JbUKUST AJNJD STREAM. 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 



DBVOTKD TO KlKLD AND AQUATIC Sl'OBTS, FBACTICAL NATO UAL hllSTOKY, 

 PI8B OCI.TOBS, TBS PBOTBCTION OF GAME, PKESBKVATION OP 1'ORBSTS, 

 AJJIl TUB INCULCATION IN MEN AND WOilKN OP t litALTHT INTEHEST 

 IN OUT-DlJOB RE0B.HATION AND STUDY : 



PUBLISHED BY 



"$otesi mi gtrauq gttblishing {femtryaqg.- 



— AT— 



NO. Ill FULTON STEKBT, NEW YORK, 



fPOBT OFFICE BOX 2832.] 



TERMS, FOUR DOLLARS A YEAR, STRICTLY IN ADVANCE. 



Advertising Rate*. 



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

 Special rales for three, six and twelve months. Notices in editorial 

 columns, 50 cents per line— eight words to the line, and twelve lines to 

 one iuch. 



Advertisements should be sent in by Saturday of each week, if pos- 

 sible. 



All transient advertisements mast be accompaoied with the money 

 or they will not be inserted. 



No advertisement or business notice of an immoral character will be 

 received on any terms. 



'.'Any publisher inserting our prospectus as above one time, with 

 brief editorial notice calling attention thereto, and sending marked copy 

 vo us, will receive the Fobkst and Stream; for one year. 



NBW YORK THURSDAY, FEBRUAR 1 T 27, 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 Names will not be published if objection be made.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 

 munloatlons will be rogarded. 



We cannot promise to return rejected manuscripts. 



Secretaries of Cluos and Associations are urged to favor ns with brief 

 notes of their movements and transactions. 



Nothing will be admitted to any department of the paper thatmum 

 not be read with propriety in the home circle. 



We oannot be responsiblefor dereliction of the mail servloc if money 

 remitted to os Is lost. 



vr Trade supplied by American News Company. 



Edi toeiaij Em-EiBAis.— The editor of the Chicago Field 

 has mailed ns in advance three printed columns of flat denial 

 or controversion of nearly every statement contained in Mr. 

 Hallock's published account of the origin of the Minnesota 

 Field Trials controversy, accompanied by an autograph letter, 

 in ■which he assumes that our sense of justice and fair play 

 •will induce us to publish it. Now, we do not feel justified in 

 imposing Dr. Rowe's stuff and twaddle upon our readers. 

 Those who have interested themselves sufficiently in the 

 wrangle to be inquisitive will find it in the next Chicago Field 

 as -we are promised. We have always endeavored to publish 

 a clean paper, and do not care to smirch it now. Besides, 

 the two papers have nothing in common, either as to charac- 

 ter or contents, and we will not burden our patient constituency 

 with what would prove distasteful and unprofitable to them. 



AN OFF-HAND LEAGUE. 



THERE are now a dozen or more rifle clubs about New 

 York City, each of them either nominally or actually 

 organized for the promotion of orf-hand practice, and during 

 the season a large amount of work is gone through with. In 

 addition to the private club matches, the formal competitions 

 between one and another of the clubs would All a liberal re- 

 port, and those friendly rivalries are productive of no end of 

 genuine sport. To systematize the season's enjoy uient,to give 

 a certain degree of order and completion to the working out 

 of that indefinite problem— who are the best team ? we would 

 suggest the formation of a short-range club league or confed- 

 eration. Precisely how broad or how restricted its platform of 

 agreements should be in our opinion, we are not now prepared 

 to indicate ; but the principal idea should be to arrange such 

 a scheme of matches for out-door work during the season, that 

 each club should meet each other club under precisely the 

 same conditions, and then by a sUrvival-of-the-fittest process 

 the best men would have amply shown their superiority before 

 the year closed. The merits of this plan would be that each 

 team would set about accomplishing precisely the same task 

 that the gauge for judging each would be the same, and that 

 the final winners would have shown their excellency beyond 

 all cavil or hint of fluke. The number of men per team, the 

 number of rounds per man, questions of rifles, sighting shots, 

 and the order of shooting, with the ranges, could be settled 

 after it had been determined to try such a league. Now is 

 the time for such formation, and there would seem to be no 

 better opportunity than at the gathering of off-hand shooters 

 which the Fohert and Stbbam Tournament will bring to- 

 gether. 



The subject is at least worth a fair and careful consideration, 

 for in its successful carrying out is the surety of a great fund 

 of profitable contention. The league need be an organization 

 of no expense ; markers and range costs would be no more in 

 the case of a match than at ordinary practice ; and in such a 

 series of contests, where tne control is in the hands of the 

 shooters and not of outside non-shooting "Directors," there 

 could hardly fail to be an entire absence of wrangle and pro- 

 test. Such leagues have worked well in other field sports, 

 and, if kept clear of the taints of professionalism and the 

 other disturbing elements which our amateur shoulder-shooters 

 recognize, as well as the honor of coming out victorious in so 

 severe a contest as the league matches would be, could not 

 but attract the very best effort of all our marksmen. 



