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FOREST AND STREAM. 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 



Devoted to Field and Aquatic Spouts, Practical Natural History, 



FlSHCDLTUHE, THE PrOTKCTION OP GAMS, PRESERVATION OP FORESTS, 



and the Inculcation in Men and Wombn of a H>'_altht Interest 

 in Out-Door Recreation and Study: 



PUBLISHED BY 



4$0**8t and £Hirt&tn fflttblishing $s)W$nt{%.. 



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No advertisement or business notice of an immoral character will be 

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

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



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JANUARY 30, 1879. 



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. 

 Names will not be published if objection be made.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 

 notes 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 

 remitted to us is lost. 



t*r- Trade supplied by American News Company. 



TrtE Minnesota Field Trials. — We have received from 

 Mr. C. B. Wb.iti.ord an instalment of a lengthy review of the 

 Minnesota Field Trials and the judges' decisions, which we 

 feel should be printed ; but we prefer to wait for the balance 

 so as to make a consecutive publication. The article will ap- 

 pear next week. Meanwhile the promised statement of the 

 editor of this paper is withheld. 



. — «^— . 



Pit, Rino and Breakfast Table;.— Why do our morn- 

 ing papers feel it incumbent upon them to publish full and 

 disgusting accounts of every disreputable cock fight, dog 

 prize fight? There arc such things ; they lurk in 

 s, isolated barns, cellars; they are enacted in the 

 night with closed doors and sentineled approaches. Let 

 them remain in the obscurity they covet and deserve. We do 

 not want our morning journals filled with descriptions of 

 them. The odor of the pit is unsavory, it offends decency ; 

 why must it greet decent people st the breakfast table ? 



ARCHERY AS A PASTIME. 



ARCHERY is making rapid progress in all parts of the 

 United States. Clubs are rapidly forming, and butts 

 and ranges are being fitted up at large expense in our prin- 

 cipal cities. There is promise now that archery will become 

 as popular as croquet, if not more so. It is a most genteel 

 pastime, in which both sexes can join ; it can therefore be 

 made most enjoyable. As the season for open air pastimes 

 approaches, we shall give especial attention to archery, and 

 impart all the information we possess to aid in the organiza- 

 tion of clubs ; to assist practice ; to give hints as to dress ; 

 to designate rules, and to print reports of matches and scores. 

 We therefore urge all those of our readers who are interested 

 in the subject to send us any reports of scores or announce- 

 ments of meets ; to forward essays, suggestions, or field notes 

 of any kind. We are prepared to make archery as important 

 a feature of our pastime department as the character of the 

 sport deserves. 



We publish elsewhere a special report from Mr. Wakeman 

 Holbcrton, President of the Oritani Archers, of Hackensack, 

 New Jersey, who has just returned from an extended tour of 

 observation through the country. He has interviewed the 

 leading spirits of the archery movement from Chicago to 

 Buffalo. What he has written indicates remarkable progress 

 and an earnest of future growth. We have been promised 

 the attentive assistance of this gentleman in this special de- 

 partment ; also that of Mr. Will Thompson, who has already 

 supplied our columns largely, and of other toxopoltsts east 

 and west. Mr. Thompson has done more to promote this ex- 

 ercise and disseminate information regarding it than any 

 other writer, unless it be his brother Maurice. 



Base ball has been called " the American game." So wide- 

 ly popular is it that the number of base ball clubs has already 

 reached at least five thousand. Almost every village of any 

 considerable size has its club. But base ball is confined ex- 

 clusively to hoys and men. Archery invites the presence of 

 women. It is therefore refining in its influence upon men. 

 In every village from boundary to boundary of our country 

 there are girls, lasses, maidens and women, who are pining 

 for some diversion from the drudgery of common-place house- 

 hold duties or the routine of society engagements. Seclud- 

 ed hamlets are so monotonous in their daily economy that the 

 mere advent of a strange cavalier sets all the maidens' hearts 

 in a flutter. They need something to occupy their leisure 

 hours in a harmless, helpful, healthful recreation. Archery 

 affords that recreation. It affords the ladies opportunities to 

 cultivate the acquaintance of desirable gentlemen — for he 

 who courts the society of ladies of culture and is ambitious 

 to draw the bow in honorable emulation with them, must 

 have as fine aesthetic sensibilities and tastes as he who ad- 

 mires a rose, or tunes his soul in unison to music. The prac- 

 tice of archery is not difficult to perfect. Some may acquire 

 more quickly than others; but let not the most awkward or 

 stupid despair. Only place them before the butts, and Cupid 

 will teach them to draw the bow. 



