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FOREST AND STREAM. 



WEEKLY JOURNAL, 



Dijvotep toFijsu) Ann Aquatic Sfobts, Practical Natural History, 

 tfjsH Culture, the Protection of Game, Preservation of Forests, 



AJ1D THE INCULCATION INMeN AND WOMEN OF A HEALTHY INTEREST 

 IN OUT-DOOR BeORBATION AND STUDY : 



PUBLISHED BY 



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'0tn$&t(g 



AT 



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

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



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 to us, will receive the Forest and Stream for one year. 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JANUARY 4, 1877. 



To Correspondents. 



All communications whatever, whether relating to business or literary 

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

 libhino Company. Personal or private letters of course excepted. 



AM communications intended for publication must be accompanied with 

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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' 

 find our columns a uusirable 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 ail 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 mall service, if 

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

 ' Trade supplied by American News Company. 

 CHARLES HALLOCK, 



Editor and Bnsiness Manager. 



primary canse of the abandonment of the expedition. Six 

 of the men were "abstainers." Some of them were en- 

 gaged in the most arduous sledge work, one of them doing 

 as much as 110 days continuous sledging, and yet they 

 were not attacked by scurvy, and were only weakened by 

 hard work. One man succumbed to temptatiou and broke 

 his pledge, and he was the only one of the Templars be- 

 longing to the expedition who was attacked by scurvy. 

 The moral is, that although the habitual use of stimulants 

 may last for a life-time without producing injurious 

 effects, yet the moment the system is called upon to resist, 

 the attacks of disease, or to undergo some unnatural strain, 

 it readily succumbs. 



■«*»» ' 



AN IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT. 



Foreign Game for our Covers.— We have of late re- 

 ceived a number of letters from gentlemen in various 

 parts of this country relative to procuring English hares, 

 pheasants, etc., to be turned out in our covers for the pur 

 pose of propagation. Regarding hares, we erroneously re- 

 plied to our correspondent B. E., week before last, that 

 tbey could not be procured in t"his country. Since then we 

 have learned from Messrs. Chas. Reiche & Bros. , the great 

 firm of wild animal and bird importers, that they not only 

 have a few English hares on hand, but in eight weeks time 

 they could import any number. And the same with Eng- 

 lish pheasants, they can be brought over, although difficult 

 birds to handle in confinement. The experiment has fre- 

 quently been tried, of breeding pheasants in this country, 

 but not with much success. Mr . Robert L. Maitland once 

 had a large number on his island home at Newport. They 

 should be turned out in the proportion of one cock to four 

 or five hens, but the great trouble here is that they will 

 not remain unmolested. Southern California would be a 

 capital place in which to propagate this fine bird. That 

 they can stand a great amount of cold is beyond question, 

 as in China, their original habitat, they are found in some 

 of the northern provinces where the winters are very severe. 

 If any society or sportsmans' association desires to try the 

 experiment of propagating pheasants, Messrs. Reiche & 

 Bros, very liberally authorized us to say that they will 

 furnish them at the mere cost of importation. 



At Messrs. Reiche's a few days since we taw a two-horned 

 rhinoceros, the first ever brought to this country. Indeed, 

 we believe, there is but one in all Europe. This beast, 

 which is a young female, was captured by Mr. Reiche's 

 men in Nubia, near the Abyssinnian border. 



We do not propose to advocate the "turning out" of the 

 rhinoceros, or as a juvenile friend calls him, "rhinero- 

 cerosis," in our covers. His proper place is in the mena- 

 gerie, but his prototype is sometimes seen by the sportsman 

 in the shape of an irate farmer armed with a pitch-fork. 

 This variety, according to our friend Orvis, is likely to in- 

 crease in Vermont since the passage of the trespass act. 



«*♦«> 



Alcohol in Arctic Regions.— One of the curious facts 

 brought out since the return of the late Arctic Expedition, 

 is that relating to the ability of the teetotallers among the 

 crew to stand the extreme cold, and also the attacks of 

 scurvy, as compared with those who took their regular 

 "tot" of grog. It will be remembered that that dre adful 

 disease, scurvy, attacked the crew, and was ind eed the 



IT is not too much to say that the information which we 

 publish this week from Mr. N. H. Bishop, of the intro- 

 duction into New Jersey of a noxious western rodent, is 

 one of the most important facts in Natural History that has 

 been made for a long time. Its interest to the naturalist is 

 great, while to the farmer the announcement has a practical, 

 value that can hardly be overestimated. The amount of 

 worry, annoyance, and real damage that these pestiferous 

 little beasts cause, wherever they abound, to the agricul- 

 turist has never been put into figures, but the absolute lo*s 

 cannot amount to less than millions of dollars annually. The 

 various sections of the West have each their peculiar 

 species, and from Illinois to the Pacific are to be found 

 thousands of spermophiles, pocket gophers, woodrats and 

 squirrels to every square mile of territory. The South, 

 too, has a fair sprinkling of these injurious animals by far 

 tbe most important of which is the enormously abundant 

 "salamander." 



