^WWBW^AUU U1JLIHJJJL1U. 



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the flowers greeting our senses, the insects chirruping m the 

 grass ond the birds chattering in the trees above lis. 



Not less distinguished in theirway are the "Lives", Wal- 

 ton not only knew how to npprccia' e 1he good qualities of his 

 liieuds, hut he had the belief that others, too, ought to 

 recognize and love these traits of character. And what else 

 could have been expected from the author of the " Complete 

 Angler" than just such a set of biographies as he has given us? 

 "Written with all the tender grace of personal love and ad- 

 miration, and for the avowed purpose of holding up for the 

 emulation of posterity, the good and the beautiful in human 

 character, the Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, 

 and Sanderson are among the English classics, and occupy a 

 place wholly uniqnein the literature of biography. It is no 

 small honor to Walton that he has left for us these records of 

 the simple piety and domestic virtues, which appear as re- 

 freshing springs of sweet water amid the rank and noxious 

 morasses of that age of profligate license and debauchery; nor 

 is it less worthy of comment that in thus commemorating the 

 character of others he has taught us that his own was simple 

 and pure, and that leading us to love his friends he teaches 

 us, of necessity, to love him as well. 



We can readily number upon our fingers, almost without 

 pausing to recall them, the few English writers who have 

 won for themselves such a warm personal regard from so 

 diverse a class of readers as has Izaak Walton. With few 

 do we comeinto such close sympathy of thought and feeling. 

 Of the "Angler," originally published in 1053, there have 

 been some forty editions, many of them very rare and costly 

 ones, upon which enthusiastic disciples of the gentle teacher 

 have spent months of research, and lavish sums of money. 

 You may find some kind of a copy of the book to-day in any 

 book store, and you may pick up well-worn copies on the 

 second-hand book stands. Who can say when the good old 

 volume will be out of print? Surely not so long as the 

 mountain streams flow on, and men go forth to angle in them. 



UNMANLY MEN AND UNWOMANLY 

 WOMEN. 



LAST Wednesday evening, at eleven o'clock, the excite- 

 ment-craving population of New Yoik flocked into 

 Gilmore's Garden to witness the beginning of another six 

 days' trial of endurance. There are sixteen competitors this 

 time, and they are women. Each of these women has already 

 allowed herself to be gazed at for a greater or less number of 

 quarter hours, and has won a more or less creditable pedes- 

 trian record ; all have found it so much to their taste or their 

 profit that they are now eager for another and a competitive 

 pose before the public. 



Had the original announcement been adhered to, the 

 "walk " would have extended over six consecutive days, in- 

 cluding the Sabbath. TJponthatday, doubtless, themanagers, 

 whose sense of public decency appears to have been strangely 

 perverted by the vacuity of their pocket-books, expected to 

 have reaped a plenteous harvest of half dollars. Unfortu- 

 nately, however, for the silvered, not to say golden, anticipa- 

 tions of "the management," the police captain of the precinct — 

 who is just now, pending his trial for alleged ruffianly con- 

 duct at the last six days' match, on exceptionally good be- 

 havior — has very properly seen fit to interfere, and by for- 

 bidding the receipt of Sunday gate-money has taken from the 

 proposed exhibition all excuse for its Sunday being. The 

 day will therefore be observed so far at least as female walk- 

 ing matches go ; the church attendants of Madison Square 

 may worship in their sanctuaries undisturbed ; and that por- 

 tion of the community which has a regard for the sanctity of 

 the day may well draw a breath of relief, since the city has 

 been spared a Sunday spectacle that would have disgraced 

 any society this side of those benighted regions to whose wilds 

 Stanley alone of white men has as yet penetrated. 



It were to be desired for certain very grave considerations 

 that this prohibition could have been extended over the whole 

 week and not alone over its first day. The entire surround- 

 ings of these exhibitions are demoralizing. Drinking, idleness, 

 late hours, unnatural excitement, betting, profanity and con- 

 gregated coarseness are not, it is true, necessary adjuncts of a 

 long-distance walking match, but they are adjuncts neverthe- 

 less, and very conspicuous ones at that. It must, moreover, 

 be well understood by any one who has given it a moment's 

 reflection, that with these surroundings what might otherwise, 

 under proper limitations, be legitimate and healthful incite- 

 ments to physical culture are degraded into vast schemes of 

 money making and gambling. It is the hippodroniing of 

 human beings, the conversion of a man into a beast — a meta- 

 morphosis which in all ugts and in all lands has been among 

 the unclean dreams of philosophy and imagination. We have 

 no rtason to felicitate ourselves because; we have realized this 

 dream by organizing such tests o! human brute enduranceand 

 by staking our money upon the human animal that seems like- 

 ly to suffer most without succumbing first. In the present 

 instance the money is staked, not upon men, but upon 

 women. 



