184 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 

 D mo T ^? ToFn5LI> and Aquatic Spobts, Practical Natural History, 



riSHOOLTUBB, THE PROTECTION OP GakE,PbESEBVATION OP FORESTS, 

 At,I> THE INCULCATION IN MEN AND WOMEN OP A HEALTHY INTEREST 

 IN OUT-DOOB RECREATION AND STUDY : 



PUBLISHED BY 



4$m*%t mi ^trtmi §nhlmhin% g}amp*w, 



11 CHATHAM STREET, (CITY HALL SQUARE) NEW YORK, 



[Post Oppice Box 2832.] 



» 



Terma, Four Dollars a Year, Strictly In Advance. 



■ ■ » 



Twenty-five per cent, off for Clubs of Three or more. 



SHOOTING IN ENGLAND. 



Advertising Rates. 



Inside pages, nonpareil type, 20 cents per line: outside page, 30 cents. 

 Special rates for three, sis, and twelve months. Notices in editorial 

 columns, 50 cents per line. 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1876. 



To Correspondents. 

 ♦ ■■ 



All communications whatever, whether relating to Duslness 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 Names will not be published if 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 regaraed. 



Articles relating to any topic within Che 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 frou one end of the country to the other ; and they will 

 And our columns a wuslrable medium for advertising announcements. 



The Publishers of Forest 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 

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

 the legitimate Bports 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. 



Ad^eHipp.mentp abonld be sent in by Saturday of each week, If possible. 



83F" Trade supplied by American News Company. 

 CHARLES HALLOCR, 



Editor and Business Manager. 



CALENDAR OF EVENTS FOR THE COM- 

 ING WEEK. 



Thursday, October 26th.- -Racing: Baltimore, Md. Trotting: Wafh- 

 ington. D. C ; Ritter?ville, Pa.: Fleetwood Park, N. Y. American Rifle 

 Association meeting. Glen Drake. Base BhII: Our Boys vs. Crystal, at 

 Brooklyn; Qiickstep vs. Resolute, at Brooklyn. 



Friday, October 2~tti.--R>cing: Baltimore, Md. Trotting: Ritters- 

 ville, Pa.; Fleetwood Park, N. Y. 



Saturday. October 28th.— Trotting: Fleetwood Park, N. Y. Rifle: 

 Marksman's badare, 7th Regiment shells and Sharpes prize atCreedmoor; 

 Competition for T Steele & Son cnp at Hartford. Fall practice of the 

 Coaching Club, N. Y. S. Base Ball: Witoka vs. Osceola, at Brooklyn, N. 

 Y.: Arlington vs. Eagle, at Slapleton Flats, S. I.; Quickstep vs. Fly- 

 away, at Brooklyn. 



Tuesday, October 31st.— Annual meetiner Yirsinia Riding Club, 

 Richmond. R'fle: Marksman's Badge, Con-in's Gnllery. 



Wednesday, November 1st.— Trotting: Hartford, Conn. 



Mr Greener's New Wohk. — We have received many 

 inquiries as to when Mr. Greener's new work would ap- 

 pear. We are happy to announce that. it. is now out, andean 

 be had of Messrs. Cassell, Pelter & Galpin, No. 596 Broad- 

 way; the price is $3 50. The title of the book is "Choke 

 Bore Gun3, and How to L..>ad for all Kinds of Game." 

 From a hurried glance through the pages we judge it to 

 be comprehensive and valuable. A review will appear in 

 our next issue. We can also supply the book from 

 this office. 



An Error Corrected. — By a process of what Mr. 

 Richard Grant White would term "heterophemy" we stat- 

 ed in our last issue that Mr. B. DeForrest was the victim 

 of a gunning accident in Connecticut. The gentleman 

 whose misfortune we intended to record was Mr. Ernest 

 Staples, and the mistake arose from the fact that our in- 

 formant mentioned in the same connection Mr. DeForrest's 

 trip to Minnesota, upon which he is at present absent. The 

 events became mixed in our mind, and hence the error. 



We regret to announce that Dr. Thebaud died at 4 a.m., 

 on the 20th. 



