248 



FOREST AND STREAMS 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 



BsvroTBD to Field and Aquatic Sports, Practical Natural History, 

 Fi*m ^V^ture, the Protection op Game, Preservation op Forests, 

 A2TD the Inculcation in Men and Women op a healthy interest 

 W Out-door Recreation and Study : 



PUBLISHED BY 



&0t$zt mid gtrtmq §uhltehittg §otn$m{$ t 



-AT 



17 CHATHAM STBEET, (CITY HALL SQUARE) NEW YORK, 



[Post Oppice Box 2832.1 



127 SOUTH THIRD STREET, PHILADELPHIA. 



Terms, Five Dollars a Year, Strictly in Advance. 



A discount of twenty per cent, ailowed for five copies and upwards. 



Advertising Kates. 

 In regular advertising columns, nonpareil type, 12 lines to the inch, 25 

 Cents per line. Advertisements on outside page, 40 cents per line. Reading 

 notices, 50 cents per line. Advertisements in double column 25 per cent, 

 extra. Where advertisements are inserted over 1 month, a discount of 

 10 per cent, will he made; over three months, 20 per cent; over six 

 Sionths, 30 per cent. 



NEW YORK, THUB8BAY, NOVEMBER 18,1875. 



i . 



To Correspondents. 



— , — * 



All communications whatever, whether relating to business or literary 

 Correspondence, must be addressed to The Forest and Stream Pub- 

 lishing Company. Personal or private letters of course excepted. 



All communications intended for publication must be accompanied with 

 real name, as a guaranty of good faith. Names will not be published if 

 Objection be made. No anonymous contributions will be regarded. 



Articles relating to any topic within the scope of this paper are solicited. 



We cannot promise to return rejected manuscripts. 



Secretaries of Clubs and Associations are urged to favor us with brief 

 notes of their movements and transactions, as it is the aim of this paper 

 to become a medium of useful and reliable information between gentle- 

 men sportsmen from one end of the country to the other ; and they will 

 ftnd our columns a desirable medium for advertising announcements. 



The Publishers of Eorest and Stream aim to merit and secure the 

 patronage and countenance of that portion of the community whose re- 

 fined intelligence enables them to properly appreciate and enjoy all that 

 s beautiful in Nature. It will pander to no depraved tastes, nor pervert 

 the legitimate sports of land and water to those base uses which always 

 tend to make them unpopular with the virtuous and good. No advertise- 

 ment or business notice of an immoral character will be received on any 

 terms ; and nothing will be admitted to any department of the paper that 

 may not be read with propriety in the home circle. 



We cannot be responsible for the dereliction of the mail service, if 

 money remitted to us is lost. 



Advertisements should be sent in by Saturday of each week, if possible. 



CHARLES HALLOCR, Editor. 



WILLIAM C. HARRIS, Business Manager. 



TRESPASS. 



THANKSGIVING. 



THE present issue of our paper goes to its many 

 friends on an auspicious day, and adds, we trust, 

 its mite towards the attractions and enjoyments of the fes- 

 tive occasion. Our daily contemporaries will so fully do 

 the historical th*t we refrain from all allusions to the Pil- 

 grim Fathers, pumpkin pies, or even roast turkey. Suffice 

 it to say that the custom which originated in New England 

 has now become truly national, and from Maine to Geor- 

 gia, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, the occasion will be 

 observed, families will be re-united, and general peace and 

 good will prevail. "May good digestion wait on appetite 



and health on both." 



■»»» ■ — 



The Centennial.— We have already referred to the 

 preparations in progress at the Smithsonian for making a 

 satisfactory display of the animal and fishery resources of 

 the United States at the Centennial. Specimens are con- 

 tinually arriving at the Institution from all parts of the 

 country to be suitably prepared for the purpose. Some 

 idea of the magnitude of this work may be gathered from 

 the fact that almost on the same day were received in the 

 flesh a white whale and ground shark from the Gulf of 

 St. Lawrence, each about fifteen feet in length; a noble elk 

 with a superb pair of antlers, from Cheyenne; a seal weigh- 

 ing three hundred pounds, from Boston, and a considerable 

 number of fishes from New York, contributed by Mr. 

