Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 6, 1883. 



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 garded. No name will be published except with writer's consent. 

 The Editors are not responsible for the views of correspondents. 



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Editorial. 



The Official Team Report. 



The Fish less Hudson. 



Forest and Stream Fables. — xiv. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Shooting in Cuba. 



A New Style of Shooting. 



A Night with the Vaqueroes. 

 Natural History. 



The American Panther. 



The Fanes of Serpents. 



Chipmunks and lied Squirrels. 

 Game Bag anh Gun. 



'I'll.' Prop-rti" in I ,.'rr;i<-. 



. , ,;.]:■ .,, i, ,., ,. 1 ;,,T. 



The Rail and the High Tides. 

 Star Wads. 

 Philadelphia Notes. 

 A Duck Shoot at Tiajuana. 

 The Kynoch Shells. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 

 Large and Small-MouUj !51aek 



Bass. 

 Taking the Tarpum. 

 Prouty on Fishing. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



The Sunftsb Question. 

 The United States Fisheries. 

 The Kennel. 

 The Beagle Club. 

 Status of the Bulldog. 



CONTENTS. 



The Kei 



Dog Critics. 



A Night Chase with the Virginia 

 Blues. 



Kennei Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Rifle ani> Ti :'.- •■ • ■ ,.■ 



: :■■ 'J ■.■■!! ■ ' ;;;":■- " . I'- 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



The Clay Pigeon. 

 Canoeing. 



The Association Races at Stony 

 Lake> 



The Seawanhaka Canoe Races. 



Order of Cruising Canoes. 

 Yachting. 



Seawanhaka Y. C 



Jumbo's Grandfather. 



Chesapeake Bug Eyes. 



Cutters on the Lakes. 



Hull Y. C. 



Royal Nova Scotia Y. S. 



Travis out of Fashion. 



Bay of Quinte Y. C. 



Elements of Safety. 



Oswego Y. C. 



Sensible Geo. Gould. 



Sensible Wash. E. Connor. 



Boston Y. C. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



shown the team reads like the note of a triumphal march. 

 Everything which could be was done to make the Americans 

 at home on British soil. There is a large debt of gratitude 

 which the American soldier should take the first opportunity 

 of repaying to his associates under British uniforms. 



It is to be regretted that Ool. Howard did not think it 

 worth while to take careful observations by instruments of 

 the weather on that eventful Saturday in July. Some of 

 the ornamental members of his staff might have found a 

 useful employment in keeping these data, or a professional 

 observer might have been secured. This whole matter of 

 official n.ote taking regarding the weather is greatly neglected 

 on our American ranges, and much valuable information is 

 thus lost. At any rate except upon the comparison of ex- 

 periences by the team men, we have now no way of finding 

 out what the weather really was at Wimbledon and how it 

 compares with some of our American blustering days. 



The report, as a whole, is a very direct and business- 

 like document, and it will be read with interest in all parts 

 of the country. He tells the story of the defeat in as few 

 words as possible, with a concise statement of facts. Where 

 there is a conclusion to be drawn from the facts before him 

 on his tour he draws it, and the paper is now a guide for the 

 captains of coming teams. Perhaps the Directors of the N. 

 R. A. may profit by it. We say perhaps, for that body does 

 seem to possess, in a high degree, the ability to make con- 

 fusion out of the simplest matters. 



With the report now given, the match of 1883 passes into 

 history, and the last official act has been performed in con- 

 nection with it. The members have all of them long since 

 gone back to their civil occupations, leaving the match and 

 its many points of praise and blame for the general discus- 

 sion of the rifle world. There is a prospect of a continua- 

 tion of the matches. If so be, they ought to represent the 

 best style of the military shooting of to-day, and all obso- 

 lete checks and stumbling blocks should be swept out of 

 the way. 



THE FISHLESS HUDSON. 

 \ "\/"E do not know of a river of its size in the United States 

 * ' which containssofew non-migratory fish as the Hudson. 

