360 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



AGRICULTURE— THE IDEAL AND REAL. 



A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 



DB r£ OT5 5? ToFlELD ani> Aqttatxo Sports, FfaoticjsxNatubal History, 



ITlSHXyiiTUJSB, THE PROTECTION OF GA»!E,PRB8KBVATIOKOy FOBESTS, 



ian> thh Inculcation in Men and Women or a healthy interest 

 es Out-door Recreation and Study : 



PUBLISHED BY 



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



[Post Okwob Box 2832.] 



•■ ♦ — 



T«rm», Four Dollars a Year, Strictly la Advance. 



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



Advertising Rates. 



luside pages, nonpareil type, 20 cents per line; outside page, 30 cents. 

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

 columns, 40 cents per line. 



with 

 copy 



year. 



NEW YORK, THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 1877. 



To Correspondents. 



All communications whatever, whether relating to ousiness or literary 

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

 Lishino 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 Names will not be published 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 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 tb favor ns 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 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 

 toay 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. 

 ' Trade supplied by American News Company. 

 CHARLES HALLOCR, 



Editor and Business Manager. 



OUR LADIES' DEPARTMENT. 



IK starting this journal our "avowed mission, as printed 

 in its prospectus, was "to inculcate in men and 

 women a healthy interest in out-door recreation and study." 

 While we have had many lady readers from the beginning, 

 and many lady contributors, some of whom are qualified 

 to take positions in the front rank of sportsmen; and 

 while we have catered, to some extent, to the wants and 

 requirements of women who seek health and bloom in the 

 open air, we have never set aside any special department 

 for their service. This we now propose to do. We have 

 secured the aid of a popular and competent lady journal- 

 ist, whose Salutatory to her sex will be found under its 

 proper caption, and we earnestly beg our ladies to lend us 

 their countenance and assistance. Our "Women's Depart- 

 ment" at the Centennial showed what they can do in tech- 

 nology. But it did not show what a benign and wholesome 

 influence they can exercise upon their husbands by becom- 

 ing partners in their pastimes and exercises as well as in 

 their bed and board. The Forest and Stream is read 

 much in the Home Circle. Now, with the additional at- 

 tractions which we give it, let it become more and more a 

 delight and household word. By ingratiating the women 

 we secure the alliance of the men. Women have a noble 

 part to perform in this life, and upon their noble conduct, 

 character and influence the nobility of man depends. So 

 thinketh The Editor. 



ii 



Around the World. — We have received the prelimin- 

 ary announcement of a proposed Scientific Expedition 

 around the world, which has for its objects the study of 

 Architecture, Archaeology, Geology, and the Fauna and 

 Flora of new and little known localities. A full scientific 

 corps will accompany the expedition, and the steamer will 

 be fitted with every appliance for safety, comfort and 

 instruction. Should the projectors succeed in organizing 

 their expedition, we sin 11 notice it at greater length. In- 

 formation can be obtained by addressing Jos. O. Woodruff, 

 Indianapolis, Ind. ; Prof. W. L. B. Jenny, Chicago, or 

 Prof. J. B. Steele, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 



Simple Method of Computing Interest.— Multiply 

 the principal by the number of days and divide the pro- 

 duct—for 5 per cent, by 7,200— for 6, by 6,000— for 7, by 

 5,143-for 8, by 4,509~for 9, by 4,000— for 10, by 8,600. 



I LOOK upon the pleasure which we take in a garden 

 as one of the most innocent delights in human life. 

 A garden was the habitation of our first parents before the 

 fall. It is naturally apt to fill the mind with calmness and 

 tranquility; and to lay all its turbulent passions at rest. 

 It gives us a great insight into the contrivance and wis- 

 dom of Providence, and suggests innumerable subjects 

 for meditation." — Addjson. 



There was a time, in the good old days of our country, 

 when people saw health, happiness and respect in an agri- 

 cultural life; but now that it is reduced to one of the most 

 scientific pursuits it has to go begging for men of brains, 

 while the other professions and callings, most or them 

 much less worthy of attention, are crowded to overflow- 

 ing. The spectacle of a stalwart farmer plowing, and a 

 delegation of men calling him to abandon his work and 

 rule the people is a beautiful picture of the past. Cicero 

 mentions several of those cases, not then uncommon; our 

 own historians tell us of others. Is it because oar farmers 

 to-day are not in sympathy with their work? or is it be- 

 cause amid the excitement of cities, the wonderful inven- 

 tions, people being shot rapidly from city to city with lit- 

 tle chance to see what sort of a being a farmer is — is it 

 because amid all these we lose sight of agriculture that it 

 does not occupy its true position? 



