3 68 



The National Geographic Magazine 



Flashlight. Boat Rigged for Night-hunting with Cameras, showing Flashlight 



Apparatus and Jack Lamp 



and animals. So many advocates of 

 hunting with the camera have been heard 

 of late, that my voice need no longer be 

 raised in behalf of this sensible and at- 

 tractive pastime, were it not that the 

 majoiity of such writers, coming from 

 the ranks of the naturalist and the ama- 

 teur photographer, almost invariably 

 decry the sportsmen as a set of ruthless 

 butchers, blind alike to the beauty of wild 

 life and to the ethics of ordinary decency. 

 No greater error could exist or its effects 

 be more unfortunate. Sportsmen, the 

 world over, constitute a high order of 

 citizenship ; generous, self-reliant, and 

 faithful, they have done much in keeping 

 up the virility of the race, and in leaven- 



ing those debasing influences of over- 

 civilization. The all-inspiring motive of 

 every true sportsman is fair play and a 

 fair chance to the animal or bird whose 

 life may pay the forfeit in the contest. 

 The salmon must be lured from the foam- 

 crested pool with a fragile, artificial fly 

 and landed with a rod so light that per- 

 haps an hour may pass before the hand- 

 net is used; the grouse must be plucked 

 from mid-air by a tiny gun, and the 

 mountain sheep shot at 500 yards with a 

 bullet smaller than a pencil tip. Within 

 the ranks of civilized man, where do such 

 rules prevail ? In business competition, 

 in the race for social and public honors, 

 in all those contests wherein Mammon or 



