lands along the Yukon river for their nesting places. The egg-hunters gather their eggs by millions in these as well as other localities in South-western Alaska, where the birds resort, and sell them for the purpose of manufacturing egg albumen, a commercial article. The destruction of these millions of eggs every spring and summer is rapidly reducing the number of game birds, and the flocks every year grow smaller and smaller. Senator Mitchell, of Oregon, introduced a bill at the last session of Congress for the protection of these game birds, but of course it did not come to vote, and it probably never will. The game birds will share the fate of the four-footed game; grow fewer every year, and finally disappear altogether.

“When one remembers that thirty years ago the skies were almost darkened by flights of pigeons across Indiana and Illinois, and that branches of trees were broken by their weight and numbers, and that the other day a wild-pigeon shot in Southern Indiana was regarded as rare a curiosity as a white blackbird, it can be realized how rapidly game birds are disappearing. The game birds which are not migratory are also hunted down in spite of game laws, and every year grow scarcer and dearer in the markets. If nothing is done to protect (more effectually) there will soon be an end of game birds. The greed of gain will end their existence.”

Of all the birds in Ohio and the North-west, the wild pigeon was by far the most numerous. Those who have witnessed their flight, from early morn until approaching night, all going in one direction, without cessation for a number of consecutive days, were ready to believe pigeons were as the sands of the sea, innumerable, and could never be exhausted. But, alas! inventions came, the foes of bird-life: railroads and telegraphs. And for many years, winter and summer, the pigeon was traced, pursued, netted and trapped, at feeding places, by gangs of pot-hunters, keeping tons of dead birds all the time in transit to the large cities. Year after year, from coast to coast, this bird was followed, invading the breeding places and destroying the young and old, until the wild pigeon now exists in history, and may be seen mounted by the taxidermist.

The birds that are not game, the women in their vanity and thoughtlessness are rapidly destroying those having an attractive plumage, and millions of humming-birds, orioles, bluebirds, starlings, indigo-birds, redstarts, redbirds, and many others, are annually slaughtered to gratify an _inhuman_ and uncivilized fashion. For more than ten years this destruction has been increasing, and birds are diminishing in this and other countries until extermination is near at hand. Jules Forest says of the bird of paradise: “They are so industriously hunted that the males are not permitted to reach full maturity, and the birds which now flood the market are for the most part young ones, still clothed in their first, plumage, which lacks the brilliancy displayed in the older bird, and are consequently of small commercial value.” As to the tuft of delicate plumes which are so much in demand by milliners, and sold by them as real, are often mixed with ospray tips, which, to the shame of womanhood, have so long been in fashion and are still used. I may state on trustworthy authority, that “during the last season one warehouse alone has disposed of no less than sixty thousand dozen of these mixed sprays.” And the question comes: Is there no way to stop it? Must bird-slaughter go on to gratify a weak and cruel vanity, that should be met not only with public scorn, but also by the strong arm of the law, to reach the possessor or the hat, as it does the fisherman and his net or the hunter and his gun.

As the country became partially settled and the larger game supply diminished by unseasonable killing, clubs of squirrel hunters organized and laws wore enacted protecting beasts and birds with a close season. The good, the social and intelligent, became members for what there was in it. These clubs entertained no secrets, and did not pattern after any of the ancient orders with which the United States appear overblessed, nor were they given to boasting of their pedigrees. No one ever claimed King Solomon was “the father and founder,” although he might have been; and members were satisfied and sanguine that Mr. Nimrod, the mighty hunter, for a _saint_, was in morals as good as any of them.

These clubs had also many improvements over ordinary societies. A candidate for membership was not obliged to ride a goat to get in, nor with bandaged eyes go down into a dangerous pit to search for the tables of stone that Moses brought home the ten commandments on. Neither had the clubs any use for a catechism of secret signs to let the brethren know when a member had been guilty of something unwelcome to society, and needed assistance. They were all Squirrel Hunters, and members recognized each other by the absence of society pins and want of superlative adjectives at the front end of their names. The only thing recorded in which these clubs resembled any other order or society was in having a great many glorious banquets. They cultivated the social and democratic principles, owing allegiance nowhere, to no one or any thing, but the government and country covered by the American flag.

The objects of these clubs were the study of natural history and to secure and enforce all laws for the preservation of game beasts and birds, as well as the summer songsters that give life and happiness to forest and field.

These clubs labored hard to enforce legislative enactments against pot-hunting and thoughtless destruction of birds, but found it more difficult to capture the violator and public opinion than to subdue British and Indians or frighten an army. People generally had embraced the idea that birds, beasts and trees could never become seriously decimated, and it was useless to offer them protection, which made it troublesome to obtain a verdict against offenders by either judge or jury. The motives of such prosecutions were generally misconstrued, or plaintiffs made subjects of sport or ridicule.

The following is taken from the records and proceedings of one of the earliest organized and most worthy game clubs in Ohio. It appears the offender was a lawyer, who enjoyed fine grounds and an elegant garden, and amused himself shooting little birds that came to share his bounty, or obtain a pittance by way of interest for the good they had by nature rendered. The club gave the lawyer notice and request to desist such cruelty, or it might become necessary to call the attention of the officers of the law to the matter.

To this the club received the following reply, worthy of preservation for its wit, humor, and literary ability:

“_To N---- E----, Secretary of Branch No. 3, Ohio Game Club_:

“MY DEAR SIR--Your esteemed favor of yesterday has been received, and at an early date I hasten to reply, not knowing just what punishment would await me should I fail to be prompt in my responses. As to the ‘birds of various kinds’ of which you speak, I move to amend in order to make more specific and certain, by stating what kind of birds, what number, when killed, and by what means. If required to plead to the general charge, I would enter a plea of ‘not guilty.’ Permit me to say that I only killed birds of _prey_, and I only _pray_ that I may kill more of them. I always bury all I kill; I _berry_ them before I kill them, and _bury_ them afterwards.

“I am exceedingly sorry that my fancied misdeeds have rendered necessary a special meeting of the ‘club,’ or to have been the innocent occasion of the least trouble to either the officers or members of that useful and ornamental body. Be kind enough to say, with my compliments, to the association of which you have the honor to be secretary, that the doors of the Temple of Justice, like ‘the glorious gates of the gospel of grace,’ stand open night and day, and the ‘club’ will please consider itself invited to enter and become ‘involved in the intricate meshes of the law.’