Will not our lady readers deign to write us an occasional 

 contribution? We prefer a few thoughts on Archery to a 

 dozen columns on Bears. 



Skating at Gilmore's.— Tho entertaining paper, "On 

 Skates," in another column is especially timely at 'this season 

 of the year, when that sport is at its height. There is no 

 more exhilarating and thoroughly enjoyable pastime than 

 gliding swiftly over the ice in the keen winter weather, and 

 stoting is deservedly a favorite sport everywhere that the ice 

 gives opportunity for its pursuit. In New York, the lake at 

 Central Park, large as it is, has become too limited to accom- 

 modate the thousands thronging to its surface. The manag- 

 ers of Gilmore's Garden have transformed the interior of that 

 structure into a vast field of artificial ice, and have made of 

 it the finest rink in America. The spectacle presented there 

 every evening is a very brilliant one. The arched lights 

 above, the rocky cavern in the background, and the throngs 

 of swift skaters gliding gracefully through the mazes of the 

 course, all this is worth a visit, even if one r'oes not put 

 on his skates and join in the merriment, "'he garden is open 

 from ten o'clock in the mntniajj dil ten in the evening. Mr. 

 F: sat Swiit, the well-known skater, is in attendance to give 

 instruction to ladies and gentlemen. Saturday evenings there 

 are. races for gold and stiver medals. 



Forest and Stream in Japan.— Mr. Charles F. Orvis, of 

 Manchester, Vermont, writes: 



I hud an order the other day for au outfit— rod, reel, files, etc., ate— 

 from Yokahaina, Japan. The gentleman saw advertisement in Forest 

 and Stream. 



HANLAN OFF FOR ENGLAND. 



WE had tho pleasure of a visit, a few days ago, from Sir. 

 Hanlan, America's champion oarsman, in company 

 with hia friends Mr. David Ward, of Canada, and Judge El- 

 liott, the well-known boat builder of Greenpoint, L. I. The 

 champion is in excellent health and spirits and will give the 

 men he meets in Great Britain a tough pull over any course 

 they may select. It is gratifying to our national pride to 

 know that he will take with him two boats built by Judge El- 

 liott : one the famous ship he sent across the line ahead of 

 Courtney in the great rnach at Lachine, and the other a new 

 boat from the Greenpoint shops. Mr. Hanlan will " take " in 

 England, for his innate modesty, good sense and generous esti- 

 mate of his rivals will certainly find a responsive feeling 

 abroad and insure him a hearty welcome wherever he goes. 

 The baseless, not to say thoroughly insipid chart; 

 raised against the results of the Lachine race, and the puerile 

 attempts to question and belittle Hanlan's title to the chutn- 

 pionship of America, have been so fully exploded and exposed 

 as the mere machinations of individuals soured by their losses 

 through being on the wrong side of the gambler's fence, that 

 the onslaught against the honesty and character of Hanlan 

 and the Hanlan Club will fail to prejudice the public abroad, 

 among whom the champion hopes to add fresh laurels to the 

 wreath of victories that now grace his brow. The calumnies 

 and aspersions upon the champion and his associates will fall 

 flat upon the British ear and will dissolve as vulgar 

 slander the moment the great sculler sets fool 

 on England's soil. Hanlan has never yet pulled 

 his level best, and our cousins will do well not to 

 figure too heavily upon his races here, for they may find in 

 him stay and power which he has not so far had the chance 

 or the need of displaying at home. With the best of training 

 and care, and seated in as good a boat as can be got for love 

 or lucre, we look forward to the result of his first match with 

 Hawdon full of confidence in the Toronto man's ability to 

 give his wash to his opponent and add victory twenty-seven 

 out of twenty-eight races rowed. 



We are pleased to know that Hanlan and his many friends 

 appreciate the fairness of the course Forest and Stiieaji has 

 maintained during the controversy which grew out of Court- 



ney's defeat, and they have our assurance that in the future, 

 as in the past, we are prepared to maintain the position as- 

 sumed pursuant to the dictates Of honesty and fair play, and 

 for the sake of the good name of professional rowing iu 

 America. Personal preference we do net permit to interfere 

 with the conduct of our columns, nor do we allow a narrow- 

 minded spirit to color our reports in compliance with the de- 

 mands of a clamorous set blinded by national prejudice or the 

 loss of precious dollars and cents. 



— ^»~^ 



RIP VAN WINKLE. 



THE story of Rip Van Winkle was originally a German 

 legend. 