 Its only commercial fisheries of any value are those of the 

 shad and the striped bass. The former has been sustained 

 by the Fish Commission, or it would have been as extinct as 

 the sturgeon fisheries, and the large bass are taken under the 

 ice in brackish water, where they go to winter, and are only 

 transient lodgers, not permanent residents. In boyhood 

 days we had what we then considered good fishing about 

 Albany in the river and in the small streams emptying in it, 

 That is, we could obtain strings of fish weighing from ten to 

 thirty pounds in a day's fishing with hook and line. The 

 fish were perch, eels, sunfish, rock bass and bullheads, as a 

 species of catfish is there called. Thirty years ago we have 

 seen boats anchored in the channel all the way from Albany 

 to Van Wie's Point, fishing for small striped bass of from 

 half a pound to two pounds' weight, using sturgeon spawn 

 for bait and taking fair numbers. 



In those days a walk down the G-reenbush bank to the 

 well-known Red House would usually give a view of leaping 

 sturgeon, and we have seen as many as twenty leaps in an 

 evening. Sturgeon was then so common that it was despised 

 by many, and it was known along the river, even as far down 

 as New York city, as "Albany beef . " Now it is a rarity 

 and a luxury. After the Erie Canal was opened the black 

 bass straggled down or up into it, and a few were taken in 

 the river; but they have never increased to any extent, and 

 the perch are nearly extinct, while the striped bass about 

 Albany have entirely disappeared. We have seen school- 

 boys take great strings of fish in the Wynantskill, below 

 Albany, and also in that bayou below Down's Point called 

 the Island Creek. 



Further down the river the striped bass fisheries of the 

 Hudson were very good thirty years ago. We have just 

 seen some extracts from papers about that time. The Sulli- 

 van county Whig of May 17, 1851, said: "On Thursday 

 morning last, nearly two tons of bass, of all sizes, varying 

 from one to sixty pounds, were taken near Denning's Point, 

 opposite Newburg, in a seine owned by Van Nort and Kue- 

 vils. Most of them were sent to Albany for a market," 

 The Albany /fester, May, 1854, contained the following 

 "The annual fishery on the Hudson, below the Highlands, 

 has opened. Nine hundred pounds of bass were sent to 

 New York from Croton banks by the cars on Saturday 

 evening; four hundred pounds with a respectable sprinkling 

 of shad, the next evening, and the weather being favorable 

 now, the probability is that much larger consignments will 



The shad are of a good size, and some of the bass taken 

 reach twenty and twenty-five pounds each." 



We have no theory to advance as to the cause of the fall 

 ing off of the fisheries of this river, we merely state the 

 facts. It would seem as if a river of this size should furnish 

 some fishing, but while the black bass have been in the river 

 for twenty or thirty years, no one would now think of catch- 

 ing one there unless by accident, The Hudson is said by 

 Col. McDonald, who gathered the fishery statistics of our 

 coast rivers for the census of 1880, to exceed all others, even 

 the famed Chesapeake, in its yield of shad, but its stock of 

 anglers' fishes have gone and the "noble Hudson," dwindled 

 to the dimensions of a creek in dry weather above Castlcton, 

 is now only inhabited by the despised sucker and a stray 

 perch or two which wanders about seeking food in the places 

 which once supported thousands of its kindred. Truly it 

 may be called the Ashless Hudson. 



Aard Vark or Whale? — A resident of Providence, R. I., 

 has been on a "trouting" excursion to Vermont, and in the 

 course of a relation of his adventures contributed to the 

 Providence Journal he tells us: "Two o'clock was to be the 

 hour for dinner, but it was after three before the party got 

 in, tired and hungry. The result of the catch was two 

 hundred and fifty trout, which we at once dressed and 

 cooked, and four thoroughly hungry men sat down and 

 spt into their empty stomachs two hundred and fifty 

 crispy, fried trout. Of course there were no heavy weights 

 among them, they were ordinary-sized brook trout." This 

 may be intended for plain prose, eighty ordinary-sized brook 

 trout per stomach, but is it not eloquently suggestive of the 

 infinitely big and the infinitely little? To find a parallel to 

 these trout, and stomachs it is necessary to leave the realms 

 of ordinary trout-hog achievements and seek among the 

 phenomena in tropic lands or ocean depths. In Southern 

 Africa the aard vark or earth hog, a nocturnal prowler, 

 preys on ants and "sweeps them into its mouth with rapid 

 movements of its long and extensile tongue." Then there is 

 the whale, which within its cavernous jaws engulfs mil- 

 lions of minute — or ordinary-sized — marine animals. And 

 again, there is the — but why thus enviously seek to belittle 

 the exploit of the Providence trouters? 