“Allow me further to say that I expect tomorrow morning to be on my premises, near the city, engaged in my usual and ordinary amusement of destroying birds of prey; and as it is the ‘early bird that catches the worm.’ I would suggest to members of your valuable association, through their secretary, that they meet at an early hour, say half-past five in the morning, either at Dodson’s store or at the well-known grocery stand of John L. King, and proceed in a body, in full uniform, to the premises alluded to in your correspondence. It might be well to have music, and march to the tune of ‘Listen to the Mockingbird,’ or such other appropriate music as your orchestra may select.

“One other suggestion: I am constitutionally and proverbially careless in the handling of firearms, and it may be well to make that statement to the members of your organization, so that should a stray shot fall wide of the mark at which it was aimed, they may feel a sense of security behind such intrenchments as nature or art shall have provided. Ice-water and sponges will be furnished free to each and every member who attends, but no gin cocktails will be given.

“Very truly yours, H----.”

It seems an unanswered question, how the natives preserved the forests from fires, and maintained the numerical strength of the species of animals on which they subsisted. The countries in which Indians have been found subsisting by hunting, are known to have forests undisturbed by fires for thousands of years, and containing a full complement of all kinds of game indigenous to the locality. This country, at the time surrendered, was fully endowed with all the gifts of nature. Love had preserved the forests from fires, protected the game beasts and birds, and shown natural wisdom enough not to kill the goose to obtain the golden egg.

How these wise results were accomplished are unknown to civilization. But it can be stated as a fact, new countries have never suffered from forest fires or the destruction of their game at the hands of the Indian hunter. Even in limited and crowded reservations he manages to preserve the forests, and in some way to keep on hand a supply of animals to the full extent the conditions of nature will admit. The instinct to kill no more than enough for present use, though he may suffer from hunger the next day, probably has had a favorable influence on game and its preservation.

While practically a resident of an unsettled Indian country (the northern portion of Iowa Territory), in 1845, it was noticeable that there existed no lack of game, nor variety, although pretty densely populated with Winnebagoes, Sioux and Fox Indian, who derived their meat chiefly from the yearly increase of game furnished within a limited territory.

Soon after the close of the treaty with those tribes, made by General Dodge in the summer of 1845, at Fort Atkinson, the writer, with a friend, passed through the hunting grounds for more than one hundred miles, and saw a number of large flocks of wild turkey and larger game in abundance. We followed the deep-cut channel of the romantic Turkey river for sixty miles in the Indian country, and during this ride the young birds were seen flying from bluff to bluff, crossing the river on their daily round in search of food.

And we believe it is true: No game laws enacted by white man can prove as effective in the protection of game as those enforced by Indian hunters. The red man never scares game from the region in which he hunts. He steals upon the deer or wild turkeys with the soft tread of moccasined feet, and dressed in accord with the tints and tones of plain and forest, the animals are satisfied with trying to avoid his presence without quitting the region selected as their home.

An old-time hunter in the West makes the statement that ever since the general adoption by Indians of firearms for hunting, it has not been found that game has diminished in regions where the white man is an infrequent visitor. It is when white hunters invade their haunts, with the tread of booted feet, their clothes alien to surrounding nature and with dogs and bluster, that all kinds of game are bound to be killed or driven away. And as Sir Samuel Baker, the explorer, asserts of African game and predatory creatures: “Animals can endure traps, pitfalls, fire, and every savage method of hunting, but firearms may be used to clear them out from extensive districts.” Still, under prudent use known to Indians only, game of our forests and plains may be preserved indefinitely and in abundance of all kinds.

TREES.

“Half the mighty forest Tells no tale of all it does.”

“Individual avarice and corporate greed will soon cause all the mineral lands to be stripped of their forests.... Wealthy companies have been organized, mills erected, and the most valuable timber accessible is being rapidly cut off. That which is every one’s property is no one’s care, and extravagance and waste are the natural consequence of negligent legislation.”[21]

The increasing destruction of the timber belts of this country is certainly enough to alarm the nation. The Census Office prepared for distribution a bulletin bearing upon this subject for the consideration of the people of the United States. The lumber production--which means tree destruction--in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan in the last decade increased twenty-nine per cent in quantity and seventy-five per cent in value, and according to the eleventh (last) census, the capital invested in the milling business in the three states named shows an increase of one hundred and fifty-seven million five hundred and thirty-one thousand dollars.

United States Senator Henry M. Rice, who spent considerable time in Northern Minnesota treating with the Indians, says: “This timber cutting is going on for fifty miles up the Baudette, North and South Fork rivers, and that the Indians declare that it has been going on for more than a dozen years by Canadian lumbermen.” It is stated on good authority that more than two hundred million feet were floated through the Lake of the Woods in 1894. And Senator Rice says: “So bold have these timber robbers become that they have built dams in the tributary streams for the purpose of backing up the water and floating out their logs.”

When these extensive thieving operations were conveyed to the authorities, one lone “timber inspector” was sent up in this vast district and made his headquarters in the wilderness one hundred and fifty miles from the nearest point from which he could obtain any assistance, and it is generally believed, in Minnesota, that the “timber inspector” failed to “hold up” several thousand Canadian robbers, who were engaged in floating American timber across the line and filling their pockets with gold.

The Minneapolis Journal has done much to call the attention of the people of that state, and the Nation, to the unparalleled destruction of this greatest gift of nature, and quite recently says:

“The reservations which have been ceded by the Chippewas in this state to the government embrace the heaviest white pine forests now available as a source of lumber supply. These forests are largely contributory to the retention of the moisture which feeds the streams and lakes that make the sources of the Mississippi river.

“Already there is much said about the great commercial value of these pine lands, and there is not the slightest doubt that as soon as the region is opened by the government the work of destruction will commence, which will speedily lay bare the soil and subject it to the drying influences of the sun and wind, or to the forest fires, which will kill every young growth which appears, and destroy even tree seed, which has been borne there by the winds. The result of this will be the diminution of the sources of the supply of the Mississippi, which will be felt by every water power company from Itasca to Fort Snelling.

“These are grave consequences, and the question is: Shall the denudation of this new region be allowed to go on without some regulations as to cutting and forest renewal? There would seem to be a good opportunity to bring to bear the world’s experience in forestry. This reckless cutting and selling the forests will bring temporary gain to the lumbermen, but will ultimately destroy agriculture and water-power interests as well as the healthful conditions of the country.

