Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 27, 1883. 



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CONTENTS. 



Sea am> River Fishing. 

 The Indian and the Trout. 

 The Fishless Hudson. 

 Reel Seats and Plates, 



ri.sin-ini.TDRR. 



Habits of the Salmon. 

 The Kennel. 



Rands. 



I''-'i 



mil i. 



__jlui Dog Show. 



Sellers and Bench Shows. 

 Kennel Notes. 



RlfLE AND TKAS SH 



Range ami. Geiiei 

 The •" 



rap. 



ised National Association. 



r Summer Outing. 



■ ■ National Rod end Reel As- 

 ociation. 



The Cutters on Lake Ontario. 

 i.'int.-is in a Heavy Gale. 

 Cruising at Sea. 

 Keels Before the Wind. 

 The Recent Toronto Races. 

 Sate (Jatboats. 



The American Shipbuilding Co. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



With its compact type and in its permanently enlarged form 

 of twenty-eight pages this journal fu rnishrs each leeeltahrryvr 

 amount of first-class matter relating to angling, shooting, the 

 kennel, and kindred subjects, than is contained in all other 

 American publications put together. 



PIGEON VERSUS PROJECTION. 

 HPHE wild pigeon must now be set down in its true char- 

 -*- acter of an unmitigated and conscienceless '•duffer." 

 The New York State Association for the Protection of Fish 

 and Game has been patiently scanning the horizon month 

 after month "uutil all the grain harvest is over;" its "pigeon 

 committee have been very watchful and have extensively 

 corresponded with all the principal netters and dealers of the 

 country," but the wild pigeon has failed to "come to time," 

 and, if we may be allowed to carry out the figure, the "mill" 

 has formally been declared "off." This is a predicament 

 altogether unexpected and unprovided for. Regularly with, 

 each recurring spring for the past fifteen or twenty years the 

 birds have very obligingly nested where they could be 

 secured in thousands by the professional netters and nest- 

 robbers hired by the Association, to be, after due course of 

 transportation, offered as a sacrifice to the peculiar game- 

 protecting proclivities of the Association members. Every 

 year the victim has "come up smiling" for another round. 

 but now — the pigeon, oh where is lie? 



There are offered two explanations, each plausible. The 

 first is that the pigeon has finally become tired of playing its 

 rather arduous role in this burlesque of protecting the game 

 and the fish, and has gone off somewhere to nest beyond the 

 reach of the hired nest-robbers afuremeutioned. The other 

 theory is— on the principle that one added and two sub- 

 tracted will, if kept up long enough, eventually exterminate 

 even a pigeon flock— that the bird has failed in the unequal 

 strife to maintain itself against the destruction wrought by 

 the netters. In other words, the reason why the crates of 

 the managers at Niagara Falls this year are not full is that 

 there are no pigeons to fill them. Each of these explana- 

 tions is an un welcome one from a wholesale State tourna- 

 ment managers' point of view; the latter is unpleasant also 

 to the field sportsman. There are thousands of sportsmen 

 in America— old men and young men, dwellers in cities and 

 "farmers' boys" — who have watched with keenest regret and 



ill-suppressed indignation the unholy war of extermination 

 so relentlessly waged against this beautiful bird. 



The next convention of the New York State Association 

 for the Protection of Fish and Game, therefore, will be held 

 without the usual slaughter of pigeons. In the circular an- 

 nouncing that fact (printed on another page), the president 

 of the Association says: "It remains now to be seen whether 

 a meeting of the Association will bo so largely attended. The 

 interests remain the same— that of the protection of fish and 

 game." This is simply and purely cant, and it is the kinr. 

 if cant that does fish and game protection no good. The 

 interest manifested by the Association in any practicable, or 

 profitable efforts toward game and fish protection during the 

 past six years has been as mythical as those famous wild 

 liliesof the valley, which the president of the society once re- 

 ported finding in his spring-time tramps after game. 11 is 

 to just this cant, and this pretense of the Association of being 

 what it is not, that objection has repeatedly been urged in 

 these columns. It is the spectacle of a society, which in 

 name and professions poses before the public as working 

 for game protection, and yet belies its name and profes- 

 sions by annually leaguing itself with professional pot-hunters 

 and game-butchers of the lowest class, abetting, aiding and 

 arding them in their nefarious wholesale destruction of 

 breed iug birds— it is this spectacle that has so impressed 

 sportsmen that they fully understand this cant about the 



interests remaining the same." 



