406 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



^^^^OT^Pa 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 



devoted to Field and AqoATic sports, Pbacticai. Natubai, History, 



FI8H CDXTCKB, THE PROTECTION OF GAME, PRESERVATION OF FORESTS, 



and the Inculcation in Men and Women of a Healthy Interest 

 in Out-Boob Heobeation and Study: 



PUBLISHED BY 



^ottsi mi gtnatti §aiUshmg fflompaqg. 



—AT— 

 HO. Ill FULTON STREET, NEW YORK, 



[Post office Box ssm.] 



TERMS, FOUR DOLLARS A YEAR, STRICTLY IN ADVANCE. 



Twenty-five per cent, off for ClubB 01 Two or more. 

 Advertising Rate*. 



Inside pages, nonpareil typo, 25 cents per line ; outside page, 40 cents. 

 Special rates for three, Blx and twelve months. Notices in editorial 

 columns, 60 cents per line— eight words to tlie line, and twelve lines to 

 one Inch. 



Advertisements should be sent m by Saturday of each week, If pos- 

 sible. 



All transient advertisements must be accompanied with the money 

 or they will not be inserted. 



No advertisement or business notice of an Immoral character will be 

 received on any terms. 



V Any publisher inserting our prospectus aB above one time, with 

 brief etlltorlal notice calling attention thereto, and sending marked copy 

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



NEW TORE. THURSDAY. DECEMBER 19, 1878. 



To Correspondents. 



AB 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 Pcblibhino Company 

 Names will not be published If obj ectlon be made. No anonymous com- 

 munications will be regarded. 



We cannot promise to return rejected manuscripts. 



Secretaries of Clubs and Associations are urged to favor us with brief 

 o«es of their movements and transactions. 



Nothing will be admitted to any department of the paper that may 

 not be read with propriety In the home circle. 



We cannot be responsible for dereliction of the mail service if money 

 f emitted to us is lost. No person whatever Is authorized to collec- 

 money for as unless he can show authentic credentials from one of the 

 undersigned. We have no Philadelphia agent. 



tsr Trade supplied by American News Company, 

 CHARLES EAIXOCK, Editor. 

 T.:c BANKS, S. H. TUBHILL, Chicago, 



Business Manager. Western Manager 



Childrbn*s Aid Society. — This society during the twenty- 

 flve years of its existence has been filling a most commendable 

 mission, the value of which may be inferred from the work 

 for the past year, in which alone there were in their lodging 

 houses, 14,234 different boys and girls; 204,045 meals and 

 198,18? lodgings were supplied- In the twenty day and twelve 

 evening schools were 8,G1G children, who were taught, and 

 partly fed and clothed (500,694 meals were supplied) ; 3,818 

 were sent to homes, mainly in the West ; 2,979 were aided 

 with food, medicine, etc., through the " Sick Children's Mis- 

 sion" ; 2,550 children enjoyed the benefits of the " Seaside 

 Home" (averaging about 200 per week) ; 628 girls have been 

 instructed in the use of the sewing machine in the girls' lodg- 

 ing house and in the industrial schools. There have been 

 8,358 orphans in the lodging houses. $7,149.41 have been de- 

 posited in the Penny Savings Banks. Total number under 

 charge of the society during the year was, 31,906. We heartily 

 commend the society and its aims to our readers. Gifts of 

 money, food and clothing are acceptable, not only at this 

 Christmas season of the year, but always, and should be sent 

 to O. L. Brace, Secty. Children's Aid Society, 19 E. Fourth 

 st., N£w York. 



CriBiSTSCAS Gbbens fob the Hospitals.— The ladies of tie 

 Hew York Flower Mission, whose admirable work we have 

 already described at some length, propose this year to deco- 

 rate with evergreens the city hospitals. The rooms of the 

 Mission, 239 Fourth avenue, will be open all day to-morrow 

 for the reception of evergreens, autumn leaves, grasses, ber- 

 ries, ferns and all the other decorations which make glad the 

 Christmas days. TheBe contributions, which may be very 

 trifling to the giver, are joyfully received and appreciated. 



—The Manhattan Turtle (Jlub, of New York, held its eighth 

 anniversary last week at the Knickerbocker Cottage, 454-8 

 Sixth avenue, in which the aldermen got the best of the soup 

 thanks to Steward Fowler. The club's ball takes place Jan. 

 29, '79. 



CONSERVATIVE TRADE AND ITS 

 RESULTS. 



