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FUKEfcT AINU »1±U?jA1V1. 



OEVOTBD TO FIELD AND AQUATIC SrOKTS, PBACTTOA1 NAH7HAL IlISTUKI, 

 FlSHCrjLTttUK, THK HltOTSCTI.W OF CiAME, T'KKSKBV ATION OF FOKKBTS, 



and MB Inculcation in Men and Womrn of a ^althy interest 



IN OrJT-DooK RECUSATION AND STDDY : 



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MAGAZINE SPORTING LITERATURE. 



TT is highly gratifying to those who have long labored to 

 to cultivate the public taste for field sports to find the 

 highest literary publications awakening to the importance of 

 catering to that taste ; and it is surely in no spirit of envy 

 that we would suggest to them a slight improvement in the 

 manner of doing it. If there is any kind of descriptive writing 

 in which faithful representation of the soul of nature is indis- 

 pensable, and minute photographic pictures of the mere limbs 

 and outward flourishes is a bore, it is the description of our 

 American field sports ; and so long as the best descriptions are 

 attainable, publications that pay liberally for everything they 

 print have no excuse for publishing anything but the beat. 



We will not hide behind hints, but specify the most promi- 

 nent example, Seribner's Monthly. Of five or six sporting 

 articles which have appeared there within the last eighteen 

 months, two, "Canvas-back and Terrapin" and "Deer Hunt- 

 ing on the Au Sable," show plainly on their face that the 

 writer was destitute of any prior experience in hunting that 

 kind of game, and had probably been sent out for the very 

 purpose of seeing something to sketch and describe. This 

 view is confirmed as to the Au Sable article by the President 

 of the Michigan Game Protective Association, who, in his 

 annual report, made long before the article appeared, stated 

 that " a representative of Seribner's" had been sent out to get 

 up and illustrate such an article. We would mildly suggest 

 that a man who is competent to write such an article does not 

 need to be sent anywhere ; that the glorious sports of our 

 fields and forests cannot be written up like a watering-place, 

 a manufacturing establishment, or public institution, by a re- 

 porter detailed for that purpose ; and that pencil strokes, 

 however good, are no substitute for true pen strokes. 

 These two articles show throughout the perfunctory yard- 

 stick of the mere reporter, who gets with punctilious nicety 

 of measure and detail, all the outwardness, and leaves the 

 heart and soul of truth to our imaginations. The open- 

 ing illustration in this sketch shows two deer, one of 

 which is smelling a lantern in the hands of a hunter. It 

 shows at the commencement the author's ignorance of the 

 nature and habits of 0. wgimnmis. Further along the writer 

 says, " Arctic hares exist iu great numbers." This sentence 

 Bhows plainly that the author is about as well posted on the 

 distribution of the species of the genus Lepus as he is on the 

 habits of the white-tailed deer. In speaking of elk and the 

 weight of bucks he says, "I heard" so and so, and " learned 

 from credible BourceB," etc., but apparently knows little or 



nothing of the .subjects he attempts to treat. He says, " in 

 the rutting season, which occurs in the earlier part of the 

 winter," etc. There he makes a guess, being two months be- 

 hind time. His next wild statement Sb "that the younger 

 and weaker males go nnmated." In selecting a place on a 

 runway he talks as follows : " The place was exposed, there 

 was no shelter ; the cold wind and driving snow and rain had 

 it all their own way with me." What a "stand" for a hunter 

 to select! On page 703 he sets himself up in plain sight on 

 the cold windward side of a tree, facing a driving snowstorm, 

 in preference to taking the lee side for protection and conceal- 

 ment. In conclusion he goes on to say that deer " pay no at- 

 tention to it small fire, and the keeping it alive furnishes 

 excellent occupation." Ye hunters, imagine a deer approach- 

 ing a camp-fire in broad daylight, with the hunter skirmishing 

 around it in the dry leaves for fuel I 



Such an article as the above is not even chaff for the sports- 

 man ; .at the same time it misleads and mis-informs young 

 readers who read to learn. 



" Hunting the Mule Deer in Colorado" is an improvement 

 upon the other two, but is evidently the work of one but little 

 past the tyro period, one whose principal forte is the ability to 

 draw pictures. Contrast tho best of these three articles with 

 the recent one on "Moose and Caribou," and note the differ- 

 ence between the work of the mere reporter and the sports- 

 man. Culture is indeed necessary to write a good magazine 

 article, but experience is absolutely indispensable for a sport- 

 ing article ; and as long as the two can be combined, their 

 combination should certainly be considered a sine qua non of 

 the writer. 



