306 



FOREST AND STREAM. 





the;military match. 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 



Devoted to Feeld and Aquatic Sports, Practical Natural History, 

 Fish Couture, the Protection op Game, Preservation of Forkst3, 

 and the Inculcation in Men and Women Of a Healthy Interest 

 in Out-Door Recreation and Study: 



PTJBLI8HBD BY 



$trtesi mi ^treaty §&blishing $ompati$. 



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 to us, will receive the Forest and Stream for one year. 



NEWiYORK, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 1878. 



To Correspondents. 



All communications whatever, Intended for publication, must be ac- 

 companied with real name of the writer as a guaranty of good faith 

 and be addressed to the Forest and Stream Publishing Company 

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W" Trade supplied by American News Company. 

 CHARLES QALLOUK, Editor. 



T. C.BANKS, 



Business Manager. 



8. H. TDBRILL, Chicago, 



Western Manager. 



Another New Head. — It is said that two heads are better 

 than one. The Hydra had more than two heads, but we do 

 not remember to have read that it ever congratulated itself 

 especially on that account. The great advantage of the mul- 

 tiple possession was that as often as one head was decapitated 

 another took its place. It would be fortunate for some men 

 if this condition of things could apply to their cases. Men 

 are apt to lose their heads, and that finishes them. It is not 

 always Dice to be a finished gentlemen. This week Forest 

 ahd Stream has lopped off its old head and put on a new 

 one in the other's placs. It may not be quite so picturesque 

 as the one which bus stood as frontispiece for so long a time, 

 and some of oar Western readers will nodoubt miss the "one 

 eyed bull of the Republican Fork," so glowingly descanted 

 upon by Dr. Carver last summer. The big moose head in the 

 centre of the diagram will no longer be conspicuous. Yet 

 we need the space for our reading matter which presses upon 

 our columns, and therefore do we sacrifice that which is ar- 

 tistic and beautiful to that which is reasonable and useful. 

 But the paper in losing its head gains a firmer and more sub- 

 stantial footing, and by so much shall both we and our read- 

 ers profit in a business way. We await the verdict of those 

 who sit in judgment on us. 



The Yellow Fevee Fund. — The total sum of money given 

 for the yellow fever fund, excluding all private, religious and 

 inscriptions, and embracing only the cash subscribed 

 through the authorities of the various cities and their com- 

 mittees, amounts to $1,330,000. 



THE British rifle leaders are breaking out into a vigorous 

 attack of letter writing. All sorts of explanations arc 

 offered to make the defeat of the Scotch, Irish, United and 

 other teams appear less as defeats and more of accidental 

 omissions on their part, and it is suddenly discovered that 

 Creed moor, upon which these visiting teams made scores such 

 as they had never approached at home, was an improper 

 range given to favor the home team to the prejudice of the 

 visitors. Then the conditions of the trophy, which made it 

 obligatory upon those wishing the prize, to come and win it, 

 is found to be irksome, and with an intimation that unless the 

 trophy is sent abroad with an American team as an accom- 

 paniment, there will be no more matches ; the British rifle- 

 men unite in sitting down to see how much the American 

 riflemen will consent to give. These may be strong words, 

 but they are borne out by the record, and in those letters the 

 British riflemen have taken anything but a sportsman's posi- 

 tion. The conditions of the Palina match have not altered 

 since they went into it, nor would they in all likelihood ask 

 for changes now had victory been theirs, and to ask such 

 under defeat has a whine about it which is far from the real 

 Saxon spirit of pluckiness which would dictate a fight to the 

 end rather than a cry for terms. 



There is a line of battle, however, in which the^British rifle- 

 men may enter without meeting any preliminary impediments. 

 It is to institute a great military match. The Americans have 

 done nothing in this line. The avenue is clear for the English 

 volunteers to make the first move. As the American marks- 

 men took the initial step in the establishment of the trophy 

 for long-range championship, it would be the entirely proper 

 thing for the National Rifle Association of Great Britain to 

 take in hand the more difficult task of putting in motion a 

 match between teams of military shooters. Compared with 

 the long-range matches, they would be of infinitely wide in- 

 terest. The fancy element which will always cling about these 

 small-bore contests would not be present in a military match. 

