232 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



A Wfc.iitfL.LY JOURNAL, 



Itegom toTFykvd -^n» Aquatic Spobts, FpaoticjllNatubalHistor-e, 

 j. ish Culture, the Protection of Game, Preservation of Fobksts, 

 aim the inculcation in men and women off a healthy interest 

 fS Gut-boor Recreation and Study : 



PXTBLISUED BY 



tfartst mi ^ttmrq publishing §ant$an$, 



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



[Post Office Box 2832.] 

 ♦ ■ ■■ 

 Terma, Four Dollars a Year, Strictly In A4vanc«. 



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



Advertising Rates. 



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

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

 olnmns, 40 cents per line. 



NEW YOKK, THUKSDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1876. 



To Correspondents. 



+ r- 



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 Names will not be published 

 objection be made. No anonymous contributions will be regaraed. 



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 wil 1 

 find our columns a uesirable medium for advertising announcements. 



The Publishers of Forest and Stbeam 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 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 shonld be sent in by Saturday of each week, if possible. 

 ' Trade supplied by American News Company. 

 CHARLES HALLOCR, 



Editor and Business Manager. 



OUR NEW DRESS. 



others, enjoying the entire range of the Scientific field, we 

 feel confidence and pleasure in the acquisition of so useful 

 a colaborator. In reviving the Agricultural Department, 

 which has languished since the editorship of the veteran 

 horticulturist, Mr. Wyman, ("Ollipod Quill,") now dead, 

 we re open a field to all the congenial topics that relate to 

 the Forest, the Farm, and the Garden, and thereby addi- 

 tionally eDgage the interest of the general reader. To 

 ensure its proper service, we have secured as editor Mr. 

 W. J. Davidson, Secretary of the New York Horticultural 

 Society, who is endorsed as possessing all the requirements 

 for the work, being not only a concise and pains-taking 

 writer, but possessing a most general knowledge of all 

 departments of horticulture. We invite the especial atten 

 tion of those interested to subsequent numbers. The rest 

 of our old and efficient staff we retain. 



It was our first intention to defer the enlargement of the 

 paper until the beginning of the eighth volume next Feb- 

 ruary; but we now conclude that no time is so befitting as 

 the present, when Nature's own forests and streams, whose 

 charms we reflect, assume the changes that make them 

 gorgeous. Now the parti colored leaves are radiant; the 

 dropping nuts are rattling in the stillness of the woods; the 

 mink and sable don their glossy coats and the antlered buck 

 is in the "blue." Every breath of the crisp keen air is 

 vitalizing, and the rosy blood courses through the veins 

 with a noble and manly pulse. Come out, ye rxaidens, 

 into the rustling leaves, and weave an autumn garland to 

 hang beside the mistletoe and holly when the Yule log 

 brightly burns. Come, ye nutter?, where the burrs are 

 opening with the frost. Come, sportsmen all, to the hill- 

 side cover. Hie on, good dog! and "show us now the 

 mettle of your breeding." What is life without its Au- 

 tumn and the ripeness of its full fruition? And what is 

 Nature without its constant change? No "melancholy 

 days" are ours. The winter winds may sough and whisper 

 through the pines, but they bring no sense of sadness. 

 Snows may mantle the forests and ice fetter the streams; 

 shrouds there are for the "sere and yellow leaf," and 

 Death for all things living; but when the Spring cometh, 

 and the resurrection, the soul and the imprisoned streams 

 shall burst forth .again, with a ripple and ecstasy of joy. 

 So mote it be! 



CIRCUMSTANCES have compelled the publishers of 

 Forest and Stream to make some changes in the 

 material and personnel of the paper, which they trust will be 

 regarded for the better. The full title page we are certain 

 will be considered an embellishment to an already attrac- 

 tive sheet, while the addition of four pages enables us to 

 give an increase to our reading space, which has been 

 largely encroached upon by advertisements. The adoption 

 of a tinted cover will remedy a palpable evil of which 

 there has been constant complaint, namely: the soiling or 

 mutilation of the sheet by improper wrapping or long car- 

 riage by mail. The illuminated title page, so characteristic 

 of American Out Door Sport in its varied and most charm- 

 ing features, will make an attractive initial to each volume 

 wnen bound. We think its execution reflects much credit 

 upon the artist, Mr. Alfred Kappes, who has so faithfully 

 reproduced and vitalized our own crude designs, as well as 

 upon Mr. Max Lowenthal, the engraver, whose work is 

 undeniably good. Of these improvements, as we hope 

 they may be regarded by our readers, we need say but 

 little, ourselves, except to express some satisfaction in 

 presenting them as evidences of the prosperity of the 

 paper, and an earnest to our patrons that we strive to merit 

 their esteem and continued support. We have now, by 

 recent changes, given them twenty per cent more Forest 

 and Stream for twenty per cent less money, having re- 

 duced our rates to Four Dollars and added Four pages to 

 each weekly issue. In homely phrase, we intend that our 

 readers shall always have their "money's worth"; and we 

 are content to accept the published testimony of our 

 esteemed contemporary, " The Spirit of The Times" that this 

 liberal policy, from their own experience, will be immedi- 

 ately and abundantly remunerative. 