“In France, whole communities were ruined by the denudation of their lands; and obliged the government to enter upon the work of restocking this ruined section of country with young trees at a cost of many millions of dollars; all to regain what had been lost through indifference. But how is it now? The region of the Landes, which fifty years ago was the abandoned country of little value, inhabited by a few sickly shepherds, who wandered over the country with their meager flocks, is now the most prosperous part of France. It has been made so by the planting of forests, and has now saw-mills, charcoal kilns, turpentine works, thriving towns, and fertile agricultural lands, and a growing and increasing valuation, and the net gain to the government by the expenditure amounts to over two hundred million dollars.

“Not until the sheltering influence of trees has disappeared, the climate made variable with sharp and sudden changes of temperature, successions of thaws and freezings; not until springs and brooks become dry in summer, and a failure of all kinds of crops and plants, does the improvident ask or even wonder what the matter is.

“_Every reserve of timber in this country ought to be sacredly guarded by the government_, and timber cutting be put under stringent regulations, looking to the continued protection of the streams. _Unless this is done the Mississippi river will surely change its character._ It will become a shallow, sluggish stream, unable to carry off impurities, and useless for navigation or water-power. It will not take very long to effect this change, if the forests are destroyed in the northern part of its source. A present gain in lumber will mean very great injury to all other material interests.”[22]

A special from St. Paul says--“From Rainy Lake to the Lake of the Woods, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles, the entire country is covered with a heavy growth of timber and is mostly pine, and is totally uninhabited save by scattering bands of Chippewa Indians. That these two great lakes are connected by Rainy Lake river, one of the finest navigable streams in North America; and on which its branches and the Lake of the Woods, no less than twenty steamers and tugs ply from early spring to late in the fall, conveying stolen timber from the United States to Rat Portage, Keewatin, and even to Winnipeg, where it is manufactured and sent wherever a market can be found.

“Keewatin and Rat Portage are the centers of the timber depredations and act as a base of supplies for the depredators. Nearly all the numerous fleets of steamers plying on the lake find their home in these two towns. The Dominion Government considers its side of the line important enough to demand a station at Hungry Hall, on the Canadian side of the mouth of Rainy Lake river, as well as at several other points between the Red river of the North and the head of Lake Superior, but the United States Government, though knowing the amount of valuable timber in the district desirable, has no port between St. Vincent and Lake Superior.

“When it is realized that all this timber belongs to the wards of the United States, the Indians, or to the Government itself, it is hard to see on what principle the states can so neglect this great timber belt. Not a foot of this timber can be sold or in any way disposed of until it has been appraised and surveyed. And it was asked that the Minnesota delegation in Congress take steps at once to have Congress pass a measure authorizing the placing of a revenue cutter on the Lake of the Woods, and equipping two posts, one near Rainy Lake, and the other directly across from Hungry Hall, where one lone timber inspector is supposed to be. But has any thing been done? The State Senatorial Committee of Minnesota, in an investigation of frauds against the state, found the _timber pirates_ responsible for most all the calamities from fire which have befallen the timber lands of the state. After stealing millions of dollars worth of timber belonging to the state, in order to cover the theft, have started fires which have resulted in those terrible losses of life and property. Firing the lands they had fraudulently cleared in order to render the measurement of stumpage impossible, and thereby shut off any suits a commission might attempt to bring against them. In putting the torch to the ‘toppings,’ every thing is destroyed--stumps, young trees and frequently valuable timber, to the amount of many million dollars.”

In all the pine belts in the western country there is a loud demand by honest citizens, that the manner of cutting timber be severely regulated. It has been clearly shown from time to time that this forest destruction in the United States without restitution, is still going on at the enormous rate of over ten million acres annually, and must soon land the country in all the ills due to forest famine.

Senator Paddock, of the Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, reports that the United States Government retains somewhat less than seventy million acres of public domain, which is designated as timber or woodland, mostly situated on the slopes and crests of the western mountain ranges. The above estimate may be too low, but if not, the entire forests of the Government are scarcely sufficient of themselves to supply the vast demands of the country another decade.

In 1889, it was estimated that Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming contained fifty-three thousand square miles of forest--Colorado and New Mexico, thirty thousand; and that other portions of the public domain were covered with large and valuable belts, and of which the Hon. Secretary of Agriculture says in his reports: “We are wasting our forests, by axe, by fire, by pasturage, by _neglect_. They are rapidly falling below the amount required by industrial needs, by our water supply, by our rivers, by our climate, by our navigation and agriculture. It is high time to _call a halt_. The devastation of the axe will probably go on in the forests owned by private parties. Other forms of devastation _can and should be stopped by vigorous measures on the part of the Government_.”

“_Our only hope_,” says Secretary Rusk, “_is to save what forests we have still in public possession, ... not allowing them to be cut except under such conditions as will insure ample reproduction_.”

Six years have passed since the above important declarations were made, still nothing has been done to deter the thieves or ward off a pending calamity.

For future forest supplies the people of the United States must look to the general government which controls the national domain, holds the keys of the public treasury, and is responsible for this source of national wealth.

From various authentic sources, it is stated of the once-timbered countries in Southern Europe, Northern Africa and from the Russian Empire to South India, which are now uninhabited barren wastes, has been due to changes of climate, soil and water-fall, from the loss of forests. The once fertile valleys of Syria, with springs and brooks, and fields of grain and grass, are as parched and dry, and water as scarce as it is on the desert or staked plains--summer suns have scorched the unprotected soil--hot winds absorbed the last vestige of moisture--the air is filled with clouds of loose dust, and the naked mountains stand as monuments of departed glory, of the Roman provinces from the Caucasus to the archipelago.

Look at the wasted peninsulas of Southern Europe. What has reduced to skeletons the inhabitants of the garden lands of the nations of classic antiquity? Greece has become a barren rock, and Sicily, “the pearl of the Mediterranean,” a hospital of famine, typhus and purulent ophthalmia!

Has not the desolation in each been due to one and the same cause?--the destruction of forests.

Why then should history repeat itself on this subject in America?

As early as 1832, the wisdom of Mehemet Ali saw the cause of the poverty and distress, and applied the only remedy that ever has or ever will restore life-sustaining conditions, and commenced re-establishing forests on the sand plains of upper Egypt--Abyssinia and the slopes of the mountains--at the rate of one hundred thousand acres annually.