 Blackford, besides numerous minor articles . 

 ***** — — ~ 



Choke Bobes.— We shall publish next week an interest- 

 ing article by Mr Thomas A. Logan ("Gloan") on choke 

 bores. Mr. Logan writes: "It is time that this efiort to 

 make a gun put its whole load into a saucer, was checked. 



* * You are doing good work with the paper, and 

 you have— more and probably greater than you dream of 

 —the good wishes and God- speed of the gentlemen of the 



-<^->- 



— Visitors to Florida who dread the sickness of a sea 

 voyage can avail themselves of the very liberal excursion 

 tickets to Jacksonville, Fla., and return, now being issued 

 by the Pennsylvania Railroad. These tickets are good un- 

 til May 31st, 1876, and are sold very low. For sale at all 

 ticket offices of the company. 



g^r u CAMF s Lra<E in Florida" is now ready for distribu- 

 tion. The first e&tion nearly exhausted. See advertise- 



IT is an unfortunate circumstance that our laws of tres- 

 pass in contiguous States are as much at variance as 

 the laws governing close seasons in the same localities, and 

 uniform regulations are as much to be desired in the one 

 instance as in the other. In New York, for instance, the 

 land owner is compelled to post nodces of specified dimen- 

 sions in conspicuous positions, to protect his premises from 

 trespass and to preserve the game thereon for his own pur- 

 poses. In New Jersey the mere going upon land with a 

 gun constitutes trespass and renders the trespasser liable to 

 a fine; while in Pennsylvania a notice published in a local 

 paper is all sufficient, and the luckless stranger may at any 

 moment be rendering himself liable to a fine and perhaps 

 the confiscation of his gun . 



Of course it is to be presumed that the sportsman visit- 

 ing a State other than liis own, will place himself under 

 the guidance of some one well posted as to the locality, 

 but a general law such as that in force in this State, would, 

 while amply protecting the farmer, also save innocent per- 

 sons from much annoyance and mortification. Numerous 

 instances have been reported to us where the fines have 

 been inflicted apparently solely for the gratification of 

 petty malice, or for the sake of pocketing a few wretch- 

 edly earned dollars. 



Where farmers are themselves sportsmen and desire to 

 preserve their game for their own shooting, not an atom of 

 fault can be found with them ; but such as possess the 

 sporting instinct themselves are generally the first to grant 

 the required permissions, and the refusers ar e frequently 

 curmudgeons and misers. In the neighborhood of large 

 cities, where every hoodlum who can muster a gun starts 

 on a crusade after the luckless robins or bluejays, we can 

 sympathize with the farmer, who takes the most vigorous 

 measures for protecting his property, since, to the average 

 robin killer, when out of luck, a good fat fowl offers 

 a temptation scarcely to be resisted; but the genuine sports- 

 man, when in game districts, has the right to expect the 

 courtesy of a notice to leave before either being summar- 

 ily ejected or dragged before a country magistrate. Unless 

 one has a friend in the neighborhood it is really difficult at 

 the present day to find a spot within easy distance of the 

 city where it is safe to gun, without a fair prospect of 

 meeting with the unpleasant results before mentioned; and 

 a principal cause which has led to this result is the fact 

 that farmers have found it exceedingly profitable to snare 

 their quail and grouse and ship them with their other home 

 products to the nearest market. 



York and Lancaster counties, in Pennsylvania, must be 

 at the same time the paradise and purgatory of sportsmen, 

 as a correspondent writing from Columbia, in the latter 

 county, states that, while game is very abundant, the farm- 

 ers, most of whom are well to do, strictly preserve the 

 birds for trapping and sale in the York and Lancaster mar- 

 kets; and he mentions as one among many similar occur- 

 rences how oneKeeler had a man arrested for merely cross- 

 ing his premises, although he had not fired a gun, and 

 mulcted him to the extent of seven dollars and fifty cents. 