Every sportsman knows how sadly even the best pictures 

 fail to reach the soul of field sports. Good pictures are in- 

 deed a pleasure to the experienced sportsman, but only 

 because, they are landmarks which guide memory back to 

 bygone happy days. But bad ones only provoke him; while 

 to the inexperienced they are only ridiculous suggestions of 

 work without fun and butchery without palliation, What 

 can be more insufferable than most pictures of deer hunting — 

 a large animal standing broadside at ten or fifteen paces gazing 

 iu mild innocence at a man with a rifle at his shoulder, with 

 nothing but a pair of antlers, a few trees, and the absence of 

 fences to distinguish the scene from calf murdering in a barn- 

 yard:' A brilliant specimen of this is the square of printers' 

 ink found in the August, 1878, nuirber of Umyer's, on page 

 416, in " MacLeod of Dare," which, by reference to the in- 

 dex, we learn is an ".illustration." Strike out from this the 

 three guns, and imagination's wildest flight could never guess 

 what it is intended to represent. That this atrocious botch is 

 not the fault of the Monthly engraver is evident enough from 

 the other pictures in Harper's; and we are told on the back 

 cover that " 'MacLeod of Dare' is illustrated by Pettie, 

 Millais, Boughton, and other first-class English artists." This 

 is doubtless true, and serves well to prove how powerless the 

 pencil is even in the hands of the best artists when uncom- 

 bined with thorough knowledge of the field itself. For we 

 are compelled to assume, in charity to the "first-class English 

 artist" who perpetrated this enormity, that he had never been 

 in the field. Yet, after all, his work is about as good as the 

 pen-work it illustrates, which in itself is also a striking proof 

 of the incompetency of a writer, however brilliant, to handle 

 scenes of which he knows nothing. This assumption also in 

 charity to Mi-. Black. 



There is no interpretation of nature which requires so deep 

 an insight and so deep a love to describe as the sports of the 

 field and Hood. The mere friend or casual acquaintance can- 

 not do it— only the lover can. There is no branch of descrip- 

 tion in which the adjective daubing, now so fashionable, to 

 hide the bareness of want of honest truth is so tawdry. Nor 

 do we mean to say that even the cultured sportsman can do 

 full justice to the subject ; for no one can. But it is sacrilege 

 almost lor the pen of Ignorance to touch it, and his pencil 

 strokes are not much better. There is, unfortunately, too 

 much chaff in the work of even the very best sporting writers, 

 but when one does strike a solid kernel it is wheat A No. 1, 

 and not that little dark brown ellipsoid sometimes found in 

 its place. 



THE SPEED OF ICE-YACHTS. 



•"pnOUGH the apparently paradoxical problem of the speed 

 i- of ice-yachts under weigh has cropped to the surface 

 time and again, the frequent recurrence of the query would 

 seem to indicate that the riddle has not yet been sufficiently 

 clearly explained in the public prints to give to the inquiring 

 minds of the scientifically inclined Paul Prys that quietus 

 which only a thorough exposition of the matter iu language 

 within the grasp of all can hope to afford. 



With the advance of the wintry season, and the marvelous 

 tales of the Hudson ice-boats still ringing in their ears, it was 

 to bo expected that we should have been surfeited with num- 

 berless demands to decide for the uninitiated the oft-repeated 

 q Uer y— Can the ice-yacht really sail faster than the wind ? 



In the following lines we hope to make the matter clear, 

 and save many a rash tyro in mechanics the consequences of 

 too hasty wagers that no boat can sail faster than the wind. 



First Case— Wind forward of the beam.— The ice-yacht is 

 going along with the wind' anywhere forward of her beam, 

 having started from a position of rest. Every body having 

 weight and in motion, accumulates— to put some well-known 

 laws of mechanics into popular phrase— a desire to keep on 

 moving in the same direction. This desire increases with 

 every increase of speed, and is known as momentum, expressed 



by multiplying the weight of the body in pounds by its velo- 

 city in feet per second. As the yacht attains speed after once 

 starting, it is evident that she will continually increase her 

 momentum. The only resistance to the onward motion of the 

 ice-boat consists of the friction of the runners or skates with 

 the ice. it is easily understood that when a certain speed is 

 reached, the momentum will counterbalance, and even more 

 than counterbalance, this resistance, leaving the boat virtually 

 without any at all. Each successive shook or impulse of the 

 wind is now adding to the speed in succession, for the mo- 

 mentum already engendered serves for a moment to preserve 

 her speed already attained. The fresh columns of wind find- 

 ing the boat already moving at a certain speed, add to the 

 latter by a fresh stock of driving force brought to bear upon 

 the sail. Thus the wind acts in a cumulative manner, the 

 speed of the yacht becomes greater and greater, and with it 

 her momentum or tendency to conserve or keep up the speed: 