Trees, like beasts and birds, at one time existed in such vast and apparently incalculable numbers that it seemed improbable their presence could be diminished sufficiently to give them importance or value. To have trees removed by any means was looked upon by the owner of the soil as a favor; and those having charge of the public domain felt pretty much the same way. But to the man of three-score and ten years it is astonishing how soon the great forests have disappeared, or become so valuable and inviting as to tempt the mercenary to steal and the rewarded public official to permit. Trees have a value to every form of life--a value above the lumber they may produce or the moneyed wealth they may bring the possessor. It has for thousands of years undergone practical demonstration that forests determine the climatic conditions of any given country, and for this reason forests form an indispensable basis for agriculture, manufacture and commercial industry. They also bear a near relation to the health, wealth and prosperity of a nation.

These facts being so universally admitted, it may seem strange that a government which has from its inception been so interested in the welfare of its subjects, and which has assisted and encouraged in various ways so many sources of wealth and industry, should have overlooked the forests, from which the nation is drawing larger amounts than from all other natural sources combined.

The government has ever been devoted to the interests of agriculture and manufacturing; and by premiums, by exemptions, by protections, by model farms, by grants, by bounties, by patent rights, by technical schools, and by introduction of superior animals and improved machinery, has fostered well these industries. It has not been at fault, either, in donating large sums in the construction of canals and railroads and for the improvement of rivers and harbors. It has even taken an interest in the clam and oyster, and has stocked the rivers and lakes with young fish, that the devastation of these natural sources of wealth may be compensated thereby, and perpetuated as a national trust; while the springs and brooks and streams, the climatic causes of disease, the necessary conditions for national wealth and national health--in a word, the importance of forests for the nation, for the land, for agriculture, for the perpetuation of rivers--has received little or no official recognition. Few persons are so destitute of foresight as not to see that the fires and thieves, and increasing consumption, if continued at the present rate, can not fail to make this a treeless waste, a desolate, uninhabitable country, at no very distant date. Is there no way by which the remaining beasts and birds and trees can be preserved? Must the civilization of the North-west permit the pirates of destruction to take and hold possession of all its natural endowments? The clubs have been after the pot-hunter with legal enactments, and have crippled, but never as yet have they succeeded in exterminating him. He is still destroying the remnants of game, and is at large in the public domain, seeking something to devour.

The general government should no longer postpone a definition of its policy regarding _forests_, _rivers_, and its _millions of acres of arid lands_. The American people have been slow to realize the drifting of this country toward a forest famine and its destructive results. On the subject of forestry, until recently, representatives have been politically dumb, and, no doubt, would have remained so much longer had it not been for the inspiration of a few men. In January, 1872, ex-Secretary Morton presented a resolution before the Agricultural Society of Nebraska to set apart one day in each year and consecrate it to planting trees. This day was christened “Arbor Day,” and is now observed by law and proclamation in thirty-one states; has entered our schools and colleges, and forestry forms part of the curriculum.

Wherever Arbor-Day has been observed it has awakened a sense of inquiry; has taught the children the names, nature, and usefulness of trees, with a lasting admiration and love for them. From the influences of Arbor-Day, Nebraska has more than a million acres of planted forests, and Minnesota, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, and other Western States fast following the good example. With laws, plantings, and premiums; with books, schools, and colleges; with the hearts of workers in it, forestry has built up a healthy public sentiment that must be felt. The Eastern States are also awake and glistening with law officers to protect their woods from fires and thieves; and by large premiums and exemptions from taxation, have greatly promoted the interest of forestry in their respective states.

Even the state that sold her birth-right--one hundred and fifty billion feet of standing forest for nine hundred million dollars--is not without influence for good. All these noble acts of the states and of the people will be heard in time; for the government of the nation is not given to disregard the will of the people, and has ever shown a readiness to take the front and co-operate with the states in every good work. But there is something more required of a government--the representatives of the people must do more than simply respond to petitions. In a free republican government the people are both sovereigns and wards, and they expect those who assume legislative and executive powers of the nation to understand political economy sufficiently to manage correctly the finances and the natural wealth of the nation with intelligence and superior wisdom. And in this direction it would certainly prove a most laudable act to withdraw from sale or entry for a long period, if not perpetually, _all_ remaining forests and all arid lands where the rain-fall is below twenty inches, and place the same under the management of the Secretary of Agriculture, with ample powers and appropriations to build up a grand system of forestry, surpassing in extent and wealth all similar institutions belonging to the monarchies of Europe combined.

Governor J. J. Stevens, in his final report of surveys for a railroad across the Rocky Mountains, called the attention of the government, in 1855, to the arid lands west of the Missouri river, between parallels forty degrees and forty-nine north latitude. He compared it in extent, climate, rain-fall, and other features, to the Steppes, which occupies about one-fifth of the Russian Empire, and quotes the “Commentaries of the Productive Sources of Russia” to sustain his statements:

“Among other peculiarities of the Steppes a very prominent and distinctive one is the absence of timber, ... and opinions differ greatly as to the possibility of wooding it anew.”

Since 1855, the Russian Government has arrived at one conclusion, and adopted a policy of reforesting this two hundred and forty thousand square miles worthy of imitation.

Let the Government of the United States do as Russia has been doing, and the steppes from the Missouri river to the mountains will be reclaimed and made to “blossom as the rose.” According to geological surveys there are seven hundred and fifty million acres of arid, treeless lands, incapable of successful cultivation without irrigation--but where trees can be grown--for experiments have shown that trees will grow where the rain-fall is insufficient for grain or grass.

According to J. W. Powell, director of the United States Geological Survey, on the water supply in the arid regions, it would seem if all the water run off could be impounded and appropriated to irrigation it would be insufficient to supply one-tenth of the arid districts. And it might be asked if the arid land in the Dakotas, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, California, New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Indian Territory, only about “one hundred million acres” can be irrigated and made productive, what is to be done with the remaining six hundred and fifty million acres?

Could the area entire, or any part of the arid lands be made productive on the most economic plan yet devised by irrigation enterprise in this country, the cost of such lands and their products could never become profitably utilized in commerce so long as the vast area of cheap productive soil of the United States, or even that of the North-west lies out doors, ready to receive the showers of Heaven.

When we recount the miseries and misfortunes of the eight hundred million people that meagerly subsist on the products of irrigated, treeless lands, it makes an irresistible hope that the government of this nation may never be induced by ingenious descriptions of co-operative systems of economics, nor less perceptible but more powerful influences of _speculators in western water-ways_, to adopt a policy that will make any part of this country and nation, a Spain, a China, an India, or an Egypt, for want of forests.

Every country should have a just proportion of the total area in timber to make it healthful and productive. It is far better to have a portion in timber than to have all the country clothed with herds or covered with corn. It is the order of nature, the necessity of civilization, and the only true basis for a happy, powerful and independent population.

