FOREST AND STREAM. 



105 



Moreover, we are exerting ourselves to secure the opening 

 of a comfortable., clean hotel at some desirable locality on 

 the Indian River, and we think have secured the proper 

 man to take charge of the enter prise. Such a hotel will 

 be available both for sportsmen and their wives, and is 

 very much needed. It will be sure to remunerate anyone 

 undertaking the venture, and we would herewith advise 

 any persons contemplating such a movement to put them- 

 selves at once, in communication with us, as we can fur- 

 nish them with points of the utmost value. Parties hav- 

 ing orange, groves and farms to sell would also find it to 

 their advantage always to advertise them through our col- 

 umns, as we have frequent enquiries respecting such from 

 intending settlers. 



Mr. Whitney, of the St. Augustine Pre.vt, will receive 

 subscriptions and orders for this paper. 



MORE NITRO-GLYCERINE. 



WE see no reason why a weekly magazine of undoubted 

 excellence and merited popularity, under the head- 

 ing of "Science and Invention," should give unusual space 

 (at least without, condemnation,) to a method for destroying 

 fish with uitro-glycerine, employed by a gentleman attached 

 to the United States coast survey. It. strikes us that gentle- 

 men attached to this useful department, even those of the 

 most inquiring minds, have a sphere of usefulness not eon- 

 fined by the theodolite, the plumb line, or their instruments 

 for triangulation, yet, to go out of their way to detail the 

 barbarous methods of slaugtering fish by the thousands, 

 by means of infernal devices, is certainly stepping beyond 

 geodetic limits. 



If fishing by means of nitro-glycerine over comes into 

 vogue, it means not only the destruction of the fish, but 

 the ruin of those who hollow fishing as a vocation. For 

 one fish taken by this abnormal process, thousands are 

 stunned, maimed and killed, which are never seen. Since 

 it is pretty well determined that even noises and sui ftiee 

 disturbances, such as cannonading, drive fish away from 

 certain localities for a season, if nitro-glycerine explosions 

 are used, we may bid good-by to our sea coast, fish. It, 

 seems strange that Professor Baird. the United States Pish 

 Commissioner, on the'oneside should belaboring manfully 

 to protect the fish, and that on the other side, some one in 

 Government employ should be doing Ids best to destroy 

 them. 



To use nitro-glycerine, or any explosive material for fish- 

 ing, no matter whether on our immediate coast or in Cali- 

 fornia waters, is as reprehensible as would be the employ- 

 ment of strychnine on the wild waste of the prairie to kill 

 buffalo. 



People must be bred up to proper ideas on these particu- 

 lar subjects; and all wholesale and indiscriminate slaughter 

 of God's creatures, whether on water or land, should be dis- 

 countenanced. 



■»♦»■ 



The Irish Team Going for Grouse.— Very few sports- 

 men come to us from over the water at this season who do 

 not. improve the opportunity to take a hack at the pinnated 

 grouse, or "prairie chickens," as they are. called in the 

 Western vernacular. The recent efforts to acclimate this 

 desirable game bird in England, made by the Prince of 

 Wales and others, h.ive given them something of a wide- 

 spread fame abroad, and therefore increased the interest in 

 them. The Irish Team are not behind Dunraven, St. George 

 Gore, the Earl of Roseberry, Dr. Kingsley, and other cosmo- 

 politan crack shots, in. their desire to test their quality in 

 the open field; and several of their members have ex- 

 pressed their intention to go West after the. conclusion of 

 the international rifle match. The matter of securing them 

 good sport has been left entirely in the hands of the Editor 

 of Forest and Stream. We have accordingly placed 

 ourselves in communication by mail and telegraph with 

 our friends in Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska; and 

 if the Irishmen do not get a good hag of chickens, it will 

 not, be the fault of ourselves and our friends. We have 

 already received such replies to our inquiries as to assure 

 us that arrangements will be made that cannot but prove 

 satisfactory to them. A deputation will probably meet 

 the team at St. Louis, and escort them to the locality deter- 

 mined upon for the sport. We will announce the pro- 

 gramme as soon as it is perfected, which should be by next 



week. 