A Game Supper. — We acknowledge with thanks an in- 

 vitation to attend the annual game supper of the Salisbury 

 (Connecticut) Bird and Fish Protection Society, held at 

 Lakeville on Saturday last. But alas! cares and onerous 

 duties compelled us to forgo the pleasure, and the tooth- 

 some quail and succulent woodcock "passed by with 

 impunity" as far as we were concerned. Mr. C. S. Kelsey 

 ia President of this flourishing society. 



. ^ o»» — 



—If your feet blister in walking, soap you boots inside. 



THE Maharajah Duleep Singh is one of those Indian 

 princes who having surrendered his authority and 

 revenues to the British Government and accepted in lieu 

 a princely income, has settled down to the life of a country 

 gentleman in England. A very fine and courteous gentle- 

 man he is, too, with a penchant for outdoor sports, which 

 is more characteristic of his adopted country than it is 

 oriental. But the Maharajah, being a prince, must do 

 things in princely style, and in this respect ranks with the 

 most advanced of advanced British sportsmen. His es- 

 tate of Elvedon Hall is noted as a game preserve, and it 

 is reported that during the first fortnight in September he 

 killed in nine days 2,350 partridges to his own gun, or 

 rather guns, for it must have required more than one, par- 

 ticularly on one memorable day, when no less than 780 

 birds were, according to the Field, brought to bag. Now, 

 if the Maharajah is a moderately early riser, and did not 

 linger too long over tiffin, he may have shot incessantly 

 for eight hours, or four hundred and eighty minutes, which 

 would give him the handsome average of a little over a 

 bird and a half a minute. Western sportsmen who con- 

 sider their bag of rifty or sixty prairie chickens a day some- 

 thing remarkable, or even our friend of the "Snipery" in 

 Louisiana, who reports killing two hundred or more snipe 

 per diem, will hereafter consider their bags as insignificant. 

 But let us see how the Maharajah accomplishes this won 

 derful shooting, aside from the question cf endurance, 

 which we admit is inexplicable. The partridges are all 

 hand-reared, their eggs beiiig placed under common fowls, 

 and the young birds afterwards carefully reared and pro- 

 tected. One of those irrepressible Britains who invaiiably 

 want to get at bottom facts, and are continually writing 

 letters to the Times over the signature of "Paterfamilias," 

 etc., asks the Field where all the eggs required to produce 

 this prodigious number of hand-reared birds come from. 

 An inquiry which carries with it an insinuation thit an 

 immense number of nests must have been robbed to pro- 

 cure them. The noble sportsman would, no doubt, repel 

 with scorn any such insinuation, but the fact remains to be 

 cleared up. The birds were killed by the battue or drive, 

 a method which not only reduces the sport to mere slaughter, 

 but as eggs must be procured at any cost to supply the bird j 

 required on an aristocratic estate, offers inducements to 

 poaching. Pheasants are reared and killed in the same 

 manner, and the mode is thus described in an English 

 paper : 



" Battue shooting, if the truth is to be told, differs very 

 little indeed from netting a field. There are points in tire 

 periphery of the covert at which the pheasant always 

 breaks. At one of these so-called 'warm corners' the guns 

 are posted, and meantime the beaters enter the covert trom 

 the opposite side, and — to use the expression applied by 

 Herodotus to the massacres committed in Samos by the 

 Persians — 'net' it. The terrified birds cannot turn back 

 on the line of Hie beaters. Slowly and inch by inch they 

 are driven toward the fatal corner. As they break forth, 

 the earliest and boldest are picked out and brought down, 

 and at first the shooting is fair enough. The great bulk of 

 the birds, however, are headed back by the sound of the 

 uuns, and hang on the edge of the cover until the beaters 

 are within a yard or two of them. Then, in their last 

 despair, they dash forward en masse, and for a minute or 

 two comes a rush of pheasants thick enough almost to 

 darken the air. There is no need to aim. The sportsman 

 loads and fires and loads and fires, or — if he be en grand 

 seigneur — has attendant keepers to load for him; and when 

 the brief ten or twenty minutes over the bag is reckoned. 

