THE AMERICAN SPORTSMAN'S JOURNAL, 



CEntcrea According to Act of Congress, In the year 1881, by the Forest and stream Publishing Company, In the Office of the Librarian ot '.Congress, at Washington.;^: 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, MAY 19, 1881. 



\, 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial, : — 

 The Development of the Gun ; The Zoological Society of 

 Philadelphia ; Sewage Can Be Utilized ; Fysshynge Wyth 

 an Angle j Spring Snipe Shooting 308 



The Sportsman Tourist :— 



Natural Histoei :— 



On the Larriweep : Canoe Tours through Maine. 304 



Habits of Quail ; Texas Quail ; The British Museum of Nat- 

 ural History 305 



Game Bag and Gun :— 

 An Encyclopedia of Gunnery : Hounding vs. Still Hunting ; 

 Fish and Game at the Kangeley Lakes ; Notes. .... , . 807 



Sea and River Fishing : — 



Troutmg in Tim Pond ; Pish Protection in California; Deri- 

 vation of "Bass ;" Notes 310 



Fish Culture :— 



Epochs in the History of Fish Culture 311 



The Kennel:— 



The Beagles Battler, Major and Dyke; National Fiold Trials; 

 Measurements of Prize Winners ; Notes 312 



Ru.'iji! and Teap Shooting : — 



Range and Gallery ; The Trap 315 



Yachting and Canoeing :— 



The Now Bedford Yacht Club ; Steam Launches aud Red 

 Tape ; Cruise of tho Sunshine 316 



Answers to Correspondents : — 318 



TO CORRESPONDENTS. 



The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium ol entertainment, 

 Instruction and information Between American sportsmen. 



Communications upon the subjects to which Its pages are devoted 

 are Invited from every part of the country. 



Anonymous communications will not be regarded. No correspond- 

 ent's name will be published except with Ms consent. 



The Editors cannot be held responsible for the views of correspond- 

 ents. 



All communications of whatever nature should be addressed to the 

 Forest and Stream Publishing Company, Nos. 89 and 10 Park How, 

 New York. 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



TUirrsday, May 19. 



Wb are pained to learn of >the death at Philadelphia on 

 the 11th inst. of Dr. Ohas. E. Cady, the writer of the sketch 

 " In Bast Tennessee," published in our issue of March 7, 

 and of frequent communications which have appeared in the 

 Fobbst and Stream: in the past months. We had never 

 met Dr. Cady in person, but he was one of the scores of 

 correspondents with whom we enjoy a most pleasant episto- 

 lary friendship. The formation of such acquaintanceship 

 is among the amenities of editorial life. The correspond- 

 ence of a widely circulated journal is voluminous, and ex- 

 tends to scores of persons who, in time, are regarded as 

 personal friends. Possibly the knowledge we thus gain of 

 an individual is imperfect ; at the best it reveals but one 

 part of his personality, and this may be the side the least 

 known to those who are in daily intercourse with him. 

 The man who appears in his letters is not the man who min- 

 gles with his fellows ; yet who shall say which is the more 

 .true revelation of character— the written or the spoken 

 thought ? 



The New Michigan Bill which has passed the House and 

 Senate of that State, and at the time of our correspondent's 

 writing, was awaiting only the Governor's signature to become 

 a law, is a decidedly wise provision. It prohibits the expor- 

 tation of game from that State. We long ago expressed the 

 conviction that only by the enactment of such laws would the 

 Western States save their game from the ref rigerators of the 

 great market centres. The Michigan Sportsmen's Associa- 

 tion originated the non-export bill, and deserve the credit of 

 it. They will be indorsed by all classes save the nomads who 

 hutcher game for the market. It is to be hoped that other 

 States may follow the wise lead of Michigan in this matter. 

 By cutting off the traffic in game, the far-Seeing societieswho 

 are attempting to check extermination have attained a notable 

 advance toward the accomplishment of their object. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GUN. 



THE bfeech-loading shotgun embodies a perfection attained 

 after centuries of slow development. It is a product 

 of the labor and skill of successive generations of workers and 

 thinkers. 