Yes, we all know that. But in one important particular, at 

 least, Irving's version of the myth is solely and truly Ameri- 

 can. In no village of tho Old World would such a complete 

 and bewildering transformation of all familiar surroundings 

 greet the returning dreamer as that which our own Rip found 

 after his long sleep among the Kaatskills. To be sure, twenty 

 years would leave their traces upon the quiet German burgh. 

 The sprightly young host would be found filling the chair of 

 the old innkeeper long gathered to his fathers; but there would 

 be the same quaint old sign and the same banner flaunting 

 from the flagstaff. The busy tongue of the scolding frtm 

 would have ceased its earthly jarrings ; and, instead of the prat- 

 tling child of twenty years agone, the matronly young woman, 

 with child in arms, would greet the old mau, but the greeting 

 would be at the door of the self-same cottage not at all changed 

 in all these twenty years. In short, people would have 

 changed ; things would be found the same. It is just here 

 that Irving's story is a true picture of American life. The new 

 flag, the freshly painted inn sign, the altered village, tho 

 newspapers, the life and activity and bustle, the broadening 

 of thought and interest, all these, much more than the changed 

 faces of the children and the old-time cronies, were what, puz- 

 zled Kip. Twenty years in American life— that means a cen- 

 tury, two centuries, of the village life when and where this 

 dreamer's myth first arose. 



And there is something of a moral in all this ; a warning to 

 ub all. It is not absolutely necessary to creep away to the 

 mountain recesses to fall behind these busy times. We may 

 be in the ranks of the wide-awake workers and Btill we may 

 suddenly fall to rubbing our eyes and wondering if after all 

 we have not been drowsing away while the winters and springs 

 and summers and autumns have been gliding by. "We are 

 living at a tremendous pace here in America :" such has be- 

 come, the hackneyed common-place ; but even as we say it, 

 some new phase of enterprise and progress presents itself and 

 We mutter the bewildered waking expressions of the confused 

 sleepers who even as they speak do not know that they have 

 slept. _ 



THE MIGRATION OF BIRDS. 



IN all ages the migration of birds has occupied the atten- 

 tion of tho observers of Nature. Early writers among 

 the Greeks and Romans mention tho arrival and departure of 

 various species and often debate gravely as to what these 

 movements may portend. These curly writers too seem to 

 have had, mixed up with a great deal of fable, not a few ideas 

 on the subject, which, in the light of our present knowledge, 

 we can pronounce just. 



In later times when the swallows were thought to pass the 

 winter peacefully reposing in the mud at the bottoms of lakes 

 and marshes, and when it was considered highly probable 

 that the rails changed into frogs in the lateautumn and sought 

 the same refuge, the fact that most birds journeyed southward 

 at the approach of winter was generally acknowledged, and 

 the hybernaters were thought to be the exceptions to the 

 rule and that they failed to migrate only because their deli- 

 cate organizations or their weak powers of flight rendered 

 them unequal to so extended a journey. The larger birds of 

 passage, the storks, the swans and the geese,- in their regular 

 spring and autumn migrations could scarcely fail to attract 

 attention and to lead to a true interpretation of these general 

 movements. But the movements of the smaller birds, and 

 especially of such as migrate by night, were puzzling enough 

 iu earlier times, and it is not surprising that our forefathers 

 held ideas on this subject which seem to us peculiar. Be- 

 sides the fact that the sudden disappearance of certain species 

 of birds gave rise to all sorts of hypotheses to explain their 

 absence from localities where just previously they had 

 abundant, there is, as Dr. Cones in his recent admirable work 

 on the Birds of the Colorado Valley has shown, a certain 

 mass of testimony furnished by people of excellent character 

 and standing to the absolute discoveiy in winter of certain 

 birds, usually swallows or swifts, in a torpid condition. This 

 testimony, though mainly contributed from Europe, comes in 

 part from this country. 



It is certainly a curious fact that little or nothing is known 

 of the winter home of the common chimney swift 

 ptlagica), when we are so well tufa <■■ vhere and 



bow the swallows, which so closely resemble it in many of 

 their habits, pass the period of cold. In the work above cited 

 Dr. Coues discusses this point at some length. He believes 

 that the swifts hybernate in hollow trees, and no doubt iu the 

 succeeding parts of his work he will give us his reasons for 

 this belief. Published observations on this matter are as yet 

 too few to enable ue to reach any definite conclusions on it. 



The old idea upon the subject of migrations was that they 

 were governed almost wholly by temperature, and that these 

 long journeys from north to south and back again were un- 