Any necessity is deplorable which draws woman forth 

 from the retirement which is her sphere, unless it he to some- 

 thing high and noble. Doubly to be deplored, not for the 

 sake of these individual women alone, but for the sake of 

 womanhood itself and of mpn's reverence for it, ia that so- 

 called amusement which not only brings woman before the 

 public gsze, but strips her of ber modesty— her chiefest orna- 

 ment — and exposes her, a short-skirted s pectecle, to the un- 

 holy gaze of lewd men. It is this unsexing of woman that 



we denounce, and against which, for the respect he bears his 

 mother or his sister or his wife or his daughter, should be ut- 

 tered the protest of every right thinking man. 



The men who institute these female pedestrian shows, and 

 the men who abet them with 1heir pationsge, are unmanly 

 men ; the women who participate in them and 1he women 

 who encourage them with their presence are unwomanly 

 women. 



Bottom's Swjm.— The curicsity of tbegcod people of the 

 Ohio Valley has been aroused to the bjebest pitch by the ap- 

 pearance of the terrifying object in blsek which seemsneifber 

 to care for ice, snags nor rapids, and which delightsin the very 

 fierceness of the contest with the raging elements and in the 

 consternation of the simple-minded rustics who till the soil 

 along the river banks. Paul Boyton is at his old tricks again, 

 shooting rapids with no worse results than being bruised a 

 little, or getting so nearly ur.dcr the wheels of excursion 

 Etcamers that there is no fun in it, and at other times 

 being engulfed in the seething currents of angry waters, but 

 whose spile the amphibious captain laughs to naught in bis 

 rubber suit. The doughty skipper is now pursuing his long 

 and toilsome journey down the Ohio and the Mississippi to 

 the Gulf, and be will not rest till the long swim has been ac- 

 complished and the value of his life-saving Euit put through 

 the severest tests. 



Tbe Glotjobstek Fishermen.— The occupation of our coast 

 fisbeinien is at best one of extreme toil, hardship and peril. 

 The men who go down into the sea in ships must needs have 

 for the pursuit of their calling brave hearts to do and to dare, 

 for they go forth into certain danger and possible death , and 

 they who remain on the shore to watch the lessening sails dis- 

 appear from their sight must needs exercise not less of cour- 

 age and patience. The local history of sea-port fishing towns 

 is filled with sombre pages. The city of Gloucester, Mass., 

 is now in mourning for the fisheimen, who, after days and 

 weeks of weary watching and waiting by wives and children, 

 are believed to have perished iu tho February gales off tbe 

 George's banks. Of the fishing fleet which sailed from Glouces- 

 ter in the early part of last month, thirteen vessels, with their 

 one hundred and forty-three men, have never been heardfrom. 

 This calamity leaves fifty-seven women widows and one hun- 

 dred and forty-nine children fatherless. Such disasters have 

 not been infrequent in the previous history of the city. In 

 February, 1862, fifteen vessels and one hundred and twenty 

 men were lost ; in 1871, nineteen vessels and one hundred and 

 forty men were lost ; in " The Lord's Day Gale" of August, 

 1873, fifteen vessels went down into the waters, and with 

 them one bundled and twenty-four men ; again, in the De- 

 cember gales of 1870, ten vessels and nicety-eight men were 

 destroyed, ar.d the melancholy record of the losses for the 

 year numbered two hundred and twelve lives. This is a sad 

 catalogue, the statistics of which become full of pathos when 

 we reflect upon the tales of human heart suffering they tell. 



Wbathek on the Lower St. Lawrence. — The meteoro- 

 logical phenomena of the Gulf of St. Lawrence have been sin- 

 gular the past winter. While deep snows and severe weather 

 have prevailed to the westward, there has been less snow on 

 the Gulf coast than the oldest inhabitant had ever seen. A 

 letter from Gaspe tells us that the ice has not held to the 

 shore as in other seasons, and there is no body of ice outside. 

 There is every appearance of an early spring. The same let- 

 ter says the fishermen are suffering for necessaries, having no 

 potatoes and very little flour. 



GAME PROTECTION. 