Prevention of Cktjeltv to Children.— The Fourth 

 Annual Report of the New York Society for the Prevention 

 of Cruelty to Children, shows that during the year 351 cases 

 have been prosecuted, and 304. convictions secured. The So- 

 ciety has placed 610 children in variouB homes and insti- 

 tutions, and temporary relief has been given to 386 children. 

 An important branch of this work is the rescuing of Italian 

 children, who are held in virtual slavery by the pardrones, 

 and the efforts of the Society are directed towards abolishing 

 their traffic in the child slaves. The Report states that the 

 cause of fully two-thirds of the suffering and abuse of chil- 

 dren is intemperance. Five new societies have been organized 

 in other states, and the influence of the New York Society is 

 felt abroad. We take pleasure in commending its objects and 

 work. 



Spobtsman's PBTXosornY.— The editor of a Western paper 

 being threatened with assassination if he published an article 

 put in the objectionable matter the next morning with the ex- 

 planation that he would " just as lief die now, when fishing 

 •was out of season, as at any other time of the year." The 

 Ban Francisco News Letter has discovered an impecunious 

 fellow considerably out of pocket and at elbows, who carries 

 a gun case stuffed with wood— a sort of dummy— and he ex- 

 plains: "You see, they think a fellow is going hunting, so 

 my seedy clothes pass muster. " 



i&" Foeest and Strkam will be sent for six months for $3, 

 or for three months for $1. To clubs of five or more, $8 per 

 year. 



ARCHERY'S DISAPPOINTMENTS AND 

 FREAKS. 



IT would be base presumption for us to undertake to treat 

 of archery from any other standpoint than that of a tyro; 

 but it does not require very long practice to find out that its 

 " witchery" is that of a coquette who retains her admirers in 

 her toils by alternate smiles and frowns; whose attractions 

 are unequalled but whose moods are rather uncertain. 



One of the commonest causes of disappointment 13 too 

 much anticipation. If there is one thing that seems easier 

 than another to one who has never tried, it is to hit a four- 

 foot target at any moderate range, and the first time one wit- 

 nesses any bow-shooting he is apt to be more or less sarcastic, 

 and to think, and perhaps to say, that he could do a great deal 

 better than that himself, and not half try. When he does try 

 he is somewhat dismayed at the number of things he finds 

 out in the first five minutes; but unless he is different from 

 the average human being, he will still retain his first impres- 

 sion, only admitting that he has not quite got the knack 

 of it yet. 



The idea is deeply rooted in the human breast that skill in 

 archery is a trick which may be caught in a moment by a 

 favorite of fortune, such as most of us are. No beginner 

 would be surprised at equalling the score of a Fisher or a 

 Palairet, and the more of a beginner he was the less astonished 

 he would be. Hovering ever close to him is the phantom of 

 a discovery which in one supreme moment shall turn his 

 dreams to realities. He expects to catch it every day, to 

 blunder on some trick of holding, drawing, aiming, loosing; 

 a talisman hid through the ages awaiting him, and which 

 shall turn all things to gold— and he will find it too. Ever 

 and anon as he tries some new plan his heart will bound high 

 with the hope that he haj struck it at last, but when he next 

 puts his finger on it, behold ! it is not there. 



But this state of things is one to which there are many ap- 

 parent exceptions. Archery, again like a coquette, has a way 

 of often bestowing her brightest smiles on new acquaintances 

 The beginner who makes an astonishing score is not an un- 

 common phenomenon, and it is mortifying to one who has 

 by patience reached a somewhat satisfactory score to see it 

 nearly or quite equalled by one who " had never taken a bow 

 in his hand before" — but let him be patient. The big scores 

 of beginners have a way of not holding out, and the old simile 

 of the rocket and the stick thereof will be wanted pretty soon. 

 It is a thing which we do not profess to understand, but- 

 which we have often seen — a most marked falling off in achiev 

 ment after the first few days or perhaps weeks j a period of 

 discouragement which we fear has lost to the world many a 

 real archer. But this point safely passed, the aspirant becomes 

 an archer. Whether good or bad, he is still an archer, one 



while practicing. All human cares and hopes, loves and 

 hates fade from memory, save only those of the hour. For 

 the time the target's circumference incloses his world of 

 things hoped for— though his world of things reached is apt 

 to be far more extensive. A succession of bad shots leaves 

 existence a hollow mockery, and only by a centre hit or two 

 can he be reassured that life is not an empty dream. 