 The same correspondent, however, relates another case, 

 where the tables were turned, and the would-be gun seizer 

 was soundly thrashed. All this unpleasantness might be 

 avoided, if notices — such as one sees on Long Island, for 

 instance — were posted in conspicuous places. Nor can we 

 blame the farmer so much, when he is actuated by other 

 than such selfish and even lawless motives as snaring and 

 trapping. Many Western land owners are awakening to 

 the fact that their prairie chickens are great destroyers of 

 grasshoppers and noxious insects, and whether from this 

 or other causes are becoming close preservers. A corres- 

 pondent writes us from Lawrence, Kan., very pertinently 

 on this subject as follows :— 



"The laws of this State prohibit shooting on anyone's 

 preserves without the consent of the owner. While this 

 does not so much affect grouse shooting early in the sea- 

 son when the birds are principally on the prairies, it does 

 give a great deal of trouble later, when they are on stubble 

 or in the corn, and almost results in putting a stop to quail 

 shooting entirely. Owing to our visitations of grasshop- 

 pers last Fall and Spring, a large number of our farmers 

 are taking strong grounds against allowing any birds to be 

 killed on their premises; so much so that in some sections 

 it almost amounts to total prohibition. 1 mention this that 

 parties coming here from the East to shoot may be fore- 

 warned, and be led to shape their course accordingly. In 

 some localities permission to shoot is cheerfully accorded 

 to gentlemen sportsmen, if they will take the trouble to 

 ask for such favors; but very often either permission is re- 

 fused entirely, or parties not making the request are sum 

 marily ordered off the premises. There is less trouble on 

 this score in the southern and southwestern parts of the 

 State, than in this and the other older settled portions, but 

 there is enough anywhere." 



Assuming that the question of protection to crops by 

 game birds is really being agitated at the West, it may be 

 interesting to know that in England the value of the pheas- 

 ant to agriculturists is being appreciated. It is stated that 

 upwards of twelve hundred wire worms have been taken 

 from the crop of a hen pheasant, and if this were but a 

 single meal, what must the total for the season amount to? 

 Indeed it has been complained that in some districts they 

 have entirely extirpated the grasshoppers. We find it sta- 

 ted in an exchange that a farmer's boy in Phio, observing 

 a flock of quails in his father's cornfield, and finding that 

 they were pursuing a very regular course of foraging, first 

 up one series of rows and then down the next, feared that 

 that they were destroying the corn, and fired into them. 

 But one bird was killed, and upon opening this one he 

 found in its Graw one cut- worm, twenty-one viae bugs and 



about one hundred chinch bugs— but not one grain of 

 corn. 



Before leaving this subject we should like to call atten- 

 tion to another kind of trespass, far worse than any unau- 

 thorized shooting over a farmer's land. We allude to the 

 indiscriminate and wanton destruction of game by stran- 

 gers in localities where the residents have been trying to 

 preserve and increase the number of their birds. The Nor- 

 folk Virginian claims that recently a party from New York 

 camped near Suffolk, and were slaughtering quails whole- 

 sale for shipment to and sale in this city, shooting over relays 

 of dogs, and fairly exterminating the birds. We join with 

 our contemporary in calling upon the county supervisors 

 to put a stop to this slaughter. To make the matter worse 

 the heavy rains destroyed nearly all the first broods, and 

 the others are scarcely half grown. For our part, we should 

 not regret a law which would limit the killing of birds by 

 one person to a certain number on each day. 

 . ♦>» > — ■ 



AMERICAN ARMS ABROAD. 