—The bill before the New Jersey Legislature at its last ses- 

 sion, just closed, to prevent the shooting of woodcock prior 

 to Sept. 1, was passed to a third reading, and only failed in 

 consequence of the adjournment of the Legislature. This is 

 unfortunate. The bill had many friends, and was warmly 

 supported, and ha:! the session lasted a few days longer it 

 would undoubtedly have become a law. The originator of 

 the bill was Geo. B. Duryee, of Newark ; and John Gill, of 

 Orange, was one of its chief promoters. Let their names be 

 emblazoned in letters of gold, and let their efforts and exam- 

 ple be followed in other States. 



Beply to Sets Green on " Destruction of White Fish." 

 — Editor Forest and Stream : Mr. Green writes to the New 

 York Times as follows : " When I was in New Yorklast week 

 1 saw tons of two-year-old White-fish, not weighing over eight 

 or ten ounces, in Fulton Market. They are sold for cisco or 

 herring (Arguressmvs clupeiformis). I consider this one of 

 I he greatest wastes of fish food that exists in this country. 

 These fish have passed all their early dangers, and if they had 

 been permitted to grow ono year longer they would have 

 weighed two and one-half or three pounds, and would be 

 worth to the fishermen that caught them twenty cents each, 

 whereas, in the condition I flaw them in, they were worth not 

 more than one and two cents each. If the same fisherman 

 had only waited one year— for fish are local and never wander 

 but a few miles from where they are taken, except during 

 their breeding seasons— he would have been paid just ten times 

 over for his patience." 



Seth Green, nor any other person ever wrote a betterarticle 

 in a short way for the protection of fishes or for the interest 

 of the fisherman than this. We have ourselves for years ob- 

 served the destruction of young wbitefish on Lake Erie when 

 they have been caught, and sold as herring, both fresh, smoked 

 and ealted, and have deplored this destruction as much as any 

 other observer; but where is the remedy? The; pound-net 

 cannot be abandoned, it is the best net, when not abused, in 

 existence. Mr. Green proposes to enlarge the mesh in the 

 leader and pot of the net. No pound-net should be allowed 



to be set in any of our waters with less thsn a two-inch mesh, 

 measured from knot to knot. Now here comes the dilemma. 

 With this size mesh no herring would be caught, and in the 

 course of ten years Lake Erie would be packed with this fish 

 (for they are most terribly fecund; and ns they are the natural 

 enemy of tbe wbitefish hardly one of the latter by this time 

 would be found to enter the fisher's net. Bv enlarging the 

 mesh as you propose, Seth, you let the herring go scot free to 

 reproduce and devastate the waters. You well know he is a 

 decidedly predaceouB little rascal, following the wbitefish on 

 to his spawning grounds, devouring bis eggs the live-long 

 winter and finishing tip willi lie young from the lime they 

 are out of the shell in the spriDg until they leave for deep 

 water, and how much longer they feed on this young fry I 

 cannot say, but in June I have taken herring with the hook 

 baited wiih a lake shiner 1£ inch long, and caught a hun- 

 dred or more in the course of one afternoon. With the same 

 bait and often with a bit of meat on the hook, I have taken 

 through the ice in March, with others, amcrg the Islands at 

 the head of the lake all that we could cany. 



Db. E. Sterling. 

 Michigan Game Law.— The Michigan Senate passed, March 

 18, the game law, of which the provisions are: No person 

 shall hunt deer in the upper peninsula from Kept. 1 to Dec. 15, 

 or in the lower peninsula iron Oct. 1 lo Nov. 15. It also for- 

 bids hounding deer in the upper peninsula at any time during 

 the year. No person shall kill wild turkey except during Oc- 

 tober, November or December of each year. Killing of 

 woodcock is allowed only between Sept. 1 and January 1. 

 Shooting prairie chickens, partridge, giouse and wild ducks 

 only allowed between Sept. 1 and Jan 1, Other wild water 

 fowl or snipe to be killed only between May 1 ard Sept. 1. 



Rochester, N. Y.~ Having shot ccnieleiably in England 

 and in this country, I feel interested in the protection of 

 game. My conviction is that a panacea may be found in a 

 September opening for all shooting, and pemiitting no shoot- 

 ing before. Intelligible duties lo gsme reuslnhh s'end a test 

 of willing deputies would spriDg from this, and those duties 

 could be capably peifoimed. Undoubtedly tbe key-note lo 

 extermination is sounded in the sunnier shooting, which ip, 

 to say the least of it, a difficult pastime to confuse with spcit! 

 r Nth. 



THE NEW YORK GAME LAW. 



Hotson, N. Y„ March 15, lsio. 