As the source for national revenue, it is an interest ranking first in importance, even in dollars and cents; and certainly, if for no other reason than for the wealth there is in it, the subject demands the attention of the government sufficiently to enforce protection and perpetuation. Every year it comes--“Once more the forests of the far west are aflame,” and it is not only the loss in money, but such sections of country are ruined for all purposes beyond the power of generations to repair.

It may seem expensive to maintain an army of officers and employes to protect and perpetuate the forests of the public domain. But notwithstanding it would require large appropriations, it would repay the outlay many thousand times in national wealth, for this great army would not be idlers. Nothing short of an organized department of forestry can protect and maintain this source of national wealth. The appropriation for this department in France has been five million dollars, and is returned with good interest.

Austria, not larger in extent of territory than the States of Illinois and Iowa combined, maintains thirty-two thousand forestry officers or employees and receives a large net income from this source; and reports show that Germany has an annual income of fifty-seven million dollars from an area of thirty-three million acres of timber, and it is estimated that no more is harvested each year than is compensated by growth and reoccupation of wasted ground. For, forest preservation does not mean that trees shall not be cut down, but that they shall be used, while all the conditions for their reproduction are steadily maintained from year to year, using if necessary, an amount equal to the production by growth. This requires planting, and tree-planting and forestry mean labor in this country as it does in Europe. The United States without Alaska, is, I believe, about nineteen times larger in area than Germany, and to be proportionately equal with this foreign power, the United States should have under control of the government an area of _six hundred million acres as a reservation for timber to supply the public necessities of the near future_. And it should be done without delay; the arid lands and forests along the streams and lakes that make the sources of the Mississippi and other navigable streams, should be dedicated forever to the cultivation of timber.

And here the labor question is solved. Every government that is able to sustain itself, must have something for idle hands to do. The increasing supply of labor has alarmed many thinking people. _Labor is wealth_, but how can all find employment? Which means _bread_. And various suggestions have been made simply to furnish _subsistence_. But in forestry there is something better--a necessity, a demand for labor, giving profitable employment to a vastly greater number than any other public necessity; for the labors of a department or bureau of this kind would be as immense as indispensable; and could end only with the end of the race.

A forest of six hundred million acres, thoroughly organized and officered under the Secretary of Agriculture, would sink the post-office department and its patronage into insignificance, and would be the brightest star in the civil service solar system to those who elect a life in the service of the country. But this is not all--it would make the climate more healthful, the rain-fall more regular and abundant, the soil more productive, and in due time would exceed all other sources of revenue combined.

The immensity of the consumption of forest supplies can not be measured accurately; but some idea can be formed of its vastness, when it is known that the one hundred and eighty-seven thousand miles of railroads and one hundred and thirty-seven thousand miles of telegraph lines in this country consume each year the annual growth or a forest equal to _one hundred and fifty million acres_. And nothing short of a large area of well-managed forest will prove adequate to _future_ demands. What else can the nation expect when at present statistics show the annual consumption, or crop, exceeds in value seven hundred million dollars?

This is more than the yield of all the gold-mines and silver-mines, coal, iron, copper, lead, and zinc combined; and if these are added to the value of all the steamboats, sailing vessels, canal-boats, flat-boats, and barges in American waters, the sum would be still less than the value of the forest crop by an amount sufficient to purchase at cost of construction all the canals, all the telegraph and telephone lines in the United States. The value of the forest income exceeds the gross income of all the railroads and transportation lines, and is an interest ranking in importance far above all others in the United States.

If this country ever becomes a Dalmatia--changed from a healthful, fruitful and salubrious habitation to a sterile, sickly waste, with decayed cities and crumbling greatness, history will not say “the Romans did it.”

Man should ever remember prevention is better than cure. The worst of evils is prevented by the removal of the cause. And when the apathy and improvidence which now threaten the destiny of a rich and prosperous nation are removed, then, and not till then, can it truly be said that the lost Paradise of the Eastern Continent has been regained in the New World of the West. The people should understand, also, the inspired influences of living forests--trees--those musical mutes, upon those who breathe their sweet ennobling influence.

The finest agricultural climate, perhaps, in the world, fell to the lot of Ohio. But this state will soon be obliged to do something to offset the destruction that is still going on with the little groves. When it came into the Union, it presented the grandest unbroken forest of forty-one thousand square miles that was ever beheld on this continent. A forest interspersed with hills and valleys, springs, brooks, and rivers; with a soil most inviting to the aspirations of agriculture.

The natural conditions of things were such that the possessors of this inheritance soon desired occupation of the soil, and looked upon its trees with less favor than they did upon those who disputed their titles with the tomahawk. Indians could be induced to move out of the way, but trees were all disposed to stand their ground and take the consequences. Both were considered too numerous for easy advancement of civilization, and in the contest both got the worst of it.

Forests may flourish independent of agriculture, but the latter can not prosper without the former. This was not so evident, however, to the early inhabitant, who felt he had thrust upon him more than his share of perpetual shade, and every owner and occupant of the soil combined with his neighbor in a warfare of destruction upon trees, and millions, the best of their kind ever produced were killed by cutting a circle around the trunk and left to decay. These deadenings were to be seen all over the country, as fast and as far as settlements were made or contemplated. And now, in less than a hundred years, more than eighty per cent. of this great forest has disappeared, and only small clumps in agricultural sections can be seen in any part of the state.

The older trees that occupied their places in these remnants of woods have nearly all fallen by the hand of the axman, and the younger growths are being appropriated for various purposes, greatly in excess of possible reproduction to the remaining stock; and the time is not far distant, if things continue without change for the better, when the salubrious climate, with summer showers and productive soil, will become changed to one of uncertainty. The entire North-west is now on the very border of forest limit. Still thousands of portable saw-mills are moving over the states, destroying the remaining needful trees, and the rural districts will discover, when too late, that private interest is insufficient to protect forest lands in quantity enough to maintain climatic and sanitary influences without the aid of state government.

Some years ago the legislature of Ohio passed a law, now in force, which lost the state many millions of growing forest trees that stood on the public grounds. The act reads: “Supervisors shall cut down _all bushes_ growing within any county or township highway, the same to be done within the months of July and August of each year.” Thus a clean sweep was made of every tree, bush and plant, as the word “bushes” was legally defined to mean places “abounding in trees and shrubs.” Trees of all kinds, sizes and ages, bordering and within the legal limits of the highways, met their doom under this act. And every growing scion that dared since to raise its head along the border lines of Ohio roads has met a similar fate in the months of July and August of each year.