Although universally execrated by the farmer, but little, 

 with our present knowledge, can be done to check the 

 ravages which these animals everywhere commit. Most of 

 them work chiefly during the hours of darkness, many 

 never appear above ground at all and those that do are sel- 

 dom seen far from their burrows. Traps, firearms, and 

 even poison have been employed against them without 

 success, for, as has been said, man is hopelessly at a disad- 

 vantage in dealing with these destructive pests. It will, as 

 the West becomes more thickly settled, be a serious ques- 

 tion as to what means shall be taken by farmers for the 

 protection of their crops, and indeed this point has for 

 several years occupied the attention of agriculturists in 

 California. It is no exaggeration to say that in many sec- 

 tions of that State one may see in a mile's ride tefl thousand 

 ground squirrels (Scmrus fossor), and yet these accomplish 

 but a small part of the damage done to the vegetation, by 

 far the greater portion of the injury being effected by the 

 silent, unseen, yet constantly working pocket gopher 

 (Thomomys). Thus plants and vegetables are destroyed, the 

 roots of trees gnawed off and an incalculable amount of 

 damage done to the most important industry of the State. 

 The Californians have tried all the ordinary means for rid- 

 ding their fair land of these plagues, and in some sections 

 have even imported cats in large numbers to see if they 

 would not be able to meet the enemy by night and beat 

 him on his own ground. But the snares and the poison 

 proved, as elsewhere, of no avail; and the cats apparently 

 thought it less trouble to catch and eat the birds than to 

 hunt ihe gophers; at all events they destroyed many of the 

 former and caused no sensible diminution in the numbers 

 of the latter, and so this agent failed. We were recently 

 informed by one of the largest land owners and farmers of 

 Santa Barbara county, that it would be an enconomy for 

 the people of the State to organise a. corps of hunters who 

 should devote all their time to shooting these animals; in 

 this way alone, he said, could the squirrels be exterminated 

 The pocket gophers are not to be shot, as they never do 

 more than just protrude the head above ground, and dif- 

 ferent measures would have to be taken to wage a success- 

 ful war against them. 



Those rodents which, throughout the country at large, 

 accomplish the greatest amount of injury, are the spermo- 

 philes, the different species of which are all included in 

 western parlance under the name gopher, and the Geomyi 

 dae, which are the pocket gophers to which we have so 

 often referred. The word gopher seems to be a corrup 

 tion of the French gaufre, a honeycomb, referring of course 

 to the way in which the ground is pierced in every direction 

 by the burrows of the animal. 



The Geomyidae, though poorer in species than the sper- 

 mophiles, are enormously abundant in individuals. They 

 are provided with large cheek ponches. the pockets, in 

 which they transport food, and perhaps, thought this last 

 is not certain, the dirt from their burrows. An interest- 

 ing and exhaustive account of this family, its structure and 

 habits, is given by Dr. Coues, in Chapter XIII of Major 

 Powell's recently published report on the Exploration of 

 the Colorado river of the West. 



Although Spermophilus Franklini may do considerable 

 damage in New Jersey, the farmers of that section have 

 abundant cause for gratitude that it was a pair of spermo- 

 philes that were turned loose on them, and not a pair of 

 pocket gophers. The latter would do more, damage than 

 ten times their number of the former, and would be more 

 than ten times as hard to fight. We would recommend the 

 adoption of vigorous measures tending toward the destruc- 

 tion of these involuntary colonists of our sister State, for 

 the more time that they have in which to establish them- 

 selves, the more lasting and successful will be their strug- 

 gle for existence. We must be allowed to congratnlate 

 Mr. Bishop on the success and value of his observations on 



this species, and it is pleasant to ourselves that Fobesi? 

 and Stream is made the vehicle of a communication of 

 such great practical importance. 



.«.*»» — 



SALT IN ITS RELATION TO MANKIND. 



NATURE, in its benignant charity, has bestowed upon 

 man no greater boon than the apparently insignhi- 

 cant grains of salt which are daily required to make his 

 food palatable and wholesome, and without which the 

 world would be infested with disease. Its mysterious and 

 potential influence extends and permeates to the inmost 

 recesses of our world, endowing elements of its own crea- 

 tion with inherent natural affinities, which in turn produce 

 complex substances necessary for the welfare of mankind, 

 as well as wondrous in form, beauty and usefulness. Yet 

 how little do men know of its importance, of its history, 

 or of the many different uses to which it is put. 



In the eastern part of Europe, imbedded amidst pictur- 

 esque wooded slopes and gently undulating hills, rests the I 

 little town of Wiecklieza, rendered famous the world over 

 by the presence of its ancient and extensive salt mines . 