■ ■»»*■ 1 



The French Gun Trade.— We notice in La Glume 

 Jttustrw the advertisement of a three-barrelled breech 

 loader. Two barrels are placed as in an ordinary double 

 gun, and the third barrel is piled on top of that. A party 

 with a gun of this kind would of course load for a flock. 

 We see too, manufactured by the same maker, Laine, a re- 

 volving shot gun, which has in addition a magazine for 

 cartridges. By St. Hubert ! game must be plenty in 

 France when they want such engines of destruction. There 

 is a great deal of prejudice against French arms, which 

 arises from ignorance. There is no more beautiful gun in 

 the world than those which are turned out by the Parisian 

 artist. Material, finish and shooting qualities are admirable. 

 Englishmen and Americans object to too fine a worked up» 

 gun on the outside; but if you want u good arm, you can have 

 one made in France as plain as a pjkf-staff. We scarcely 

 know in this country what an arme dc hixe is. People who 

 shrug their shoulders at French guns would do well to re- 

 member that we owe our present system of breech loaders 

 entirely to France, and as has been said before by Greener 

 and Gloan that all our turn or slide barrels, whether hori- 

 zontal or lateral, are simply modifications of Le Faucheux's 

 first breech loaders. La G7wuai llhmtree is now publishing 



a tnost thorough and interesting account, of the French arm 

 trade, to which we would call the attention of our readers. 

 Monsieur dc Bevans is a thorough master of the gunsmith's 

 art, of which he treats, and we have to remark that, our own 

 manufacturers might read with no HWe profit his articles on 

 Lea arme* dc Ghatw. 



♦.*. . — 



A Relic of the Mound BdtmhpbS,— Major ft C. Alden, 

 of New Smyrna, Florida, who has been excavating the an- 

 cient, Indian mounds in that vicinity, has sent us The skull 

 of an individual of the ancient race exhumed. It is a noble 

 skull, with monumental occiput, and every tooth perfect— 

 the entire knowledge-box in as good a state of preserva- 

 tion as when it was stored with its fulness of cerebum and 

 cerebellum, before it, was discarded by the middle-aged 

 man whose shoulders it, once adorned. Whenever that 

 time was— how many decades of years ago— no exhuma- 

 tion will reveal, for there are neither signs nor tokens to 

 indicate identity of birth or race, except a few arrow- heads 

 and bits of pottery. The eyeless sockets are filled with 

 white beach sand, and through the jaws there has been 

 growing the root of some vine whoso slender tendrils have 

 crept up into the brain-pan ; so that we can easily under- 

 stand that, long after the human life had passed away, a 

 vegetable life quickeued within that skull and made it tlvrob 

 once more. 



This is no "poor Yorick." This cranium does'nt look as 

 if it could ever have contained a joke. No "infinity of 

 jest" is there! Evidently it belonged to a member of the 

 "Serious Family." Only the stern realities of life were 

 met in its day and generation— the struggle for existence, 

 the battle brunt, and horrid wars. Perhaps this vacuous 

 thing was the very "head and front of the offending." 

 Strange that the empty shell should so long outlast, the 

 entity that vivified it and gave it power! It is useless now, 

 except to speculative anatony. Therefore, we shall lay it 

 away upon the shelf of our miscellaneous collection, and 

 patiently await the arrival of bones that shall complete the 

 skeleton, even if it be until doomsday. Of what service is 

 a head without the members? At the resurrection all will 

 reunite. 