 All rifle shooting has a presumable end in the culture of sol- 

 diers, and the nearer this end is brought to the means the 

 greater will be the popular interest taken in the contest. 



England, with her great force of Volunteer marksmen, can 

 surely have no fear of any rivalry in this special line of rifle 

 shooting. She has no end of excellent shooters to choose 

 from, and though there might be slight trouble from the etn- 

 harras de rklienes when the task of selection comes up, it is 

 certain that the team when chosen would be a strong one, 

 able to shoot on any field, and with the superb regulation 

 weapon of the British army need fear no humiliating com- 

 parison when the scores were made up. The field of inter- 

 ested, silent participators in the match would be so large that 

 there would be no difficulty in securing the means necessary 

 to carry out the match. The difficulty with the long-range 

 matches has been the limited number of persons who were 

 sufficiently concerned in the contests to assist in defraying the 

 expenses connected with them. In a military competition it 

 would be entirely proper, if necessity demanded, that govern- 

 ment aid should be extended ; but the almost certain proba- 

 bility is that no such demand would be made. A test severe 

 enough to bring out [the very best effort of the men, and to 

 showin the most emphatic manner the meritsor demerits of the 

 arms used, could not fail to be satisfactory to all concerned, and 

 the conclusions reached would be entirely novel, since no such 

 matches have ever taken place in connection with the modern 

 scientific target practice. The ranges should bo well covered 

 from the off-hand distances back to the longest ranges over 

 which the military weapons are presumed to carry. Small 

 arms commissions have been appointed in every civilized 

 country, and their conclusions are shown in the various sorts 

 and styles of weapons in the hands of the troop of the several 

 nationalities. The advantages of these pieces can be shown 

 in a marked way by a test before the butts, and to shrink 

 from such trial would be a confession of weakness. What 

 American militiamen lack in numbers, in organization, in 

 experience before the targets, and in a hundred other points 

 in which the British volunteers are thoroughly traiued is sup- 

 plied by an enthusiasm which will carry them over many diffi- 

 culties and fill up many deficiences. They are surely in 

 no worse condition than were the American small-bore men 

 in that November, 1873, when the challenge of the Irish 

 champion eight was received and accepted. The British vol- 

 unteer may rely upon it that the American militiaman will 

 not be found the least backward when the hour for action 

 has come. 



Nothing in a Name.— The names of the army officers 

 who are in pursuit of Little Wolf's band of Indians out West 

 are Lieuts. Hunter and Chase; they didn't catch 'em, never- 

 theless, 



LIGHTING THE COAST BY ELEC- 

 TRICITY. 



THOUGH at present the only question to be solved in re- 

 lation to lighting cities by electricity consists of the 

 hitherto insurmountable difficulty experienced in the econom- 

 ical subdivision of the electric current proceeding from the 

 main centre of supply to a large number of widely distrib- 

 uted individual lights, the same does not obtain in bringing 

 into practical use the electric light to advantage in many of 

 the more prominent light-houses along our coast. Apart al- 

 together from the intrinsic superiority of such lights, due to 

 their greater power in penetrating fogs and hazy atmosphere, 

 it is certain that by the use of electricity we cannot only in- 

 crease the efficiency of the lighting of the 3,000 miles of coast 

 line t w which we even at present provide, but ft considerable 



saving can be effected in the number of lighthouses and the 

 corresponding reduction in the working force, to say nothing 

 of a variety of supplementary uses to which a strong light can 

 be made to contribute in different ways. 



The cost of the electric light, as at present generally sup- 

 plied, is still somewhat in excess of that of wick and oil, ma- 

 terial and necessary service included. The excess is, however, 

 small, while the range of the light is so much greater that in 

 many instances intermediate stations, which are now required 

 to keep up the continuity of the lighted horizon for the marin- 

 ers' guide, could be done away with to no detriment. Again, 

 lights which now serve the double purpose of indicating local 

 dangers, channels or fairways, as well as of a link in the chain 

 as a whole, could be reduced to a lower rank than they at 

 present must necessarily occupy, and by substituting specially 

 colored lenses of a low order their identification would be 

 much facilitated. 