 Editor FonrsT and Stream: 



It appears that a msjcriiy of lie mfmbers of tire New York Associ- 

 ation for the Protection of Fish and Gum e favor extending tlie close 

 season for partridge, quail, wcod-duek, etc., to Oct. 15. To mate the 

 close time later than Sept, 1 or Sept. 15, excepting for qnail, Is objec- 

 tionable to tlie spoilsmen of this locality, and, I am inclined to think, 

 generally elsewhere throughout this State, excepting on Long Island' 

 where the climate Is more favorable for shooting in the latter part of 

 the fall ana first part of winter, ana the only part of the State where 

 quail are plenty. The extensive sandy plains, bnary swamps and 

 forests of shrub oak on Long Island are natuial grounds aDa shelter 

 for quail, and the snow, so destructive to quail elsewhere In the State 

 is there quickly melted by the sea breezes, 



In this more noithern and hilly country from Sept. IB to Nov, 1 is the 

 ben and pleasantest part of the season for shooting. Partridges can 

 lake care of themselves as well, or better, by the 15th of Sept., being 

 protected by the leaves, as later, when the leaves have fallen. Oct. 16 

 is late for woodcock shooting here, but I am not In favor of summer 

 woodcock shooting. I do not understand lhat It Is the intention to 

 make any change in the close season for water fowl shooting; it la 

 not necessary in order to protect I he quail, they being hunted differ- 

 ently and on different grounds from water fowl. We never— hardly 

 ever— get our share of water fowl, as compared with the more favored 

 States South and West. King Fiost makes a close season for water 

 fowl in the northern half of this Slate most of the time from Nov 15 

 to April. The first half of the fall months being the pleasantest and 

 best pari of the season for shooting in tie northern parte! the state 

 and the last half of the fall the best In the southern part, panicularly 



on Long Island, It would therefore be treating u 



fairly, you see, to extend the close season f< 

 to Oct. 15. Water fowl are very wild here In th 

 hunted all winter Sonth, and the familiar repoi 

 bo nl ckly Hurry lurther north to their favorite : 

 not think they are slaughtered in such number 

 spring as to make it appear Decessary for thei 

 Mbit spring shooting. 



After being confined in office for several months and reading weekly 

 In the Forest and Btbeakoi the line sport shooting water f ow] ir, 

 the favored localities, thus keeping the subject "excitedly" in mind 

 also reminding me of the times that I too have visited some of those 

 favored localitiesto shoot dnck, and, on returning, figured the cost of 

 the ducks I shot, cash paid, at much higher sums than tliey Would 

 bring in market, I greatly enjoy getting out on pleasant days in the 

 spring, Willi a good companion, in my sneak-boat, and "creeping " for 

 ducks, the most exciting, skillful and best way to hunt them for sport 

 and although not able to get a "big bag," if I get a pair I am well satis- 

 fied with my luck, regarding the excitement and exercise sufficient 

 remuneration. 



1 have a very favorable opinion of the New York Association for the 

 Preservation of Ftsh and Game. It is the chief among associations of 

 the kind, and a power to prevent the killing and selling of game out of 

 season ; but I am inclined to think that seme of Its members are a lit- 

 tle selfish, and more familiar with the shooting on Long Island than 

 elsewhere In this Slate. Latitude 42 



WKLi.svn.ntVN, Y„ March 17, i&B, 

 EDrroa Forest and Steeast : 



At arecent meetiDg of the New York Association for the Protection 

 of Game a bill was reported and read, making the aeason for all kinds 

 of game to open Oct. 16 and close Feb. 1. 



Should such a bill become ; a law— not excluding woodcock from its 

 provisions-it would be very harsh and unjust to sportsmen in this seo- 

 tionof the State. In this viciniiy it Is a rare occurrence lo see a 

 woodcock later in the seaton than Oct. is, and usually they leave a 

 during the last Cays ot September In each year. 



We are strict in enforcing our game laws, snd the result is that 

 when the season opens on the first of August we have a Wee 

 birds wiih us. II the law should be changed as proposed upon wood- 

 cock, in this section we should not be able lo kill a bird in an 

 The change in the law might be a nice thing tor New Yorkers built 

 would be death for the " little fish "In the country. 



Cr.AilENCJJ A. Fabndjj. 



Editok Forest and Stkeah : 



To set the close season date at Oct. 15 would be very unfair for the 

 northern part cf the State. Woodcock are almost all gone from here 

 by lhat lime. The 1st of Sept. would be belter. The October date 

 would cause many to violate the law, and would thus deprive thoae 

 who did reapect it ol much of their legitimate sport. w. B. ». 



nfferners veryun- 

 )r water fowl shooting 

 e spring, having been 

 tof guns causes them 

 nesting grounds. I do 

 a in ihls State in the 

 r preservation to pro- 