 acquired. This is plain enough. The question may now 

 naturally suggest itself— What, then, is the limit to the ice- 

 boat's speed ; why under these conditions can she not attain 

 infinite speed ultimately, and move so fast that ihe retina 

 cannot catch her imago, and thus the boat become actually in- 

 visible ? She can attain a certain speed and nothing beyond, 

 for the following reason •• The faster she goes, the more does 

 the wind draw ahead relatively. Any one acquainted with 

 boat sailing is aware that the pennant at the masthead always 

 shows the wind more ahead than what its actual compass 

 direction is at the time, provided the wind be, as now consid- 

 ered, forward of tho beam. This apparent discrepancy in the 

 direction of the wind arises from a combination of the path* 

 pertaining to the wind and boat ; and the faster the latter is 

 sailing the more acute will the angle become at which the 

 wind strikes the canvas, and therefore the smaller and smaller 

 will become its effect. In other words, as the boat reaches 

 higher velocities, the cumulative shocks of the wind become 

 less and less, and the momentum due to the highest rate is no 

 longer fully sustained ; for it is constantly being eaten into by 

 the loss due to the friction of the runners without being suffi- 

 ciently fed by the weakened impulses of the wind— drawn 

 further ahead— to maintain the highest rate. Her speed, then, 

 has attained its greatest under the circumstances, and begins 

 again to diminish until the fall in velocity brings the wind 

 once more further aft, when the latter's effective force is again 

 on the increase, a fresh supply of momentum is stored up at 

 a more rapid rate than its loss from friction, and the boat re- 

 ceives new life and a higher rate of speed. In this manner, 

 though of course in an almost imperceptibly small degree, the 

 yacht keeps forging ahead, then slowing down when the 

 limit is reached, and again forging ahead, and soon, touching, 

 as it were, the greatest velocity attainable with the strength 

 of wind then blowing, receding, and again touching, ad 

 infinitum. 



Second Case — Wind right abeam. — If sails were absolutely 

 flat, and trimmed perfectly in line with the keel-plank of the 

 ice-boat, it is easily understood that, with the wind right 

 abeam, there would be no force whatever tending to drive 

 the boat ahead, but the whole pressure would be felt in send- 

 ing the boat square to leeward. If the steel runners are sharp,, 

 so as to have a strong nip on the ice, the tendency of the 

 wind acting upon the centre of gravity or centre of efforts of 

 the sails would be to capsize the boat, and if strong enough 

 would actually lay her over on her beam ends, or as one 

 would say in ice-boat parlance, lay her over on her runner 

 plank ends. As no sails sit perfectly flat, but are always more 

 or less " off," owing to slack canvas and the gaff sagging over 

 to leeward as well as the clew of the jib, it follows that in no 

 case, even with sheets pinned hard down, can a boat experi- 

 ence a true beam wind. The direction of the latter will al- 

 ways be more or less ahead in relation to the sails, and the case 

 will thcu fall under the first headingand the reasoning applied 

 to a wind forward of the beam will hold good for this suppo- 

 sition as well. 



Third Case— Wind abaft the beam.— Should the wind be 

 abaft the beam an entirely different phase of effects presents ( 

 itself, one in fact almost the reverse of the cases heretofore 

 considered. For as the boat gathers way and gains in ' 

 momentum the relative angle of the wind becomes greater and 

 greater ; in other words, the wind appears to draw aft more 

 and more until finally a speed is reached which will bring the 

 wind dead aft, that is in line, with tho keel. No higher speed 

 than this can be obtained and, moreover, this speed cannot be 

 greater than that of the wind. If we assume it to be greater ' 

 it is evident that the wind would suddenly seem to chop out • 

 dead ahead, sails would be taken aback and the yacht at once 

 drop down again to a lower rate. In addition, with the wind 

 abaft the beam, an ice boat will always have it right aft and 

 her boom must be kept broad off, the same as in sailing an 

 ordinary boat when right before the gale. A little reasoning 

 will show the cause. The successive impulses of the wind 

 and the continual addition to the boat's momentum send her 

 ahead at a rapidly rising speed until the wind is brought rel- 

 atively in the wake. Let the yacht slow down a little and the 

 wind appears again over the quarter, when once more the in- 

 crease in the momentum stored starts the craft ahead at a live- 

 lier pace and aft tho wind comes again. As when on a bow- 

 fine the wind is always kept nearly ahead ana tee yacnt close 

 hauled, so is the wind brought always relatively aft, when act- 

 ually blowing from 90? to 180°, with the line of direction 

 taken by the yacht. 



Fourth Case— Wind dead aft,— Under these circumstances 

 it is evident that the yacht can sail no faster than the wind ; 

 for if she did, the wind would be brought out ahead and take 



