Part 21

The common deer, hedged within their narrowing ranges by civilization, and hunted by all methods in all seasons, may outlast the century, but they will have become wofully scarce at the close of it, even in such regions as the Adirondacks which seem to have been set apart by nature especially for the preservation of wild life.

The wild turkey is passing away, and it is a question of but few years when he shall have departed forever. In some localities the next noblest of our game birds, the ruffed grouse, has become almost a thing of the past, and in some years is everywhere so scarce that there are sad forebodings of his complete disappearance from the rugged hills of which he seems as much a belonging as the lichened rocks, the arbutus and the wind-swept evergreens. One little island on the New England coast holds the handful that is left of the race of heath hens.

The woodcock is being cultivated and improved and murdered out of existence with clearing and draining and summer shooting, and unseasonable shooting is doing the same for many kinds of waterfowl. In the Eastern States a wild pigeon is a rare sight now, and has been for years; the netters and slaughterers have done their work too thoroughly.

Gentle woman is making an end of the song-birds that she may trick her headgear in barbaric and truly savage fashion. The brighter plumaged small birds are becoming noticeably scarce even in those parts of the country that the milliners' collector and the pot-naturalist have not yet invaded, and such as the scarlet tanager, never anywhere numerous, are like to be soon "collected" out of living existence. If they are to be saved, it is by no dallying, nor slow awakening of popular feeling in their behalf.

There will be pine-trees, no doubt, for centuries to come, but who that live twenty years hence will see one of these venerable monarchs of the woods towering above all other forest growth, or see any ancient tree, however historic or precious for its age and beauty and majesty and mystery of long past years, if it is worth the cutting for timber or fuel?

Even the lesser growths of the old woods are passing away. Some, as the carpeting sphagnum and the sprawling hobble bush, disappear through changed conditions; others, as the medicinal spikenard, sarsaparilla, and ginseng, and the decorative running pine and the arbutus, through ruthless, greedy gathering, which leaves no root nor ripened seed to perpetuate their kind.

An old man may be glad that his eyes are not to behold the coming desolation, but he must be sad when he thinks of the poor inheritance of his children.

THE PERSISTENCY OF PESTS

From the sowing and planting of his seed, almost indeed from the turning of the furrow, the farmer enters upon a contest with the weeds, for a place in which his crops may grow, and if he or the crops are not vanquished, as the weeds never are, the warfare continues till harvest time.

While he, with infinite labor, prepares the ground and sows his seed with all care, praying that drouth may not wither nor floods drown it, and that frosts may not cut down the tender plants, the winds of heaven and the fowls of the air scatter broadcast the seeds of the noxious weeds, or these lie dormant in the ground awaiting opportunity. They germinate in sterile places, fence corners and nooks of the wayside, and flourish alike in scorching sunshine and in sodden soil.

Weeds defy the latest and the earliest frosts, grow with their roots in the air; and cut down, spring up, grow on, blossoming and ripening their seed in creeping stealth and ever unscathed by blight; and so flourish in spite of all unkindliness of man or stress of nature, that the husbandman wishes that they might by some freak of demand become the useful plants, his present crop the undesired ones.

Somewhat the same position in which weeds stand opposed to the plants which the husbandman depends upon for his livelihood, vermin hold toward the beasts and birds upon which the sportsman depends for his recreation. While they whose protection men endeavor to maintain during the season of procreation, and at times when scarcity of food prevails, decrease often to complete extinction, the vermin, whom the hand of man is always against, continue to increase and multiply, or at least hold their own. With them as with the weeds nature seems to deal with a kinder hand. She spares and nourishes them, while she destroys their betters.

The snow crust, which walls the quail in a living tomb, makes a royal banqueting hall for the pestiferous field mice, where they feast and revel in plenty, secure from all their enemies, feathered or furred. It impounds the deer, but gives free range to the wolf and to his as pitiless two-legged brother, the crust hunter.