If laws can be enforced to destroy trees along the borders of public highways, it is reasonable to suppose laws may be made and enforced to restore and protect them in such locations. Ohio has approximately forty thousand miles of good public highways and ways that could well subserve the use of trees along their borders, at sufficient distances to give them room and opportunity to grow. A tree on either side at thirty feet distant would make in the aggregate a forest of ordinary distribution of several million trees, that could be owned, cultivated and protected by law. At the same time, an act of this kind would maintain the lawful width of roads and prevent encroachments by adjoining land-owners, and make all highways and byways avenues of beauty, health and pleasure.

A fraction of a mill added to the tax assessment as a “forestry fund,” and expended in planting and protecting trees, would soon accomplish the work. Trees similarly arranged along railroads, canals and water-courses, and around district school-houses, with a law exempting from taxation all lands devoted exclusively to woods, would, in the combination, form an important factor in preserving the true ratio of timber to farming lands, the humidity of the atmosphere, and the healthful condition of the country.

Trees are to be prized for many reasons, and admired for their longevity. There is, perhaps, no limit to the life of a tree. No inquest has ever rendered a verdict “_caused by old age_.” They are not dependent upon the heart for their systemic vitality. The potency of the living principle lies near the periphery and most distant roots and branches from the surface of the ground; and grow on and on, subject only to accidents that may end life. The expression may have seemed extravagant for even an enthusiast, when that slip from a cypress tree of Ceylon was planted, to say it would “_flourish and be green forever_.” It is now the historical and sacred Bo-tree of two thousand one hundred and eighty-three years, and still green and growing.

While the Bo-tree is perhaps the oldest tree found in human records, it is not likely by any means, that it stands at the head in longevity. For trees keep their own books, and write their own history, in which may be found an account of passing years, from the beginning to the ending of life--a true autobiography--the eucalyptus of Senegal, the chestnuts at Mount Ætna, the oaks of Windsor, the yews at Fountain Abbey, the olives in the Garden of Gethsemane, or the mammoth trees in California are much older, making it quite probable that some of the first seedlings that grew after the last remodeling of the earth took place, are still green and growing.

It is stated on good authority that one of those ancient Jumbos blown down at Sequoia Park, California, was forty-one feet in diameter and showed six thousand, one hundred and twenty-six annual rings, or yearly growths.

In the explorations and surveys, under act of Congress, 1853 and 1854, Dr. J. M. Bigelow, in his report says: “It required five men twenty-two days,” with pump augers, to get one of these Sequoia Gigantea down--costing for labor at California prices, $550. “A short distance from this tree was another of larger dimensions, which, apparently, had been overthrown by an _accident_ some forty or fifty years ago.... The trunk was three hundred feet in length; the top broken off, and by some agency (probably fire) was destroyed. At the distance of three hundred feet from the butt, the trunk was forty feet in circumference, or more than twelve feet in diameter, ... proving to a degree of moral certainty that the tree, when standing alive, must have attained the height of four hundred and fifty or five hundred feet!

“At the butt it is one hundred and ten feet in circumference, or about thirty-six feet in diameter. On the bark, quite a soil had accumulated, on which considerable-sized shrubs were growing. Of these I collected specimens of currants and gooseberries on its body, from bushes elevated twenty-two feet from the ground.”

Ohio abounded in large forest trees of many varieties--the sycamore, oak, poplars, chestnut, black walnut, etc. The writer made partial notes at the time, of a large yellow poplar that was cut down in 1844, and taken to a saw mill, receiving from it over eleven thousand feet of lumber, which was sold at the mill for one hundred and two dollars. The tree was large at the base, measuring three feet above the ground, forty feet in circumference. The axemen built a scaffold twelve feet in height to stand upon, and by means of the axe and saw, they made a stump fifteen feet in height. Some distance above this point the center was decayed and when down, ten feet was discovered as unsuitable for boards. Four sound logs of ten feet each were cut below the two branches, and each branch made also a good saw-log. The four logs cut from the trunk of the tree were, on the average over seven feet in diameter, and were obliged to be quartered in order to handle them, and consequently there was more than ordinary waste at the mill, as well as where the tree stood. The outside appearance of the tree bore no evidence of decay and those who had taken the contract to cut it down were greatly rejoiced to find over four feet of the diameter useless as support.

Many coon-hunters had followed tracks in snow for miles to bring up at this tree, which was selected for safety or other _instinctive reason_; probably from its long standing it became a favorite resort or stopping place for traveling raccoons. A portion of both main branches of the tree was hollow. One was occupied by coons and the other by “the little busy bee.” But neither the bee-hunters nor hunter for coons could be induced to cut the tree for what it contained, and for forty years it defied the axemen of the surrounding settlement.

Another of the first crop of trees that has passed away without mention is a sycamore that stood on the banks of the Scioto, in Pickaway county. It became quite noted and familiar to generations of hunters, who used the interior for camping purposes on hunting excursions for nearly half a century. It was also known and visited by others, from the fact, in 1872, a newly married couple commenced housekeeping in its spacious quarters, and enjoyed the seclusion amidst a forest of other mammoth trees. July 4, 1855, the dimensions of this sycamore were taken, which showed--Circumference three feet above ground, forty-five feet, and diameter of the hollow chamber, fourteen feet; door-way, three feet wide at base, terminating in a point seven feet above.

The large trees existed in abundance in many portions of the state, showing ages of four to five hundred years. Trees sometimes are found in such close proximity as to be termed “wedded,” as those shown in the following page, which are near the line of the towing path of the canal in Miami county--an elm and sycamore--girt six feet from the ground measures twenty-four feet.

One of the surveys of the Military District, in Pickaway county, is known as the “Seven Oaks.” In 1793, while Nathaniel Massie was making surveying tours in the country yet covered by hostile Indians, his assistant, Duncan McArthur, ran around a tract located in Pickaway county, covered it with warrants, and named it, “The Seven Oaks.” The trees were said to be large one hundred years ago and still growing. From measurements made June 21, 1895, the circumference of the main undivided trunk, three feet from the ground measured twenty-five feet ten inches; height of common trunk, three feet six inches. At the top of the common trunk is an opening eighteen inches wide into a circular inclosure, with a floor thirty-six inches in diameter, formed by main trunk and surrounding trees. The four trees, forming the west and north portions of the circle, remain united for ten feet, while those forming the south and eastern portion separate at six feet from the ground. Each of the seven trees is one hundred feet in height, and measures a little over eight feet in circumference at bisections.