 'Sport,' in the true acceptation of the term, this kind of 

 shooting can hardly be termed — unless, indeed, it be sport 

 to gather barn-dooi fowl together by scattering barley, and 

 then to bring a mitrailleuse to bear on them." 



Of course dogs aie useless in such shooting, and the 

 breeding of them is discouraged. Not only is the battue 

 adopted by the country gentleman who wishes to show as 

 good head of game as his neighbor, but it is being adopted 

 in grouse shooting on the moors. Whether the same 

 amount of enjoyment is to be derived from it as from the 

 old mode of shooting over dogs is a question any sports- 

 man can answer for himself. There are none in this coun- 

 try who would not be happier when evening came with 

 their fifteen or twenty quail, half a dozen woodcock, and, 

 perhaps, two or three brace of ruffed grouse, earned by 

 hard work and straight shooting, than the Maharajah with 

 his seven hundred head of hand bred partridges. 



Referring to this enormous slaughter, the Mews says: — 



"it must be pleasant for the sportsman to wander among 

 his hen-coops on a fine spring morning, and watch the hens 

 hitting on the partridge eggs which are soon to produce 

 cheepers for his ennobling amusement. Still one cannot 

 help wishing that the same sort of adventure might now 

 and then befall the Maharajah, as once occurred to an 

 English preserver. This gentleman's keeper had reared 

 some hundred pheasants, and the day came for those phea- 

 sants to die. But the covers were beaten in vain, only a 

 chance wild bird was found, and that got away untouched. 

 When the gallant sportsmen nad gone home disgusted after 

 their bloodless foray, the keeper's bride, a young and tender- 

 hearted woman, opened her bed room door and let the 

 birds forth in safety. She had called in the poor creatures 

 that she was uted to feed, which knew and loved her, and 

 had 'hidden them by fifties,' as Obadiah once concealed 

 the prophets. Women will never understand sport, and 

 we trust it may be long before men understand it in the 

 form which the Maharajah pursues." 



•»•*» 



— It has been agreed by the Commissioners of Fairmount 

 Park to allow the main Exhibition building at Puiiadel- 

 phia to remain in the park. 



— ; «>»«» — -— 



— Fur dealers from the Upper Ottawa report the supply 

 of furs plentif ulj but prices very low. 



PROTECTING WILD PIGEONS. 



A FEW weeks since we printed an article pointing to 

 the fact that unless wild pigeons were afforded some 

 measure of protection they would soon be exterminated 

 and the trap-shooter be deprived of the means of pursuing 

 his sport. Not only the trap-shooter, however, would be 

 the sufferer, but the sportsman, who prefers to shoot his 

 pigeons au natural. Our contemporary, the Rod and Gun 

 in reviewing our article considers that we are in error in 

 attributing the destruction of wild pigeons to trap, 

 shooting, and is of the opinion that "if among the scores 

 of millions of wild birds a few thousands have been used 

 for the trap, it would hardily have affected the whole 

 mass." We think our contemporary is in error. His "few 

 thousands" should have read "hundreds of thousands an- 

 nually." For we believe that not less than a million birds 

 are netted for trap shooting each year. At the last Slate 

 Sportsman's Convention held in this> State, 12,000 birds 

 were trapped, and our neighbor must remember how they 

 were procured; how the Convention was postponed from 

 week t© week, until the news came from away up in 

 Northern Michigan that the birds had been found and net- 

 ted. It is also to be remembered that these birds are netted 

 when on their nests, when in the very act of reproducing 

 their species. Now we are not opposed to trap-shooting. 

 We think that when properly conducted, and in modera- 

 tion, it is a very proper amusement for gentlemen during 

 the non-shooting season, and the means of bringing about 

 much good feeling and jollity among sportsmen. But we 

 do think that if wild birds aie necessary for its prosecuiion 

 that measures should be taken for procuring tho ; e 

 birds at some other than the breeding season. What would 

 be thought of the man who would throw a net over a hen 

 quail while on her nest and then shoot her out of a trap? 