THE OFFICIAL TEAM REPORT. 



COL. HOWARD has made a report of his work as captain 

 of the American team of 1883, and in another column 

 it will be found at length. Col. Howard has been a careful 

 observer, and his report is a valuable one. It has many 

 suggestions in it which ought to be of real value in the 

 making up of future teams for similar representative work. 

 The defeat he attributes to the wretched conditions of light 

 and wind, which were such as to set at naught all previous 

 records which the members of the team had garnered up, 

 and made the match in certain of its stages little more than 

 a series of sighting shots, each one fired without any special 

 reference to the one preceding it. 



Col. Howard is not prepared to say that the foreign 

 weapons are any better than our own, and it does seem most 

 ridiculous to predicate any comparison of the weapons upon 

 the result of a single match, and while the American am- 

 munition question is so unsettled. Upon this matter of 

 ammunition Col. Howard has discovered that factory am- 

 munition is not satisfactory for fine work, and that it is 

 better to permit shooters to load their own cartridges, even 

 if they gain only an imaginary advantage. He is in favor 

 of a large reserve, and the keeping of the men in a state of 

 dependence upon their own judgment at least until near the 

 time for the final shoot. This may be a point upon which 



there could be a difference of opinion, for if men are to 



work together as a team, the longer they enjoy the benefit 



of joint practice the better. 

 The ex-Captain is very right in suggesting that in any 



future matches the terms be drawn up fully in every particu- 

 lar, and no part be left for government by the rules of this 



or that association. Both British and American National 



Rifle Associations show such an attitude for sudden changes 



in the rules, that it is very difficult to keep track of them, 



much less to interpret all the possible complications which 



may arise under them. If an international match is worth 



having at all, then it is surely worth the trouble of writing 



out a special set of instructions for the government of the 



contest. 

 That portion of the report which speaks of the courtesies ' be sent off every evening, for the greater part of a month, 



New Sporting Grounds. — Shadowy tales come to us of 

 new sporting grounds in the Galapagos Islands, in the Pa- 

 cific. To one of these islands, once settled by convicts, were 

 imported cattle, asses and bull-terriers. The island has long- 

 been deserted by human beings, but the live stock, reverting 

 to a wild condition, has increased and multiplied; and, more 

 than that, has assumed a savage nature, until now the vicious 

 cows, aggressive asses and ferocious bull-terriers are well 

 worthy the pursuit of blase tiger hunters and lion killers. If 

 the Galapagos are too far off, American sportsmen in search 

 of novelty may try the wild camels in Arizona, which have 

 become so numerous as to be a great nuisance to the settlers. 

 Some of the residents of Los Angeles are organizing a grand 

 camel hunt. It may be a very creditable undertaking, if the 

 beasts are really making trouble, but the sport, in it must be 

 exceedingly tenuous. For excitement, a milch cow hunt, or 

 even a Newport "fox hunt" would far surpass a camel hunt. 



Death op Prop. Phelps. — Among the season's deaths 

 resulting from the careless use of firearms, is that of Pro I'. 

 Stuart Phelps, of Smith College, Northampton, Mass. In 

 company with Rev. Newman Smyth and Mr. C. W. Farn- 

 ham, of New Haven, Conn., Prof. Phelps was at Chamber- 

 lain Lake, Me. Last week Wednesday he was putting his 

 gun into the canoe. The gun was heavily loaded, with the 

 muzzle toward him. It was discharged, the buckshot taking 

 effect in his head and killing him instantly. Prof. Phelps 

 was a son of Prof. Phelps, of Andover Seminary, and a 

 brother of Miss Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. His death is 

 widely lamented ; and it is to be hoped that the unhappy 

 result of the incautious haudling of a loaded gun may serve 

 as a warning to others. A loaded gun is no respecter of 

 persons. 



FOREST AND STREAM FABLES. 



? with great Happiness his 

 Nourishment therefrom, chanced to casta look li i n 



saw a Swallow swimming the Mid-air, and there taking Flies 80 skill- 

 fully and gracefully that his actions were beautiful to behold. 

 "Foolish Fellow!" quoth the Clam, "Why does he not coin 

 here with rae and take his Pleasure with eases" 

 Moral. 

 The Pleasure of the Swallow is mt (Re Pleasure "f the Clam, 