 Underneath the town lies a "city of salt," mapped out 

 into its streets-like passages, almost interminable in extent. ' 

 On every side are seen palaces in miniature, with a mimicry 

 of thrones rivalling the famed Aladdin's; interiors of ; ; 

 cathedrals enshrining images of patron saints; the high 

 pulpit and great organ with its crystal fifes; lofty columns 

 with towering cornices, counterparts of those above 

 ground, all formed from pure rock salt, which has been 

 chiselled out by the hand of man or moulded by nature. 

 They glisten and shimmer in the rays of the miner's light ' 

 like ice in the setting sun, rendering the scene enchant- 

 ingly beautiful, and more like the idealization of a oream 

 than a reality. Again are seen overhanging towers, with 

 delicate sculpturing of the crystal-like substance, while at P 

 their base lies a miniature lake, black as Ihe Styx, whose J 

 dark placid waters have never known the presence of - ; 

 living thing, and whose eternal silence speaks wonders 

 withal. This famous mine was first discovered in 1250, 

 since which time it has been constantly operated, furnish- 

 ing for many years the greater amount of salt used I 

 throughout Europe. Some idea of its mammoth propor- 

 tions may be formed, when it is known that its subter- 

 ranean excavations extend upwards of three miles, and j 

 have a depth of 1,800 feet, with an aggregate length of 

 shaft of 2.250 miles. The mine itself consists of four 

 stories, underlying each other, supported by immense 

 pillars of salt, and communicating with each other by 

 means of stairways cut out of the solid salt. The annual 

 production from the mine is estimated at G0,000 tons, while | 

 the bed of which it forms but a slight portion is reckoned g 

 at 500 miles in length, 20 miles in width, and with an un- 1 

 known depth. • i 



There are also many other. celebrated resources of salt in \ 

 various parts of the world. Thus, at Cardiena, in Spain, | 

 there are vast rugged precipices of pure salt, which tower , 

 above the plain to the height of 500 feet, and which re* ,, 

 sembled huge icebergs, reflecting beautiful prismatic hues j 

 in the sun's rays. In Cheshire and Northwick, England, I 

 immense quantities of salt are annually exhumed from 

 beds where it has been deposited in lenticular masses | 

 instead of in the usuil geological strata. Again, there are 

 also enormous deposits of salt in Punjaub, India^on both , 

 sides of the Carpathian mountains, and throughout wide 

 districts in Austria, Armenia and Syria. 



In the United States especially, nature has dispensed this 

 essential to human comfort with a liberal hand, in order 

 that even the poorest of its creatures may not be without 

 it. This is evidenced by the numerous salt mines, lakes 

 and springs, which abound in various sections of the [ 

 country, and which, although not as well known as those . 

 in the old world, yet rival any for their yield and purity. ( 



Near Austin, Nevada, there is a vase deposit of salt, 

 known as the Humboldt mine, which stretches away in the l 

 distance like a frozen lake, without, a single flaw or crack, 

 for not less than 20 miles, and having a breadth of about 



12 miles, covering in all 52,930 acres of land. The annual < 

 yield from this immense bed of 'salt is between two and 

 three million bushels. In Michigan there are three immense '; 

 beds or "lakes," as they are termed, the principal one ; 

 being a mass of angillaceous gypsums 'and pyritous shales, 

 11 to 20 feet in tnickness, with an aggregate thickness of J 

 200 feet. Its body describes an irregular circle, under- 

 lying an area of 17,000 square miles. The yield from this 

 source alone is almost 2,000,000 bushels per annum, ob- 

 tained by means of springs and wells, both natural and 

 artificial. Again, in Louisiana, are found irregular look- 

 ing "mountains" of natural formation, which are termed 

 "islands" in local parlance. The purest and most import- 

 ant of these islands, "Petit Anse," is said to have first be- 

 come known in 1698; but. singularly, knowledge of its 

 existence seems to have been forgotten until the late civil 

 war. At that time, residents of the interior, unable other- 

 wise to procure an adequate amount of salt, resorted 

 thither for the purpose of boiling down the waters, which 

 came gurgling from the base of the elevation. In this way 

 it was discovered that the entire island was composed of 

 salt, and for two years the whole trans-Mississippi country 

 was supplied with salt from this source, 21,000,000 pounds 

 having been taken from it in three months. The salt itself 

 is unusually pure, analysis showing it to contain 99 per 

 cent, of p«?re salt. 



In addition to these mines and deposits there are hun- 

 dreds of salt springs and lakes in Pennsylvania, Ohio, "Vir- 

 ginia and Florida. The most remarkable salt lake in the 

 world is the "Great Salt Lake" of Utah, lying 300 miles 