"jVT OTHING is so thoroughly characteristic of our mari- 

 -L ^ lime interests as the narrow conservatism which has 

 ruled supreme ever since the decline'of the ship-building and 

 the foreign commerce of this country set in some eighteen 

 years ago. While Great Britain was pushing the advantages 

 which the change from wood to iron and cheap labor gave 

 her before our war broke out, we, on the contrary, retired 

 into our shell, and as yet have not again come forth. But 

 for the efforts of the few iron yards on the Delaware to pro- 

 claim to the world the fact that we can and do build as cheap 

 as any other nation, it would perhaps forever have remained 

 a secret, known only to the few, that we build any vessels at 

 all. Even among the iron men but two yards— those at 

 Chester and at Wdmington— make known their business and 

 capacity to the outside world at large, through the means of 

 liberal advertising and the pushing of their wares. The 

 natural result has followed. These two yards have stepped 

 in and snatched from other older establishments the cream of 

 the business, and they now launch three vessels to every one 

 built by the sleepy proprietors of half a dozen other yards 

 most favorably located on the banks of the future American 

 Clyde. These latter eke out a commercial existence, which 

 hangs between life and death ; they vegetate on stray orders, 

 few and far between ; they complain of dull times and have 

 not the sagacity to see the true cause of their limited patron- 

 age. 



If our Eastern ship-builders— those of Belfast, Bath and 

 Boston — would " blow their own horn" and let the public 

 know that in Maine or Massachusetts fine Al wooden ships 

 can be built better and cheaper than anywhere else, they 

 might secure some of the patronage that now finds its way to 

 Canada, to Sweden and to the Baltic Maine — yes, even back 

 to England's shores, the very wood they use being sent from 

 here. English ships and English inspection has been written 

 up, advertised and pushed in every conceivable manner, until 

 now the good American patriot can hardly convince himself 

 of our ability to compete, and begins to cry aloud for " re- 

 form " in our registry laws. He wants to buy cheap ships 

 abroad. Do our readers realize what this means ? Do the 

 wooden men of the East and the iron men of Pennsylvania 

 know the consequences of the tampering with the registry 

 laws as they stand? The move to " free " our commerce 

 raeaDS foreign ships and the entire - extinction of shipping in- 

 terests in America, the wiping off the sea of our ensign, the 

 closing of every busy yard on our shores, and the return 

 upon public chirity or public care of the thousands that now 

 find employment in the construction of vessels, casual though 

 their work may be. 



If such a change should be made, the first to feel the pinch 

 of want will be the hardy set of ship-carpenters in New Eng- 

 land and the skilled men of Philadelphia, Chester and Wil- 

 mington, and the financial crash of the capitalists whose for- 

 tunes are sunk in plant and tool will not be loDg in following. 

 But who will be to blame ? None but the very ship-builders 

 themselves, for they are without doubt the slowest and most 

 short-sighted of business men. Strange that in our great 

 country of restless enorgy and bustling drive, a community 

 should still exist, which, in the barnacle methods, the sloth- 

 ful benightedness, the stupid conservancy of its enterprise, or 

 lack of enterprise, and the narrowness and selfishness of its 

 views, would carry off the palm for decay and lassitude in 

 comparison with any business concern in Persia or the Steppes 

 of Tartary I 



Though the drafting offices and the engineers' departments 

 are filled with talent of which no mechanic need be ashamed, 

 not a word do we ever see in print concerning the doings at 

 our yards. Ships may be launched, the people hardly know 

 where, a three-line notice in some local organ with a circula- 

 tion of three, dismisses the whole subject as unworthy fur- 

 ther attention ; and, though another fine vessel may have been 

 added to our fleet, though her model and rig may embody 

 wisdom, talent, genius and beauty by the ton, no one ever 

 learns the fact, nor does any one seem to care. The owners, 

 builders and sailers belong to the class of limited energy we 

 have referred to ; from them nothing can be learned, nothing 

 can be hoped ; the lay preBS is not competent to discharge the 

 duties of a technical critic, and so the false impression gets 

 abroad : we cannot build ships, we cannot sail ships, we can- 

 not own ships. And the average American, thoroughly in 

 the dark about the true condition of things, in his last ex- 

 tremity appeals to Congress, and Congress, gored to some- 

 thing desperate by the-free trade sophistries of would-be 

 Britains, born against their will within the fair lands of the 

 Republic, seriously thinks of ignominiously retiring the Stars 

 and Stiipe3 from the seas and hoisting in its stead the colors 

 of an alien and a rival ! 



In the same class of conservatives with ship builders and 

 owners the American yacht builder still belongs. Some hon- 

 orable exceptions there are, it is true, but as a class the yacht 

 builder is as blind to his interests as ever a person can be. He 

 is thoroughly countrified in the range of his reputation, and 

 lives off the crumbs the fickle winds of popular favor may 

 happen to blow his way. He makes no noise in the world, 

 neither does he nor his intelligent friend waste time or money 

 in laying before the general public his peculiar talent and fit- 

 ness for the specialty he has chosen as the source of his liveli- 

 hood. Generally a rotten slip, a tumble-down shanty for a 

 shop, some primitive tools and a blissful ignorance of the, 

 scientific facts underlying his profession seem to be the acme 



of his ambition, and to nail together a boat or two every 

 season is the higheBt goal of business success he craves. T 

 idea that by fully publishing his successes, hia facilities for 

 repeating the same, his location, the wares he can offer to 

 those in search for such goods; that by stirring himself 

 and keeping a weather-eye open to all avenues of 

 increased fame | that by making himself heard and 

 his influence felt throughout the community, he can surely, if 

 slowly, attract to his vicinity a vast amount of business that 

 now strays all along the coast and falls to the hands of many 

 men incompetent to perform their tasks ; in short, that by 

 well-laid plans, he can rise to success, can climb above dull 

 routine mediocrity, has never yet entered into the head of a 

 single yacht builder in America. 