One of the most dangerous errors, often the pre- 

 lude to disaster, to which our coasting fleet is liable, 

 arises from mistaking one light for another, especially 

 when first making a land fall, or picking up one's 

 position again after a spell of thick weather. As the log-slate 

 is not to be trusted to the last mile, cases arise where the 

 master will, for want of powerful night glasses or detail 

 charts, fancy himself with land closer aboard or with ample 

 sea-room between himself and shore, especially when his 

 soundings may be by their nature misleading and only tend 

 to confirm him in his misconception. It is, under such cir- 

 cumstances, a very easy matter to be misled by two similar 

 lights, for their difference in power would be of little or no 

 avail. A reduction in the number of lights of first and second 

 order, and in some cases even of those of a lower class and 

 a substitution therefor of a less number of electric lightB 

 of great range, would afford the skipper seeking his position 

 a larger margin of safety than at present, and if a reduction 

 of expenses be not considered a necessity, the multiplying of 

 small colored lights of low range on shoals and dangers, and 

 in fairways generally would seem a policy more progressive 

 than that now persistently pursued— the accumulation of 

 lights, under unfavorable conditions hard to place for the 

 navigator a stranger to the latitudes. 



But the electric light at an elevation can be made to sub- 

 serve many other purposes than the limited functions now 

 fulfilled by the low range wick flame. The diversity of 

 uses to which a powerful illuminator can be put are so strik- 

 ing, and to the navigator along a dangerous coast, of such 

 immediate, value, that it is rather strange those m authority 

 should have hitherto given little attention to the benefits and 

 security that might be made to flow from somewhat more 

 progressive ideas if put into practice. Some excellent sug- 

 gestions have been made in this connection by Mr. McMullen, 

 of London, England, in an interesting little volume de- 

 scribing a cruise, single-handed, in the yacht Orion, 

 a craft of some twenty tons. His observations so en- 

 tirely concur with what our own experience would suggest, 

 that credit should be given the gentleman for having been the 

 first to call the attention of the Board of Trinity to the seri- 

 ous defects of the electric lights at the South Foreland and 

 Portland Bill. To craft plying near the shore they become 

 an absolute nuisance, and it is at all times difficult to estimate 

 their proximity. 



The intensity of the light is required only for great dis- 

 tances, and it would seem but natural that some provisions 

 should have been made for tempering the fierce glare when 

 close aboard j not only would the lights thereby be rendered 

 less blinding, for at present they virtually invite collision, but 

 by adopting a shade of some definite color, green or red, or a 

 combination of both, limiting the white rays from the lens 

 to distances beyond one, three or five miles, such change of 

 color being noted on the chart, a warning would be given to 

 the coaster in time to turn him about before he had stood in 

 shore too far. The range of the colored base should be regu- 

 lated according to the. reefs and shoals or banks off shore, and, 

 in the absence of any dangers, will serve the end of taking 

 accurate departures and plotting, out a position on the chart 

 with something more than a guess at the distance of the light, 

 too often very wide of the truth. Nor need the power of the 

 light be materially affected by the arrangement of a colored 

 "warning radius," for only the weakest and lea3t useful 

 prisms at the base of the lens, instead of lending their limited 

 assistance to the general illuminating power at the horizon, 

 could be thrown out of focus and their rays bent toward the 

 base. In such position they would acquire power not before 

 possessed, which would do efficient service in illumioating 

 through colored glass the region of warning. The mariner 

 who finds himself within the range of color knowB what he 

 is about and is prepared to keep a sharp lookout, whereas, 

 without such warning sigD, he may he rushing on to destruc- 

 tion in a fancied security born of a faulty estimate of the sea- 

 room left him. 



With our rapidly advanoing knowledge of electricity, it is 

 a satisfaction to know that the Light-house Board is f ul'y in- 

 formed upon all that may in the least affect the thoroughness 

 of our surviee, and to it we commend the foregoing for con- 

 sideration should the introduction of electric lights be con- 

 templated. 



_ . ■»■ •■ 



Asotssv Canals and Mouses op Flobida.— In his in- 

 teresting article on Marooning, which we print to-day, Dr. 

 Kenworthy sayB : 



l[lt is to be regretted that some of our scientific institutions 