Of the first firearm we have no record. Its experimental 

 discharge must have been regarded as a wonderful and note- 

 worthy event, but tho echo of that report had died away long 

 before the time of written history. The invention of gun- 

 powder is one of the disputed dates of history. It is not im- 

 probable that the inventor of the rude primitive cannon made 

 his experiments before Moses wrote the book of Genesis. In 

 the Gentoo laws, a code believed to have been coeval with 

 the Jewish law-giver, mention is made of gunpowder as ap- 

 plied to firearms. For the prototype of our breech-loader, 

 then, we must go back at least to India centuries ago. Gun- 

 powder ia believed to have been introduced into Europe in 

 the seventh century, and its adoption for firearms to have 

 been genera) in the thirteenth century. 



The first guns must have been crude affairs, for those which 

 came later, and of which fair representations have been pre- 

 served to us, were. exceedingly rude, clumsy and inefficient. 

 They were made of wood, bound with iron bands; formidable 

 for the actual damage done by their projectiles less than for 

 the terror inspired by their belching forth of fire and smoke. 



The first mention of cannon throwing stones is of those 

 employed at the siege of Seville, in 1247. Leaving aside now 

 the successive steps in the perfection of cannon and laTge 

 guns, and following the advance in the single line leading to 

 the sporting shotgun, we find the next step to have 

 been the invention, in the fourteenth century, of small 

 cannon which could be carried into the field and man- 

 ipulated by three or four men. Then came semi- 

 portable weapons fastened to long stocks, the muzzle 

 end resting on a forked stake support, and the other end 

 upon the ground. Another advance was the ixrmbardello, or 

 small bombard, fastened to a straight piece of wood, sup- 

 ported against the shoulder and fired with a match. Later 

 followed the hand culverin, with bent stock and flash pan, 

 and fired with a match. The soldier armed with the culverin 

 and bombardello had, we are told, in addition to the unwieldy 

 weapon itself, his coarse powder for loading in a flask ; 

 his fine powder for priming in a touch-box ; his bullets in a 

 leathern bag, with strings to draw to get at them ; whilst in 

 his hand were his musket rest and his burning match. It 

 is needless to say that he must have risen very early in the 

 morning to have brought much venison home at night with 

 such a rig as that. But the old worthies thus accoutred did 

 not try for any smaller game than their own genus. Hunt- 

 ing for game was practiced with bow and arrow only, until 

 in the sixteenth century the Spaniards contrived the arque- 

 bus or matchlock. Here the match was fitted to a "ser- 

 pentin " or cock, hung upon a pivot, and brought into con- 

 tact with the priming by a working substantially the same as 

 that of the modern hammer and trigger. This was further 

 unproved by the German invention of a steel wheel with ser- 

 rated edge, fitted to a spring, and made to revolve rapidly, 

 the edge coming in contact with a piece of pyrites, and by 

 this friction producing the sparks to ignite the priming. The 

 use of tho wheel-lock for sporting purposes was very general 

 in the middle of the sixteenth century, and for a long time 

 was not improved upon. 



But necessity is the mother of invention. A band of 

 Dutch chicken stealers or of Spanish marauders — it is dis- 

 puted which — being too poor to provide themselves with the 

 high-priced wheel-lock, and afraid to use the matchlock be- 

 cause its light revealed their whereabouts to the minions of 

 the law, abstained from their evil practices long enough to 

 devise a weapon better adapted to the needs of roost robbers. 

 The result was the flint-lock ; and the pot-hunting fraternity 

 scored a long credit mark. The sportsmen of our grand- 

 fathers' generation owed the mechanism of their guns to a 

 band of poultry thieves ; there is yet hope for the colored 

 brother. 



The flint-lock reached itsperfection in the hands of " that 

 king of gun-makers," Joseph Manton, in the early part of 

 the present century, and it gave way only to a worthy su- 

 perior in the modern gun exploded by percussion. 