“Grandeur, strength, and grace, Are to speak of thee. This mighty oak-- By whose immovable stem I stand and seem Almost annihilated--not a prince, In all that proud old world beyond the deep, E’er wore his crown as loftily as he Wears the green coronal of leaves with which Thy hand has graced him.”

Great trees and great men and women are too numerous to obtain more than a mention. Every thing in Ohio has shown a tendency to superiority. It may seem almost fabulous, though true, a grape-vine near Frankfort, in Ross county, was cut down in 1853 that measured sixteen feet in circumference, ten feet from the ground; twenty feet up it divided into three branches, each measuring eight feet in circumference; height, seventy-five feet, and spread one hundred and fifty feet; and when cut up made eight cords of fire-wood.

It has been shown by actual measurements that the “big elm” of Walnut street, Chillicothe, Ohio, is much larger than the famous Boston elm, or any one at Cambridge, New Haven, or the great tree at Wethersfield. The Chillicothe elm measures twenty-eight feet six inches in circumference three feet above ground, with boughs covering an area of fifty-five square rods. As late as 1840 the remnants of this olden forest crop could be numbered by the dozen on an area of almost any square mile of woods. They were left because it meant work to get them off their pre-emption claim. But an advance in lumber and improvements soon diminished the number having a lumber value, leaving those unfitted for boards to the destruction of campfires and girdling, or to be utilized as houses of various kinds and purposes. A large, hollow sycamore in Pike county, near Waverly, made a commodious blacksmith shop and horse-shoeing establishment for many years.

“The Logan Elm” is the most interesting historic tree in Ohio, testifying of thrilling incidents in colonial times--military achievements of Lord Dunmore, unsurpassed ability of the red man, and the trying period of the earliest pioneers--each giving great interest to the spot where stands this living monument.

During the fall of 1774 Lord Dunmore fitted out an expedition of three thousand men, hoping to destroy the Indians and their numerous towns along the Scioto valley. His army moved westward in two sections. The larger division, commanded by Dunmore in person, crossed the mountains by way of the Cumberland Gap, and arrived at the Ohio river near where Wheeling now stands, and the smaller corps, under command of Colonel Andrew Lewis, followed the Kanawha to its confluence. Before reaching the villages of the plains and along the borders of the Scioto river, in Pickaway county, the divisions had planned to form a junction.

Colonel Lewis arrived on the Ohio river at the point designated October 6th, and encamped on the grounds now occupied by the town of Point Pleasant, awaiting dispatches from Lord Dunmore. After remaining three days without intrenchments or other works of defense, he was, on the 10th, attacked early in the morning by one thousand chosen braves of the tribes belonging to the confederacy, under the great chieftain, “Cornstalk,” hoping to destroy his enemies before they should have an opportunity to unite their forces. The battle lasted all day and ended with the cover of night. The Indians felt they received the greater disaster, having two hundred and thirty-three killed and severely wounded. Here Colonel Charles Lewis lost his life, with the lives of half of the commissioned officers.

Chief Cornstalk felt the failure, and to save the towns and people of the Scioto valley, something must be done immediately, and hurried to Lord Dunmore with petitions for peace. Previous to this, and in ignorance of the bloody battle, Dunmore had transmitted orders to Lewis to move on and enter the borders of the enemy’s country on the Scioto.

Elated with the idea of slaughtering the “redskins” in their camps and country, the enraged Virginians marched eighty miles through a rough, trackless wilderness, without bread or tents, and on the 24th day of October encamped on the banks of Congo, under the spreading boughs of the historic tree, and within less than four miles of the great town of the Shawnees, located on the west bank of the Scioto river, now known as “Westfall.” Chief Cornstalk had been scouting Colonel Lewis’s movements, and he, with the chiefs of other tribes, were beseeching Lord Dunmore to stop Colonel Lewis and save their towns and women and children.

Thrice had Lewis received orders to halt, but on he went; and when near the Indian town, he was intercepted by Dunmore, who drew his sword upon Lewis and threatened him with instant death if he persisted in any further disobedience, and marched the army back to Camp Lewis, where the treaty went on to a satisfactory conclusion, in the presence of two thousand five hundred troops and all the confederate chiefs and their warriors.

There was one chief absent whom Dunmore much desired present--Logan, the great warrior of the Mingoes--who felt his people had been very unfortunate in their attempts at peaceful relations with the whites; and in order to secure his presence, John Gibson, an interpreter and friend of Logan’s, was detailed as messenger with dispatches to the chief, who resided at Old Chillicothe (Westfall), about four miles distant from Camp Lewis.

Of this matter Captain Gibson says, under oath, he found Logan at his home, but refused to attend the council, and that at the chief’s request they walked out some distance into the woods and sat down. Logan appeared much affected, and after shedding many tears and showing other manifestations of sorrow, told his pathetic story in reply to the request from Lord Dunmore, and which Gibson translated into English and delivered to Dunmore in the council assembled under the boughs of this noble tree on the banks of the Congo--and was read as follows, to wit:

“I appeal to any white man to say if ever he entered Logan’s cabin hungry and I gave him not meat; if ever he came cold or naked and I gave him not clothing.

“During the course of the last long and bloody war Logan remained in his tent, an advocate for peace. Nay, such was my love for the whites that those of my countrymen pointed at me as they passed by and said, ‘Logan is the friend of the white man.’ I had even thought to have lived among them, but for the injuries of one man--Colonel Cresap--who last spring, in cold blood and unprovoked, cut off all the relations of Logan, not sparing even my women and children. There runs not a drop of my blood in the veins of any human creature. This called on me for revenge--I have sought it. I have killed many. I have fully glutted my vengeance. For my country I rejoice at the beams of peace. Yet do not harbor the thought that mine is the joy of fear. Logan never felt fear. He will not turn on his heel to save his life. Who is there to mourn for Logan? Not one.”

The authorship of this message has been doubted and disputed by reason of its greatness. But it is well known that many of the native men of America have shown an ability for expression of thoughts surpassed by no people or nation in the world. Who could have thought it--who could have said it so effectively, by every gesture and living fiber--as it was expressed by Tecumseh, after finishing a speech at Vincennes holding, contrary to the United States Government, that no one or two tribes could make treaties conveying away lands without the consent of others equally interested? When done speaking, an aide of Governor Harrison, pointing to a vacant chair, said to Tecumseh, “Your father requests you to take a seat by his side.” Drawing his mantle around him, the chief proudly exclaimed: “My father! The sun (pointing upward) is my father, and the earth my mother; on her bosom I will repose,” and seated himself on the ground where he had been standing. And it is unusual, at least, that one with learning and general acquaintance with the high standard of natural ability of the Indian, and after so many years, should enter into a voluminous correspondence to prove that he (Jefferson) did not write “Logan’s reply.”