 And yet no argument can be advanced why a wild pigeon 

 is not just as much entitled to protection as a quail. Trap 

 shooters will discover too late that they have overdone the 

 thing. We mentioned that 12,000 birds were netted for the 

 last State Convention . At the same time there were 7,000 

 in the coops of the Syracuse clubs to be shot a week or 

 two later. When we take into account ail the clubs, large 

 and small, we are well within the limit when we say that 

 one hundred thousand wild pigeons are annually shot from 

 traps in this State. There are at times as many as 

 fifteen or twenty thousand birds in the Chicago coops alone. 

 Our estimate of one million birds netted annually in the 

 United States is well within the limit. 



Our contemporary thinks that the "greatest destruction is 

 carried on for the market," and considers that this is the ulti- 

 mate destination of all trap-killed birds. Wit h the latter 

 proposition we agree, and it is one of the redeeming fea- 

 tures of trap-shooting, that no waste follows the slaughtei; 

 but that the birds are taken from their nests and their 

 necks wrung for the market, at lea^t to any great extent, we 

 do not believe. The quantity ©f wild pigeons exposed for 

 sale in our markets will not warrant the assertion. While 

 we do not agree with the writer of the following letter in his 

 wholesale denunciation of the trap-shooter, we print it as 

 representing the sentiments of a large class of people who 

 look with dismay upon the near and utter annihiianon of 

 one of our most beautiful wild birds: — 



POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y. 



Editor Forest and Stream:— 



Yon deserve the thanks of every man, woman, and child, in the country 

 for the article in your paper of September 21st on the protection of the 

 wild pigeon. I hope you will continue to write on the subject till not a 

 pigeon shark is left from the Atlantic to the Mississippi I never could 

 underdstand how gentlemen connected with the different sportsman's 

 Associations all over our country organized for the prelection of game 

 could conscientiously countenance the wholesale destruction of the wild 

 pigeon. There is not a member of these organizations wher» j he stands 

 in front of the traps, that should not wear a badge tabled in gold letters, 

 "Guilty of destroying instead'of protecting our game." All sportsmen's as- 

 sociation that countenance the trap shooting of the wild pigeon should be 

 shunned by every honorable and highmindtd sportsman, who is in favor 

 of protec ing, instead of destroying entirely these birds, which will be the 

 case in a very few years, unless steps are taken to stop them. In this section 

 of the country it is a rare sight to see the pigeon, wbtn before trap 

 shooting was carried to the extent it now is, one could have all the sport 

 they wauted during the fall with the gun. Any where through Ulster 

 county they were numerous during the season, but you may now travel 

 the county over and rarely see or hear of a flock— and why? because the 

 moment a flight alights in the spring and commence to nest, the sharks 

 are around with their nets and the work of destruction commences. It 

 is a burning shame that these creatures should be allowed to carry on their 

 work, they could not do so if it was not for the patronage of the so-called 

 sportsman* clubs about the country. I hope Mr Editor you will not let 

 this natter drop till there is not a net left in the land. J- G. F. 



, +•■+• — 



Law Breakers in New Jersey.— It is refreshing to 

 hear occasionally of the detection and punishment cf some 

 willful violator of the game laws, but such instances are 

 by far too rare. To the credit of New Jersey, be it said, 

 that by far the greatest number of such cases which are 

 brought under our observation occur within the limits of 

 that State. In the instance to which we now call attention 

 the advantages posessed by a large and powerful organiza- 

 tion such as the West Jersey Game Protective Society, are 

 shown. It can employ detectives to track suspected par- 

 ties, and able counsel to secure their conviction. The 

 Vineland Daily Journal of the 12th inst, says: — 



"Last night a detective employed by the West Jersey 

 Game Protective Society arrived in town. This morning 

 he seized at the 6:15 train on the W. J. R. R a box, which 

 the investigation before Esquire Loughran showed to con- 

 tain 25 quails, killed out of season in violation of the law, 

 and turned over by David Irish to the railroad company to 

 ship to Philadelphia. As the penalty for this offense 

 against the State is $15 for each quail had in his possession, 

 the amount exceeded the jurisdiction of the Justice, a n 

 Irish, in default of bail, was committed to the county )w 

 to await the action of the court in Januai^. 