It 13 not worth while to promise largely, but we wish it 

 understood that it is our ambition to so constantly improve 

 this paper, and add to its intrinsic value as a medium for 

 cultured sportsmen and lovers of Nature puie and simple, 

 that it will in time emulate and equal its noble trans-At- 

 lantic models, the London "Field "and "Land and Water." 

 Some changes have also been necessitated in our edi- 

 torial staff. Mr. Earnest Ingersoll, whose valued labors 

 in the Natural History Department we reluctantly dispense 

 with, has given place to George Bird Grinnell, Esq., who 

 has become a stockholder. Mr. Grinnell is now associated 

 with Prof. Marsh, at the Peabody Museum of Yale College; 

 and as he has the advantage of constant communication 

 with such eminent Naturalists as Pana, Verrill, and many 



COLLEGE VICE AND VIRTUE. 



IT is amusing to watch the gusto with which individual 

 religious papers seem to gloat over such little scraps of 

 evidence as they may find afloat to support their theory as 

 to the dreadful wickedress of students at the larger col- 

 leges. For instance, the custom which a few members of 

 each graduating class at Yale are wont to indulge in, of 

 collecting and printing in pamphlet form all the conceiv- 

 able "statistics" relating to that class, gives the religious 

 editor a rich treat, which they roll under their tongues 

 with a relish. The Chicago Advance having quoted some 

 or the "statistics of morality" concerning what the com- 

 pilers of this year's pamphlet were pleased to term "Yale's 

 smartest and wickedest class," (such statistics, for in- 

 stance, as that there were but 43 total abstinence men in 

 a class of 124), the Interior hastens to remark: — 



"This is a record of prodigality and destructive vices. 

 Of 124, 81 ar« dram drinkers. Of the billiard and card 

 players only 23 are put down as gamblers, but there is no 

 doubt that the remainder are gamblers more or less infatu- 

 ated. Now we say it, and say it flatly, that the father who 

 sends his son to such an institution is guilty of recklessly 

 exposing his child to chances two to one of his destruction; 

 and if his boy brings grief to his heart and dishonors his 

 name, he is entitled to no sympathy." 



A correspondent of the Advance of August 24th shows 

 up the absurdity of this onslaught, but the Philadelphia 

 Lutheran Observer of September 1st nevertheless reprints 

 with great glee the Interior's word8, and makes them the 

 basis of a long editorial, of the good old valid sort, con- 

 cerning "Morals in Colleges." Assuming that the preva- 

 lent interest in athletic sports is a thing of recent develop- 

 ment (though such sports have been practiced at Harvard 

 and Yale for more than a century, and have been practiced 

 just about as vigorously for the last quarter century as for 

 the last year), the Observer goes on to say that the truly 

 damnable development of these "statistics" are simply the 

 results of undue devotion to physical exercise. "The 

 natural and inevitable products of athletic sports," says this 

 truly good paper, "are dissipation and vice, and a general 

 lowering of moral «one and intellectual refinement and cul- 

 ture. We would rather send a boy to seek his fortune in 

 a strange city, where hundreds of gilded gateways of hell 

 are open to allure him than to a college or university in 

 which no moral supervision or discipline is exercised over 

 the students, or in which the prevalent sentiment is in 

 favor of sports, games and convivial." By a curious co- 

 incidence another editorial on the same page of the paper 

 calls favorable attention to the "Pennsylvania College at 

 Gettysburg, where the superintendent of the preparatory 

 department resides in the building, and has constant charge 

 of the students who board at the same table with himself. 

 See advertisement." 



We reserve the comments which are suggested by the 

 above. To argue in favor of out-of-door exercise, or gym- 

 nasium athletics, to strengthen and invigorate body and 

 brains, is worse than begging the question; it insults com- 

 mon sense. 



—Average temperature at New Smyrna, Florida, for the 

 month of October: At ?■ & £*., 68f;' 2 p. m. ? 74; 9 p. 

 m.,69£. 



THE EASTERN SHORE OF VIRGINIA. 



■ » 



THE^eastern shore of Virginia, composed of the counties 

 of Accomack and Northampton, is a peninsula lying 

 between the Atlantic Ocean, on the one side, and the Ches- 

 apeake Bay on the other. It presents a verv level surface 

 and has, perhaps, the best roads in the world, requiring but 

 little attention to keep them in good condition. It is with- 

 in easy access of Baltimore by a line of steamers, one of 

 which leaves South street wharf, in that city, every day at 

 5 o'clock p. m., except Saturday. The upper portion of 

 the peninsula can be reached daily by rail from Philadel- 

 phia, the terminus being Greenbackville, on the sea side 

 apposite to Chincoteague Island, and distant from it about 

 five miles. ,, A steam ferry boat con very passengers from 

 the depot to the Island. 