■*•♦■ 



Wanted a FrsH.— We are very desirous of obtaining for 

 Professor Baird, United States Chief Commissioner of 

 Fisheries, a specimen of a peculiar species of tunny, one 

 of which we saw in Fulton Market a week ago. The fish 

 wanted is larger rhau a bonito, and has blue bars on 

 it, something like the botiito, but instead of these bars 

 running slanting to the top of the fish, the bars in this 

 species of tunny run in parallel lines from head to tail all 

 around the fish. If any of our numerous friends in Fulton 

 or Washington market, will inform us when such a fish 

 turns up, we will be glad to purchase it, in order to for- 

 ward it to Professor Baird. Questions of the identity of 

 fish, or of the finding of new fish on our shores, are not 

 alone of importance in a scientific way, but may be Tem- 

 pered profitable in an economic sense, 



-*.-«. _ 



Kentucky State Sportsmens' Association.— The Tour- 

 nament of the Hunters' Club of Lexington, Kentucky, 

 opened on the 22d inst. and is advertised to continue until 

 to-morrow — three days. The sum of .$1,400 in cash prizes 

 will be divided. We have a special representative on the 

 ground, through whom we shall be enabled to give full de- 

 tails. From this gentleman, who is tin officer in of the 

 Club, we are pleased to learn that a called convention will 

 be held at the Phenix Hotel, Lexington, on the 1st day of 

 the shoot, to organize a State Sportsmens' Association, a 

 grand movement, and one much needed in Kentucky. A 

 full delegation will be designated for the National Conven- 

 tion in 1875. The Hunters Clnb, we ought to say, has been 

 chiefly instrumental in drawing attention to the necessity 

 of suitable game law r s for the'State, and securing the' co-op- 

 eration of citizens for their construction and enforcement. 



Waste op Physical Forces.— A French author, M. 

 Menier, in a clever book called VImpot sur le Capital says 

 "Homer shows us twelve slave women preparing meal with 

 stone mills for the daily consumption of the. heroes." Now 

 a woman working hard all day cannot make meal for more 

 than twenty-five persons. Of course then, in the heroic 

 ages, there must have been absorbed an enormous amount 

 of capital paid out for labor. To day twenty millers in an 

 ordinary establishment, can produce by means of machinery 

 flour enough for the daily consumption of 72,000 people, 

 or each man can feed 3,600 men. In Homer's time it 

 would have taken 144 millers. If all the machine made cot- 

 ton thread produced in England was turned ont by hand, 

 is would represent the individual labor of ninety-one mil- 

 lions of people. A smart woman can make eighty stitches 

 a minute with her knitting needles, while a machine is 

 working 480,000 stitches. The machine then represents 

 0,000 work-women. 



Adirondack Woods and Worries. —We have a letter 

 from a retired Adirondack lumberman which takes issue 

 with the sportsmen, guides, hotel-keepers, &c., of that 

 region, and which we shall print next week, in order to 

 show plainly (he relations that exist between [he parties, 

 It is well that the grievances of both sides should be beard, 

 and if there is likely to be any conflict or exhibition of bad 

 blood, the sooner the State inaugurates her proposed Adi- 

 rondack Park, the better for all interested and concerned. 



^»»- 



. —The fires in the woods of New- Jersey have made a 

 clean sweep from Sandy Hook to Tuckerton, and were 

 only subdued by the rain. Long Branch escaped with the 

 toss of a few fences and fields, 



CREEDMOOR. 



THE IRISH TEAM-PALL MEETING -SCORES. 



WOULD we had the pen of the Wizzard of the North! 

 Then we might slightly paraphrase Walter Scott's 

 wonderful description in Ivanhoe, of how the smiths and 

 armorers worked manfully for the knights who were to try 

 their skill at the Grand Tourney of Ashby de la Zouche. 

 In our prosaic times the simple substitution would be that 

 of a rifle for a lance, of a butt for a shield; for now rifle 

 makers and gunsmiths are busy getting their arms in order 

 for the Fall Meeting of the National Rifle Association, 

 which lakes place on the 29th of this month. Last year 

 tins most important event in tlie annals of the National 

 Rifle Association, took place on Wednesday October 8th, 

 and was continued on until Saturday. Very probably as 

 the contestants may be more numerous this year, the same 

 length of time, three days, will be consumed in shooting, 

 but as the offlers have no doubt gained additional experi- 

 ence as to the carrying out of the programme, we see no 

 reason why it should be extended beyond that time. 



Great additional eelat is added to the Fall Meeting by the 

 presence of our most excellent friends and guests the Irish 

 team, who have most gallantly crossed the Atlantic, in 

 order to compete for rifle supremacy with our own men. 

 We give a very brief resume of the matter. On October 

 3d of last year, Major Blennerhassett A Leech, through the 

 medium of the New York Herald, sent a challenge to 

 American riflemen offering to meet our men on the range 

 at Creedmore, to shoot for £100. Some of the leading pro- 

 visions were as follows: — 



Targets, scoring, ten,, same, as adopted by the National Bifie Associa- 

 tion of Great Briiain, at Wimbledon, is;:',, twhen the Tri-h eight won the 

 international inaieli For the E';eh<> Shi,. Id, h,. ;i> in... Kuelund and Scotland). 