The wet seasons that drown the callow woodcock and grouse work no harm to the ravenous brood of the hawk and owl, nor to the litter of fox, mink, or weasel. Wet or dry, hot or cold, the year fosters them throughout its varied round.

Winged ticks kill the grouse, but the owl endures their companionship with sedate serenity and thrives with a swarm of the parasites in the covert of his feathers.

The skunk has always been killed on sight as a pest that the world would be the sweeter for being rid of. In later years the warfare against him has received an impetus from the value of his fur, but though this has gone on relentlessly for many years, his tribe still live to load the air with a fragrance that incites the ambitious trapper to further conquest.

All the year round, farmers and their boys wage war upon the crows, but each returning autumn sees the columns of the black army moving southward with apparently unthinned ranks, while, year by year, the harried platoons of ducks and geese return fewer and less frequent. Those detested foreigners, the English sparrows, increase and multiply in spite of bitter winters and righteous persecution, while our natives, the beloved song-birds, diminish in numbers. On every hand we find the undesirable in animated nature, the birds and beasts that we would gladly be rid of, maintaining their numbers, while those whose increase we desire are losing ground and tending toward extinction.

The prospect for the sportsman of the future is indeed gloomy, unless he shall make game of the pests and become a hunter of skunks and a shooter of crows and sparrows. Who can say that a hundred years hence the leading sportsmen of the period will not be wrangling over the points and merits of their skunk and woodchuck dogs and bragging of their bags of crows and sparrows?

LII

THE WEASEL

A chain that is blown away by the wind and melted by the sun, links with pairs of parallel dots the gaps of farm fences, and winds through and along walls and zigzag lines of rails, is likely to be the most visible sign that you will find in winter of one bold and persistent little hunter's presence.

Still less likely are you to be aware of it in summer or fall, even by such traces of his passage, for he is in league with nature to keep his secrets. When every foot of his outdoor wandering must be recorded she makes him as white as the snow whereon it is imprinted, save his beady eyes and dark tail-tip. When summer is green and autumn gay or sad of hue she clothes him in the brown wherewith she makes so many of her wild children inconspicuous.

Yet you may see him, now and then, in his white suit or in his brown, gliding with lithe, almost snake-like movement along the lower fence rails, going forth hunting or bearing home his game, a bird or a fat field-mouse. In a cranny of an old lichen-scaled stone wall you may see his bright eyes gleaming out of the darkness, like dewdrops caught in a spider's web, and then the brown head thrust cautiously forth to peer curiously at you. Then he may favor you with the exhibition of an acrobatic feat: his hinder paws being on the ground in the position of standing, he twists his slender body so that his forepaws are placed in just the reverse position on the stone or rail above him, and he looks upward and backward.

He may be induced to favor you with intimate and familiar acquaintance, to take bits of meat from your hand and even to climb to your lap and search your pockets and suffer you to lay a gentle hand upon him, but he has sharp teeth wherewith to resent too great liberties.

While he may be almost a pet of a household and quite a welcome visitor of rat-infested premises, he becomes one of the worst enemies of the poultry-wife when he is tempted to fall upon her broods of chicks. He seems possessed of a murderous frenzy, and slays as ruthlessly and needlessly as a wolf or a human game-butcher or the insatiate angler. Neither is he the friend of the sportsman, for he makes havoc among the young grouse and quail and the callow woodcock.

The trapper reviles him when he finds him in his mink trap, for all the beauty of his ermine a worthless prize drawn in this chanceful lottery. When every one carried his money in a purse, the weasel's slender white skin was in favor with country folk. This use survives only in the command or exhortation to "draw your weasel." When the purse was empty, it gave the spendthrift an untimely hint by creeping out of his pocket. In the primest condition of his fur he neither keeps nor puts money in your pocket now. He is worth more to look at, with his lithe body quick with life, than to possess in death.

LIII

FEBRUARY DAYS