If, however,now that it has exhausted— temporarily at least 

 —the supply of wild pigeons,the New York State Association 

 for the Protection of Fish and Game will take up in earnest 

 some practical work forthe present or future benefit of the 

 shooting or fishing community, it will gain large accessions 

 to its membership, and enlist the aid of many allies, ready and 



ger to assist in the effort. The society will gain in strength, 

 dignity and influence, three qualities which are now per- 

 ceptibly on the wane. There is an abundant field of syste- 

 matic and sustained work that belongs to the Association, 

 but to which it appears to have been blinded by the glare of 

 its tournament prizes. 



The Association has in its possession some very valuable 

 trophies. If the rules governing the competitions for these 

 prizes can be so amended as to substitute inanimate objects 

 for the live birds, the annual tournaments of the Association 

 will call out a larger gathering of crack shots to compete in 

 (hem than now attend the meeting. The history of trap- 

 shooting elsewhere is an ample proof of this. In New 

 England there is far more trap shooting now than there was 

 before the use of live birds w T as forbidden by law. 



This mention of the New England laws against trap-shoot- 

 ing live birds suggests a consideration which may be deemed 

 worthy of attention. There is, as we have said repeatedly, 

 a vast difference in the way the public looks upon the 

 private trap-shoots of individuals and clubs and the attitude 

 of this same public toward the wholesale slaughters at State 

 tournaments. If the individuals aiul clubs are to long main- 

 tain the right to their private matches, the huge State tourna- 

 ments must not annually invite public attention to the trap- 

 shooting of live birds. The Coney Island tournament did 

 more to arouse popular feeling against the practice than all 

 the individual and club matches held before or since. 

 Verbum sap. 



HEIRLOOMS. 

 \7[7"E saw a fishiug rod the other day which, though not 

 * ' unusually long, stretched out over one hundred years. 

 It was a bit of home-made work. The several pieces were 

 relics, to which attached associations. The rod was much 

 more highly valued by its possessor than a costly one would 

 have been. The butt piece was of ash; it came from the 

 tongue of one of those old-fashioned Sunday wagons in 

 which Long Islanders used to ride to church years ago. The 

 rod belongs to Mr. Miles Wood, of Brooklyn, and the wagon 

 was owned by one of the founders of St. George's Church, 

 in Hempstead, L. 1. 



The second piece of the rod is of black pepper cane, 

 brought from the island of Java iu 1864, by a brother. 

 The third piece is of ash, and this came from the whiffle- 

 tree of another one of the old Long Island Sunday-go-io- 

 meeting wagons, the property of Samuel Carman, whose 

 family were the first white people born on Long island. 

 Taken altogether, the rod is not one for Sunday fishing, and 

 a further incentive to straight walkiug is found in the 

 hunting knife belonging to the same kit, for the handle of 

 this knife is made from the piece of mahogany that foi metl 

 the railing of I he family pew in St. Aun's Church, Brook- 

 lyn, built in 1819 and torn down in 1880. 

 The heirlooms which Mr. Woods exhibits with the most 



pride are a set of snipe decoys, which have weathered the 

 storms of successive seasons since 1800. They were made 

 in that year by the grandfather of the present owner, and 

 have been handed down from father to son. The dummy 

 birds are of white cedar, in an excellent state of preserva- 

 tion; they are wise old decoys, and have not been tutored by 

 three generations of sportsmen in vain. With now and then 

 a fresh coat of paint they will do for three generations more. 