THERE are two reasons why such large quantities of 

 arms for military purposes are manufactured in this 

 country for foreign powers. Of course, the principal rea- 

 son is the paramount excellence of the arm, its cheapness, 

 and the facility with which it can be produced. The sec- 

 ond cause — a minor one, it is true — nevertheless exerts a 

 certain influence. The United States, free from all entang- 

 ling alliances, can take contracts for arms with any foreign 

 government. In times past, a New England arms com- 

 pany has been known to manufacture, at the same armory, 

 pistols and carbines, identical in form and pattern, to be 

 used by two belligerent powers then in active strife. It 

 has been stated, and with reason, that warlike move- 

 ments, likely to occur thousands of miles away from us, 

 are first heralded in Maiden Lane or on Broadway before 

 they are even rumored abroad. The purchase of a few 

 thousand stand of arms from the Remingtons, Winches- 

 ters, Sharps, Colts, Whitneys, or Peabodys, ordered in a 

 quiet way by some foreign purchaser, usually portends 

 the breaking of the peace somewhere. In fact, it is by no 

 means out of the way to assert that to-day, wherever the 

 crack of the rifle is heard, no matter in what part of the 

 world it is fired, whether in sport or in anger, to lay low 

 the bounding deer or to slay one's fellow-man, some bullet 

 chambered in an American breech loader, and speeding 

 from an American barrel, flies on its errand of death. 



There are some novel points which are now apparent 

 when we consider this important subject of arm manufac- 

 turing in the United States. In the late Rhode Island con- 

 test at the What Cheer Range, our correspondent took spe- 

 cial notice of the Peabody and Martini rifle, used there in 

 public competition for the first time, and their performance 

 was highly commended. Here we have a peculiar phase 

 of American arm production. A foreign gun was taken 

 in this case, improved upon, turned out in large quantity, 

 and its manufacture absolutely diverted from England to 

 America. This special arm, now being made in Providence 

 for the Turkish goveanment, may be pointed some day by 

 the soldiers of the Ottoman Empire against Russia or the 

 Khedive. It was curious to notice that quite lately, on the 

 occasion of a visit of a gallant English admiral to New- 

 port, R. L, he was presented with an elegant Peabodyand 

 Martini rifle, made in Providence. This was indeed a case 

 of sending coals to Newcastle. 



France, Spain, Egypt, Denmark, Turkey, Sweden, 

 Greece, China, Japan, Russia, and all South America buy 

 our arms. It may be safely stated that for the last fifteen 

 years there never has been a minute when American tools, 

 with American brains and hands to manage them, have 

 not been employed in manufacturing arms for other coun- 

 tries. 



In a comprehensive article on this subject, published in 

 the New York Commercial Bulletin, we find it stated that 

 "the first large contract tor American small arms by a for- 

 eign power was made in September of 1870 with the Pro 

 visional government of France, which negotiated with Mr. 

 S. Remington, the head of a private armory in Ilion, in 

 our own State, for 50,000 stand of the approved calibre of 

 11-millimetres, or 0.43 of an inch. Before the lot was 

 completed a second contract for 70,000 stand of arms was 

 awarded, while occasional purchases were made of smaller 

 lots. The aggregate of service rifles manufacturned and 

 shipped to France by the Remington Company alone since 

 the date mentioned reaches 154,120. To this may be added 

 18,777 carbines and 40,850 army revolvers, making a total 

 of arms furnished to France by the Remingtons of 214,- 

 247." Prior to this, however, we are cognizant of the fact 

 that Colt carried out a large contract for arms for both the 

 English and Russian governments during the Crimean war. 

 Spain, with her constant troubles at home and abroad, is & 

 heavy purchaser of arms, and 250,000 breech loaders have 

 just been delivered to her, and she is likely to want more. 

 The Khedive, seeing the possible dismemberment of the 

 Turkish power, is well stocked with American small arms 

 and artillery, and has always a contract in hand. The© 

 are some cases, as in Denmark and Sweden, where Ameri- 

 can patents for arms have been purchased, and a royalty IP 

 paid for the production of such weapons when made Ji 

 foreign arsenals. 



But it is not in arms alone that we lay a heavy contribu- 

 tion on other countries. The cost of ammunition is an 

 important item which has to be added. It is pretty certain 

 that, taking the average of years, ths expense of ammuni- 

 tion per annum will about equal the first cost of the arn 

 Th© Winchester, Remington, m d Metallic Cartridge Com* 