It is a well known fact that if a farmer's son manifests 

 talents a little above the ordinary run of farmers; if he can 

 manage the stock more successfully; if he has longings for 

 intellectual culture, he is regarded as too good for the 

 farm; the town and a profession must possess him, while 

 his brother, an unambitious, lazy country lout, would 

 rather pursue the dull routine that he has gone through 

 than take the trouble to try something new. Horace 

 Greeley said on the subject: — 



"Is agriculture a repulsive pursuit? What has been 

 called farming has repelled many of the youth of our 

 day, I perceive, and I glory in tne fact. An American 

 boy who has received a fair common school education, and 

 has an active, inquiring mind, does not willingly consent 

 merely to drive oxen and hold plow forever. He will do 

 these with alacrity if they come in his way; he will not ac- 

 cept them as the be-all and end-all of his career. He will 

 not sit down in a rude, slovenly, naked home, devoid of 

 flowers, and trees, and books, and periodicals, and intelli- 

 gent, inspiring, refining conversation, and there plod 

 through a life of drudgery as hopeless and cheeness as any 

 mule's. He has needs, and hopes, and aspirations which 

 this life does not and ought not to satisfy. This might 

 have served his progenitor in the ninth century; but this 

 is the nineteenth, and the Young American knows it." 



And hence it is, that, while the best minds of the coun- 

 try come to the city to reinforce us, they leave the farms 

 to the management of men who see nothing of the sacred- 

 ness of their work, whose chief idea of a farm is so much 

 food and drink. The tendency of the times is to reject 

 manual labor, and those business men who live nearest the 

 cars are regarded as the most fortunate. 



Speed, at present, is everything. Now if a man could, 

 by turning a little wheel, plow acres upon acres in a day; 

 if crops grew and matured in a week; if one could watch 

 the growth of vegetation in a day; if all work could be 

 done by steam, there is no doubt that thousands would 

 flock to the side of agriculture. We might see horse- 

 jockeys standing, stop-watch in hand, and betting on the 

 growth of a cabbage. But alas! these things are not so. 

 There is, perhaps, the least excitement in an agricultural 

 life of any manner of living; in fact it is "behind the 

 times." 



One of, the most powerful objections to agriculture is 

 urged in the fact that it does not pay; that ideal farming 

 and air castles are one thing, the reality another. Greeley 

 again says : 



"Most men are born poor, but no man who has average 

 capacities and tolerable luck need remain so. And the 

 farmer's life, though proffering no sudden leaps, no ready 

 short-cuts to opulence, is the surest of all ways from pov- 

 erty and want to comfort and independeuce. Other men 

 must climb; the temperate, frugal, diligent, provident 

 farmer may grow into competence and every external ac- 

 cessory to happiness." 



Young rattle-brains once said he would like to be a 

 farmer well enough, if he could live in the city. Horace 

 said (not Greeley):— 



"Is there any place where envious care less disturbs our 

 slumbers? Is the grass inferior in smell and beauty to the 

 cold pavements? A the water, which strives to burst the 

 lead in the streets, purer than that which trembles in mur- 

 murs down its sloping channel? Why do people nurse 

 vines along the columns of the city? and why is that house 

 commended which has a prospect of distant fields?" 



Anuther fellow of the class mentioned above in triumph 

 discovered that Horace Greeley bought a hog for five dol- 

 lars and sold it for three, and he gave it forth to the world 

 as proof positive that farming "didn't pay." Of course it 

 was accepted by the world at large; but the investigator 

 finds that she brought him in no less than seventeen dol- 

 lars through numerous offspring. 



Many men look with less disgust on a man stained with 

 political treachery or corrupt morals than they do on a 

 man stained with the pure soil and honest elements. If a 

 young man has been highly educated, and proposes to be a 

 farmer, the relations and friends immediately exclaim with 

 great clamor, "What! throw away all that education, and 

 be a coarse, rude farmer? Destruction hath overtaken us!" 