One thing, and only one, as heretofore been against him. 

 No periodical on this side of the Atlantic had made itself felt 

 among the yachting fraternity as the organ of their particular 

 sport, and the thousands of amateur followers of the sea took 

 in what they could find in the way of yaching news and in- 

 struction in small driblets through the means of numerous in- 

 complete and precarious sources. The builder's pocket-boo!: 

 was seldom long enough to put forth in all these mediums hia 

 card to the public, and was fain compelled to trust to good 

 luck for an inquiry falling his way. But this grievance, how- 

 ever well founded in days gone by, he cannot now aver in ex 

 tenuation of the absence of business tact in his operalions. 

 Since the Forest and Stream has taken the subject in hand, 

 and in one season swung itself up to the head of the list, leav- 

 ing all competitors so far astern as to be out of the race, and 

 since this journal now has a monopoly of the yachting inter- 

 ests of this country and Canada, from the Race to the Keys, 

 it behooves all parties who are connected with the rapidly 

 growing needs and desires of this pastime to give us that ma- 

 terial support which we have a right to expect and which we 

 think we have fairly earned by hard work in the advocacy and 

 the resulting increased popularity of yachting among the 

 masses. There is a great field before the builder and a flush 

 time coming. He who does not stand in his own light, but 

 follows out the course here indicated and avails himself of the 

 recognized means of placing before the yachting men his 

 ability to construct cheaply and well, will ere long feel the 

 beneficial effects resulting from a liberal and at the same time 

 judicious use of printers' ink. It was printers' ink that-made 

 Barn;im— he will tell you so himself— it is nothing but printers - 

 ink which makes the success of any honest work. The yacht 

 builder who fails to make a note of this may one day learn to 

 his Morrow the reason why his neighbor has his yard full of 

 frames going up like the trees in the forest, white his own 

 name is unknown to fame and the public alike. 



The Fokest and Stream is the only recognized yachtsman's 

 journal in America. It is accepted as indisputable authority 

 at home and abroad ; it is quoted by al! in this and in foreign 

 lands, it goes into the hands of every lover of the sport, and is 

 seen in all places where yachtsmen most do congregate. We 

 refer with pride to our columns in the past, replete with mat- 

 ter, useful and instructive as well as of interest to all con- 

 cerned, and we can promise a continuation in the same strain 

 in the future. To our many friends who have so reHdily con- 

 tributed to our success, and who have shown their apprecia- 

 tion of our efforts to eater to their wants through the liberal 

 support accorded, we return our best thanks and wish them 

 all a merry Christmas, and, what they probably relish more, 

 an open and an early spring. 



SPARROWS AND SKYLARKS. 



A CORRESPONDENT, " Corvin," favored us with a com- 

 munication on the first subject in our last week's issue. 

 Believing that our readers may be interested in the method 

 by which these brown British invaders captured our country, 

 we give the following history of the proceeding : In the year 

 1846, Thomas Woodcock, Esq., the president of the Natural 

 History Society of Brooklyn, L. I., brought over from Eng- 

 land with him many specimens of the field birds of that 

 country. The pairing season in the south of England being 

 two months earlier than in this latitude (New York), he also 

 purchased large numbers of eggs, which, on his arrival, were 

 duly placed in the nests of our own little warblers by boys 

 hired for that purpose. Among these were several sparrows 

 and their eggs ; and, since then, more have been imported by 

 order of the Park Commissioners of New York. 



The consequences of Mr. Woodcock's efforts were that, in 

 the ensuing season, not only sparrows, but goldfinches, 

 linnets, bulfinchcs, etc., were to be seen at Greenwood and 

 in the suburbs of Brooklyn. At the Wallabout, then open 

 fields, a colony of English skylarks was successfully estab- 

 lished, and wintered two seasons. 



In the spring of 1847, the Brooklyn Athertker, a paper 

 then published by Mr. Lee, contained an allusion to the cir- 

 cumstance last mentioned, which is here inserted verbatim 



THE HUMBLE AJTIAL 6B A COLONY OP BBITISn SKYLARKS TO 

 THE SPORTSHEN Of NEW TORE AND BROOKLYN. SUSO AT 

 THE WALLABOUT ON THE FIRST OK MAY, i£4!t, Ti • 

 UKFORB SUNRISE : 



A wake ! 'Tls morning prime 1 



High on a broken cloud, 

 From an atr-buUt crag, his crimson flag 



Our monarch's waving proud 

 Then Hat to the cheering calls 



Ascend the skies, and sing, 

 Ills herald's we, with minstrel glee. 



To usher in our King I 

 caonus— Mount, mount,the azure heights, 



Our carol Is begun ; 