 ^ Remembering this, and remembering too that at fifty or 

 sixty yards distance it is often, perhaps generally, difficult to 

 see just where an arrow hits, try to realize the feelings of 

 Aspirant when his arrows have flown, one by one, apparently 

 straight and true; when regularly after each has come to his 

 ears that most musical of all sounds, the thud of the arrow on 

 the plaited straw; when he springs forward doing all kinds of 

 sums in nines and sevens in his head the while, and sees 

 ominous spots appear on the outside of Retarget. Maybe they 

 are strains or rents! Not so ; at each step sickening doubt 

 grows into dreadful ceitainity that his sums must all be done 

 in ones and threes. 



Aggravating, too, is the willful spirit that sometimes seem* 

 to possess a bow that will not hold steady and arrows that 

 will not go straight j when neither wrath nor prayer will avail 

 to coax or drive a single arrow anywhere near the centre. 

 The first goes to the right, the second to the left, a third falls 

 short, a fourth sails over. With an effort to which the taking 

 of a city were a light matter, Aspirant bites off short the 

 "winged words "that spring to his lips, and succeeds in 

 shODting a fifth carefully and calmly, only to see it glance a 

 rueful wreck from the target stand, while the broad face of 

 target seems to wrinkle in scoffing smiles. This kind of 

 thing generally happens either just after one has made an 

 especially good score or when there is an unusual number of 

 spectators ; and the utter exasperation it causes can host be 

 expressed in words of Trojan Pandarus spoken four thousand 

 years ago, after failing in a couple of fair shots ; " Now if I 

 return home safely may some enemy strike off my head if I 

 having broken this bow, do not with these hands cast it into 

 the fire." Humanity is indeed alike in all the ages. 



Once, not long ago, there was an archer. He had made 

 enough progress to practice at forty yards with some little 

 success. He encountered a few friends who, just beginning 

 were practicing at twenty paces at a two-foot target. They 

 courteously invited him to join them and show them how. 

 Loftily he accepted, wondering whether he should be able to 

 bear their admiration modestly enough, and, not knowing 

 enough to change his range, readily shot every individual 

 arrow too high— made the poorest score of the lot— and re- 

 tired feeling about eighteen inches high.. We know all about 

 his feelings ; we decline to state why. 



We could give the author of the delightful essay on the 

 " Total Depravity of Inanimate Things" some new points - 

 for never was there anything, animate or inanimate, more 

 given over to original sin than an arrow. The manner in'which 

 they will succeed in hiding themselves when that seems im- 

 possible would be admirable if it was not so aggravating 

 We have known them to deliberately turn off on the ground 

 at a right angle, to seek a loose but apparently inaccessible 

 board, and even turn once more to be sure to get completely 

 under it. We have known them to glide smoothly through 

 holes barely big enough to pass them to get into a hen house 

 The trick of seeking any particularly thick tuft of grass in 

 the neighborhood of the target is getting rather stale now - 

 we always look first for them there. Good arrows were not 

 to be lightly lost last season, when they were so scarce; but 

 when time was precious, as it generally was, the necessity of 

 the whole body of archers suspending operations to pace and 

 re-pace over all the regions round about was very, very exas- 

 perating, all the more so as no one dared grumble, knowinir 

 well that his own arrow might be the missing one next round- 

 and to find the lost arrow in a spot already searched twenty 

 times would have been mortifying had we not generally been 

 in too much of a hurry to recommence shooting to have any 

 feelings at all. Sometimes, however, it could not be found 

 until some one stepped on it. 



This last sentence naturally leads to the thought of break- 

 ing bows. But this is too solemn a subject to be spoken of 

 lightly. It is not a disappointment; it is a disaster. O 

 reader 1 in the day when such a misfortune is yours, as you 

 ruefully gaze on the two tips and one string, which is all 

 that remains toyou of your pet bow that lay so caressingly 

 in your hand— that sprung so joyfully at your touch;— in 

 that day may you have kind archer friends near you who 

 have themselves known trouble and with whom you may 

 mourn your loss, and who will not deride when you speak of 

 the lost bow as of a lost baby ; and let us wish all success to 

 those whose ingenuity and deftness promise well that the sad 

 sad tales of last season shall be repeated less often in the 

 future. 



But too long have we spoken of disappointments. Let 

 none be discouraged thereby, for it is only when pleasure is 

 high that sorrow is deep. Let those who would here write of 

 the pleasures of archery take good heed to be worthy of their 

 subject ; for even Thompson can scarcely truly paint (and he 

 would be the first to own it) the delight of seeing arrow after 

 arrow fly swift and straight as materialized thoughts to the- 

 centre of the target— the delight of the time when the arrows 

 seem to obey your will rather than your aim. To the archer 

 of the right spirit, such moments should not be few nor far 



between ; and as kind Providence has ordained that the ns- 

 who has taken to himself Mb art for better or worse, and is \ membrance of pleasant things is easiest and most vivid the 

 not to be separated from it. It would be hard to picture to j memories of your true archer shall be all rosy and golden 

 one who has not felt it the utter absorption of such & one J Truo. 