The discovery of fulminating powders and their applica- 



tion to gunnery mark a most important epoch in the manu- 

 facture and employment of firearms. The charge in 

 the gun was at first placed above the fulminat- 

 ing powder which was ignited by the concussion of 

 an iron plunger, struck by a cock. Then this plunger 

 was dispensed with, and the fulminate was simply placed 

 in the flash pan. The successive step3 are familiar to almost 

 all gunners: the priming was placed between two bits of 

 paper and called percussion pellets ; the fulminate was af- 

 fixed lo the breech of the newly invented cartridge and fired 

 by a penetrating needle ; then came the copper cap ; then the 

 culminating improvement of the cartridge containing both the 

 charge and the priming, and ignited at first by the pin and 

 afterward rim-fire and central-fire principle. 



Of the many improvements and modifications of the 

 breech-loading percussion system we shall not attempt a cat- 

 alogue here. It has been our purpose simply to outline the 

 most important stages of development through which the 

 gun has passed. For a detailed description of guns, ancient 

 and modern, we refer those interested to Mr. W. W. Greener's 

 new book on the subject, where they will find clear and con- 

 cise descriptions of the weapons, with numerous illustrations 

 which admirably exhibit the peculiarities of each arm. 



THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF PHILA- 

 DELPHIA. 



THE success which, from the inception of the project to 

 the present time, has marked the progress of the Phil- 

 adelphia Zoological Society has been something remarkable. 

 This success is due purely to the fact that the management 

 is in the hands of careful business men, who have secured as 

 their assistants gentlemen who are both competent for their 

 positions aud deeply interested in the work that has been in- 

 trusted to them. 



The Ninth Annual Report of the Society, which was read 

 at the annual meeting of the stockholders, held April 28, • 

 shows the society's affairs to be in a very flattering condition. 

 The admissions for the year amount to no less than 208,478, 

 of which 180,000 were paying visitors. The months of May, 

 July, August and September were those in which the attend- 

 ance was largest, that for May being 26,203, and in Septem- 

 ber running up to 86,011, indicating a large attendance of 

 country people. The greatest number of visitors recorded 

 for any one day was on July 5, wheu 4.702 were admitted. 

 The receipts from admissions show for the year 1880-81 a 

 slight falling off as compared with the preceding year, the 

 difference, however, being less than $1,000. The average 

 daily receipts from admissions were $110.26, and the largest 

 amount received at the gate on :.ny one clay was $976.50. 

 As might be supposed, the attendance is much larger on Sun- 

 day than on any other day of the week, and the receipts at 

 the gate amount to $15,952.40 for that day alone. Saturday 

 stands next in order, with $5,300 as its footing. 



A comparison of income and expenditures, the estimated 

 loss on animals having been charged to the last-named ac- 

 count, shows an excess of receipts over expenses of $2,749 74, 

 and this notwithstanding the fact that the expenses of feed- 

 ing the animals and of heating the garden during the unus- 

 ually long and severe winter just past have been much in- 

 creased. Several new buildiugs have been erectedduring the 

 year, and much grading, tree planting and landscape garden- 

 ing has been done. 



The report of Mr. Arthur E. Brown shows the number of 

 animals at present in the garden io be 901, of which 436 are 

 mammals, 370 birds and 95 reptiles and batrachians. The 

 collections have been increased during the year by the pur- 

 chase of 82 mammals, the presentation of 58 and the birth 

 of 19 ; 29 birds have been purchased and 69 presented. Of 

 reptiles and batrachians there were purchased 3, presented 77 

 aud born 43. The deaths among the animals exhibited make 

 the numbers of the collection slightly less than it was at the 

 close of the year previous. Among the births at the gardens 

 of the society may be noticed that of a dingo, a mule deer, 

 a collared peccary, a bactriau camel, a llama, a great kan- 

 garoo and a rat kangaroo. Two very interesting animals — a 

 great ant-eater and a Rocky Mountain sheep, or bighorn, 

 were received during the past year and attracted the atten- 

 tion of all visitors, but unfortunately neither of the two long 

 survived its introduction to the Garden. A young female 