Some years since, a partial investigation of the papers of Lord Dunmore was made. While the original Gibson translation was not discovered, there was much to confirm the statements here given.

The expedition of Dunmore with an army of three thousand men into the heart of an Indian country, with mountains and wilderness hundreds of miles between him and supplies, at that early date, with that existing animosity between the Indians and his Virginia soldiery, makes it appear now, as it did at the time to many of his soldiers, of singular significance. When the military expedition reached the point of destination it found the enemy praying for peace. And while the chiefs were entertained in council, and the braves and soldiers were listening to Virginia oratory, small bands of maddened and vicious troops stole away and murdered Indian women and children, fired their towns, and with stolen horses discharged themselves from the army and fled the country.

The Indians were helpless, and the treaty fixing the Ohio river the boundary line went on, while the soldiers put in the time making speeches and passing resolutions. The following should be ever preserved as the thoughts of men in a far country, by a captain:

“GENTLEMEN--Having now concluded the campaign, by the assistance of Providence, with honor and advantage to the colony and ourselves, it only remains that we should give our country the stronger assurance that we are ready at all times, to the utmost of our power, to maintain and defend her just rights and privileges.

“We have lived about three months in the woods, without any intelligence from Boston, or from the delegates at Philadelphia. It is possible, from the groundless reports of designing men, that our countrymen may be jealous of the use such a body would make of arms in their hands at this critical juncture. That we are a respectable body is certain, when it is considered that we can live weeks without bread or salt; that we can sleep in the open air without any covering but that of the canopy of heaven; and that we can march and shoot with any in the known world. Blessed with these talents, let us solemnly engage to one another, and our country in particular, that we will use them for no purpose but for the honor and advantage of America, and of Virginia in particular. It behooves us, then, for the satisfaction of our country, that we should give them our real sentiments by way of resolves at this very alarming crisis.”

Thereupon the committee presented the following resolutions, which carried, and ordered printed in the _Virginia Gazette_:

“_Resolved_, That we will bear the most faithful allegiance to His Majesty, King George the Third, while His Majesty delights to reign over a brave and free people; that we will, at the expense of life and every thing dear and valuable, exert ourselves in the support of the honor of his crown and the dignity of the British Empire. But as the love of liberty and attachment to the real interests and just rights of America outweigh every other consideration, we resolve we will exert every power within us for the defense of American liberty, and for the support of her just rights and privileges--not in any precipitous, riotous or tumultuous manner, but when regularly called forth by the unanimous voice of our countrymen.

“_Resolved_, That we entertain the greatest respect for his excellency, the Rt. Hon. Lord Dunmore, who commanded the expedition against the _Shawanese_, and who we are confident underwent the great fatigue of this singular campaign from no other motive than the true interests of the country.

“Signed by order and in behalf of the whole corps.

“BENJAMIN ASHBY, _Clerk_.”

All of which shows political and personal resolutions have maintained a due degree of hypocrisy to the present, without material change.

Captain John Boggs and family located on this place in 1798, before the lands were surveyed or in market. And from Captain Williamson, an officer under Lord Dunmore, Captain Boggs procured many important facts in regard to Camp Lewis, Logan, and the noted tree. This large and valuable tract of land, on which the tree stands passed from the United States into the hands of Captain John Boggs, and is still owned by his descendants.

In memory of the family settlement and historic events of the spot, John Boggs the third erected a handsome monument where stood the cabin in which three generations were born. The monument is within one hundred and fifty feet of the Logan Elm, is of pure granite, twelve feet square, base six feet, shaft fifteen feet, tapering. On each side are cut letters in commemoration of events connected with that spot. On one side is firmly set in the granite a bronze tablet, thirty by fifteen inches, bearing the picture of the capture of Captain Boggs’ son, William, in bas-relief. The figures depicted represent a thrilling and vivid scene which on that spot actually once occurred in view of the agonized family.

The landscape is an exact representation of the surroundings. In the left-hand corner is a log cabin, at the corner of which is the figure of an Indian with a gun to his shoulder; to the left, and fronting the cabin door stands an Indian. At the right of this is a field of wheat surrounded by a rail-fence. Several panels have been thrown down in the night, and the cattle are in the field eating the grain. Near the fence is seen a boy running up a slight ascent, making his way to a palisade on the elevation beyond--after him are two Indians in hot pursuit.

The Indians, under cover of darkness, had torn down the fence and turned the cattle upon the growing grain; then secreted themselves for events that might occur in the morning. The decoy was successful. The boy, awakening early, found the destructive scene, and, unsuspecting the authors of the mischief, proceeded at once to drive out the herd and to restore the fence. Suddenly an apparition of a hostile foe rises before him. He at once retreats toward the cabin, but there too he sees a redskin awaiting his approach. He turns, and, with the speed of dying fright, vainly endeavors to make the palisade on the elevation; but his course is beset with increasing pursuers on all sides, and at length, exhausted, is overcome and made captive to Indian cunning.

All this time, Captain Boggs stood sentinel at the cabin’s corner, guarding the family, while the son is relentlessly pursued by the hostile enemy. The whole is depicted and for the time preserved in bronze and granite; and as generations of the future stand before this consecrated record, it will extort thoughts of the pioneer--his pleasures and his sufferings--with venerated admiration for those whose lives marked out the pathway of our civilization.

Every nation, every country, and every town has historic trees. They are not without influence on the destiny of individuals, societies, and nations. They are objects of reverence--works of time--homes of generations--and the manifest wisdom of creation. In the _tree_ is beheld in perfection an enduring living principle, exceeding all other forms of life--beginning in the morning of creation and ending only with the end of time. When moth and rust have corroded memorial in bronze, and years of the unseen future have crumbled the granite to dust, there will still be standing noble, historic trees, with all their lessons fresh and green.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Barr’s Buffon, Vol. VII, page 175.

[19] Stevens’s Report.

[20] Illustrations of the Nests and Eggs of Birds of Ohio.

[21] Hon. J. M. Rusk, Secretary Agriculture Report, 1889.

[22] Minneapolis Journal.