 The inventory of this sportsman's kit is concluded with 

 the mention of a gun, also an heirloom, which was one of 

 the first double-barreled guns brought to America. Origin- 

 ally a flint lock, and afterward a percussion cap, it is now 

 a breechloader, and the good work it performs is suflicient 

 evidence that in those days the gunmakers put honest 

 material into their guns. 



WILD RICE AND WILD CELERY. 

 \\fJLD rice (Zimnia aquatica) is an annual plant, be. 



' * longing to the grass family. It grows in great abun- 

 nance in the Northwestern States, and in some portions of 

 Canada, being also found in favorable localities in the New 

 England and Middle States and in Virginia. Further south 

 it gives way to another variety, the Zizania miliacm, which 

 is of perennial growth, and distinguished from the aquatica 

 by the ovate grain. The wild rice has various other local 

 names, among them Indian rice, Canadian rice, wild oats 

 and water oats. 



The wild rice i3 a favorite food of water birds, mallards, 

 black ducks, teal, wood ducks, and the Carolina rail. Dur- 

 ing the last few years much attention has been given to the 

 introduction and propagation of the rice into the waters of 

 different portions of the United States, to serve as an attrac- 

 tion for the wildfowl, the final object being "to improve the 

 shooting." Our columns have contained many reports, good, 

 bad and indifferent, of the attempts at wild rice culture. 

 Some months ago we made extended inquiries of those who 

 had engaged in the sowing of wild rice. The replies, which 

 covered a very wide country, indicated that in the majority 

 of instances the efforts had been unsuccessful. The failures 

 were in many cases easily explained by the parsimony with 

 which the seed had been sown. In other localities, 

 the rice had not grown, because the soil was 

 not adapted to it. The familiar principle that certain 

 soils are best fitted for the production of particular crops as 

 wheat, oats, etc., is applicable to wild rice. It is not so 

 much a condition of climate as of soil that determines the 

 success of wdld rice culture. Where the planting has been 

 successful the promoters have been rewarded with the 

 knowledge that they have in some measure added to the food 

 supply for the water fowl, whose increase, they so much 

 desire. Among the obstacles to the introduction of this 

 plant, are the musk rats, which are extremely fond of its 

 leaves, devouring them as fast as they appear above water, 

 thus preventing the germination. Beer, also, in the same 

 manner impede its increase, and some kinds of fish feed on its 

 seed. 



We have from time to time chronicled several such favor- 

 able resulfcs-of wild rice planting, where the enterprise of the 

 individual or club has actually succeeded in attracting the 

 fowl to waters which had for years been barren of all shoot- 

 ing. 



Wild rice was introduced into Massachusetts at a compar- 

 atively recent date. It is not mentioned among the list of 

 plants of that State, published by direction of the Legislature 

 in 1813, and is only spoken of as being very rare in a similar list 

 published in 1835. But at and near Say brook, in Connecti- 

 cut, it has grown in great abundance from a very early 

 period, where, as elsewhere in New England and the Middle 

 States, it is called "wild oats." Recent efforts to propagate 

 the rice in Massachusetts have not proved generally success- 

 ful, but a notable exception to this statement is the work of 

 a few of the sportsmen of Springfield. Five years ago they 

 planted wild rice along the banks of the Connecticut Paver, 

 south of that city, and to-day there arc many acres covered 

 each season by a luxuriant growth of the rice. The plant 

 now not only furnishes abundant food to the wildfowl, but 

 serves largely as pasturage for the cattle of the riparian 

 farmers. 



The soil in which this rice has thrived so well is clayey, 

 and bottom of that character would appear to be the must 

 suitable for wild rice culture. The climate of the Eastern 

 States is right for the growth of the rice; where the soil is 

 right, the seed carefully planted, and the wild garden 

 well under way, the rice will in ice care of itself, and wild- 

 fowl will soon find out the new feeding grounds and resort 

 to them. There are very many large tracts of land now hav- 

 ing no attraction for water birds, which might be improved 