 Hauges-SCKI, !ir,n, 1,000 and 1,100 yards. 



Rifles — Any not. exceeding ton pounds weight, lint without telescope 

 Bights or hair triggers. 



Position— Any, but no artificial rest, permitted, either for the rifle or 

 person of the shooter;, 



Tile American team In he composed exclusively of rillemcu born in the 

 United States, ami to shoot with rifles of American manufacture. 

 The Irish team will shoot, with titles by Kigby, of Dublin. 

 On December 20th 1873, Col. George W. Wingate, then 

 Secretary of the National Rifle Association, and then as 

 now President of the Amateur Rifle Association, entered in- 

 to a correspondence with Major Leech, and in time, with 

 some very slight alterations, principally that of the ex- 

 treme range 1,1.00 yards being altered to 1,000 (the range 

 at Creedmoor having for its extreme range 1,000 yards), the 

 match was satisfactorily arranged. It must be here dis- 

 tinctly placed on record that Col. Wingate by no means 

 arrogated to the Amatuer Rifle Club or to himself the choice 

 of those who were to represent the American team. Great 

 care was taken, and a considerable amount of mouey was 

 expended in addressing riflemen all over the country, re- 

 cpiesting them to come forward and to give some evidences 

 of their skill. Of course it was absolutely necessary to 

 have some standard of excellence, and as the Amatuer 

 Rifle Club was the only regularly organized association of 

 the kind in the United States thoroughly conversant with 

 rifle shooting according to the Wimbledon rules, it was per- 

 fectly proper that the Amateur Rifle Club should take pre- 

 cedence in this matter, as it was the only rifle board, as we 

 may call it, capable of according a diploma of excellence 

 to riflemen. The Forest and Stream has unceasingly- 

 requested riflemen out of the State to send in their scores 

 to the Amatuer Rifle Club, and has been equally urgent 

 with manufacturers of arms, other than breech-loaders, to 

 bring their rifles to Creedmoor. As to the men who are to 

 shoot with the Irish team at Creedmoor on the 26th of this 

 month, we must unhesitatingly declare them to be the 

 best shots in the United States. Perhaps in the South there 

 are individual riflemen who at 100 and 200 yards, can equal 

 our Creedmoor men with pecularsights and hairtriggers, but 

 over that, or beyond 300 yards, we may safely assert that 

 save in California, where shooting at extreme distances 

 under Wimbledon rules, is having a most excellent develop- 

 ment, pretty generally our people are quite ignorant of 

 how to use the rifle at very long ranges. How could it be 

 otherwise, wheu one year ago long range rifle shooting 

 even at Creed moor, was in its infancy ? Wc are thus careful 

 to state this fact, at the very outset. If we are beaten, we 

 do not wish it, to be said, "There are better men;" or if we 

 are the conquerors we do not desire to have the merit of 

 our team diminished one tittle by the carping remark, "Oh, 

 there are quite as good men to be found down South, or 

 out West." 



Nevertheless, it is a matter of regret to us— which, no 

 doubt the Amateur Rifle Club feels— that the element com- 

 posing our team should be entirely composed of those liv- 

 ing- in or around New York, We should have been glad 

 to have seen the team composed of men from every sec- 

 tion. We would have welcomed any of the clever shots 

 from Mobile, New Orleans, St. Louis, or San Francisco, 

 and would have been glad to have fraternized on the range 

 with the hunter of the trackless prairies, or with the trap- 

 pers from the far off plains of the Pacific slope. Still 

 there is a certain amount of excuse for all this. If the 

 trite saying, "Am iiascitur, nan fit," is true, rifle shooting 

 may he a little inborn; but its development with arms of 

 precision is very much of a study, and a protracted one. 

 Men have not always the time to devote to such matters. 

 Then, again, systematic rifle shooting in the United States, 

 by military organizations, is yet in its. infancy. The ex- 

 cellent example shown by our own National Rifle Associa- 

 tion must have its effects. Before next year there is not a 

 doubt but that other ranges will be established, on the 

 model of Creedmoor, in large centres of population. Then 

 contests will take place between Chicago and New York, 

 or between St. Louis, San Francisco, and New York, and 