There is, perhaps, no portion of the country presenting 

 greater attraction to the sportsman in quest of small game, 

 such as quail and water-fowl, than this lit tie strip of land. 

 The former are abundant, and the peculiar geographical 

 features of the country render the sport of hunting them 

 both easy and delightful. The excellent character of the 

 roads makes a ride of twenty or thirty miles but a trifle, 

 thus enabling the hunter to go over a great deal of ground 

 in a day, and the numberless creeks or small rivers indent- 

 ing the coasts on sea and bay, form long glades fringed 

 with yellow sedge, affording cover to the birds and protection 

 from the hawks, while the absence of trees in such places 

 insures to the hunter almost any number of shots "in 

 the open." The period for shooting quail in these 

 counties extends from, the 20th day of October to the 1st 

 day of February. Snipe and woodcock are also found, but 

 in small numbers. On the sea side, and to a great, though 

 less extent on the bay, waterfowl, such as wild geese, 

 brant, black mallards, shufflers or black ducks, red heads 

 and all other kinds of duck except the canvas back swarm 

 in myriads, and are killed in great numbers every year; they 

 are shot principally from blinds over decoys. On every 

 part of the shore persons can be found who have large 

 experience in this kind of sport, and whose services can 

 be procured by visitors at reasonable rates. Perhaps 

 the best point for this sort of shooting is Cobb's Island, 

 in the county of Northampton, whose proprietors enter- 

 tain each year, in winter, quite a number of sportsmen, 

 and have all the appliances, such as boats and decoys, for 

 their accommodation. The island itself is a noted resort 

 during summer, and ^furnishes the best shooting among 

 birds peculiar to that season that can be found on the 

 eastern shore. 



In summer, and, indeed, until November, fine fishing 

 can be had in the waters of both sea and bay, the principal va- 

 rieties caught being the drum, or sea bass, trout, mullet, spot 

 and taylor. Millions of sea birds, such as curlews, willets, 

 gray-backs, brown backs, and red breasted snipe feed in the 

 marshes and on the beaches, which skirt the sea coast from 

 Cape Charles to the Delaware line, and furnish inexhaus- 

 tible sport to the gunner. Fo> es are numerous, and the good 

 old English sport of the foxhunt, with many of its primitive 

 characteristics, still survives among the people of the eastern 

 shore, who, indeed, have in an especial manner retained the 

 peculiarities of their ancestors together with the purity of the 

 old stock. They welcome gentlemen who come for enjoyment 

 and recreation, and furnish them gladly every assistance in 

 their power, but hold the pot hunter in detestation, and 

 visit him, when caught, with the severest penalties of the 

 law prohibiting hunting by non-residents. 



The steamers from Baltimore land at different points in 

 both counties, one touching twice at Onancock, within five 

 mile of Accomac C. H., the county seat. Good hotels, 

 with horses and buggies or light wagons for hire, can be 1 

 found at Chincoteague Island, Accomac C. H.,Hom 

 Town, Onancock, Puugoteague and Belle Haven, in 

 Accomac, and at Eastville in Northampton. Board in pri- 

 vate families can also be obtained at fair rates. 



QUAIL SHOOTING. 



♦■ ' 



THANKS to the mild winter of last season, and per- 

 haps in some localities to more attention being paid to 

 the administration of the game laws, quails have not been 

 so plentiful in many years past as at present. Our advices 

 from every quarter corroborate this statement, and the 

 average of bags made is largely in excess of what has been 

 usual of late years. We have before us a letter from a 

 correspondent in TJniontown, Pa., sojourning there tempo- 

 rarily, who writes that better quail shooting is not to be 

 found in America than in the Southwestern section of 

 Pennsylvania. His bag has averaged from forty to fifty 

 birds a day for a week. Such bags were not uncommon at 

 one time in the West, and we have equaled it in California, 

 but with the exception of Florida, and possibly some por- 

 tions of North Carolina and Virginia, we confess that we 

 know of no place where such shooting can be found. In 

 order to make a good bag at quail three requisites are de- 

 manded: the birds, a suitable dog, and the necessary skill 

 on the part of the shooter. Occasionally we hear of a 

 sportsman killing all the birds in a bevy, but we believe 

 that such occurrences are exceedingly rare. The nature 

 of the ground frequented by quail and the instinct of the 

 birds are such that generally,when flushed in the open,they 

 have close at hand an almost impenetrable swamp or thick 

 wood where even the best dog will fail to find them all. 

 We have shot in a thoroughly cleared up country where 

 even the woods were free from underbrush, so that the 

 birds in flying into them would pass through into another 

 stubble field beyond. Under such conditions it is not im- 

 possible to exterminate a bevy, although the hjjmane ana 