 They, of course, differ with Cicero when he says: "I 

 am excessively delighted with the pleasures of husband- 

 men, which are not checked by any old age, and appear 

 in my mind to make the nearest approach to the life of a 

 wise man." It is not necessary, then, that a man should 

 be rude, uncultivated and of no intellect, when he has 



chances for study and improvement that few men enjoy: 

 the long winter— just the time he may devote to culture— f 

 while with granaries full, health, happiness, independent, f 

 he may compare with satisfaction his own lot with that of J 

 striving humanity in general. Lord Francis Bacon said, j 

 "Indeed it is the surest of human pleasures; it is the great- §)' 

 est refreshment to the spirits of man. Man shall ever see 

 that, when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come I 

 to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if garden- 

 ing were the greater perfection.' 1 



But until the popular idea changes, until men look on | 

 work a? a blessing and not as a curse, when the farmers « 

 themselves take advantage of their opportunities— not un- £ 

 til these tilings begin shall agriculture take its true posi- J 

 tion. A young man must not, however, rush suddenly i 

 into farming with the idea that previous education is not « 

 necessary, and that it does not take brains, for if he does | 

 he must look well to his bank account. It is just this fact ; 

 that enables smart men to succeed. Happily, under the ,, 

 influence of our agricultural schools and a growing favor | 

 for agriculture, we may hope that before long "the good ( 

 time coming" will cast into insignificance "the good old J 

 times," and men will not be afraid to be healthy and hap- \ 

 py. Perhaps then we may see many such peaceful scenes J 

 as men love to gaze on. Edward Everett describes one of \ 

 them: — 



"The well filled wagon brings home the ripened treas- 2 



ures of the year. The bow of promise fulfilled spans the " 



foreground of the picture, and the gracious covenant is 



redeemed, that while the earth remaineth, summer and 



winter, heat and cold, and day and night, and seed time 



and harvest, shall not fail. " 



_ ^^ » 



ANGLING IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA. \ 



Jf, "* ' * 



Mr. Francis Francis, in the preface to his "Book on , 



Angling," tells us that "when first infected with the fever i 



of angling, my ambition was to catch every species of I. 



fresh water fish, from the minnow up to the salmon, 



which inhabits our British waters." 



This would be easy enough to do, in a binall territory 

 like England, containing not over twenty species of fish ' 

 which can be coaxed to take bait; but how would the 

 American angler succeed in such an enterprise? He would 

 have to travel from Florida to Alaska, and from New York 

 to San Francisco, a region containing several millions of 

 square miles of territory, and according to the latest 

 writers more than one hundred species of fish which can 

 be taken with the hook— a moderate estimate, since there 

 are fifty species of salmonidae in the United States already 

 described. A long life industriously devoted to this pur- 

 suit would hardly suffice. The present writer has been an 

 angler for over fifty years, and has fished in sixteen States 

 and Territories, but thirty species of fish are all that he has 

 captured in our fresh waters. Now, if Mr. Francis is able 

 to write a volume of four hundred and twenty-nine pages 

 on the fresh water fishes of Britain, what libraries would 

 he compose if he had our Icthyofauna to describe? There 

 is an immense field for American writers upon this subject, 

 although some excellent books has been written within the 

 last ten or fifteen years. Fifty years ago the only work to 

 be found by the young angler was that of Isaac Walton, 

 which indeed is the book of books— guide, counsellor and 

 friend — and can never be out of fashion, any more than 

 Shakespeare himself. Then comes Sir Humphrey Davy's 

 Salmonidae, and the inimitable sketches of Professor Wilson 

 in Blackwood's Magazine; and later we have the works of 

 Dr. Smith, Herbert, Morris, Eoosevelt, Genio Scott, 

 Brown, Gibbs, Hallock and Prime, besides many charming 

 papers in the sporting journals. 



Mr. Francis, ten years ago, wrote as follows about Salmon 

 Fishing in Norway, which some late writer describes as 

 superior to that in Canadian waters: — 



"But awhile ago Norway was a pleasant spot for fisher- 

 men. The few fishermen to be met with there were (they 

 are not now) fond of telling of their sport, but they were 

 gentlemen and sportsmen of the old school. The natives 

 were civil, easily satisfied, and fishing was easy to come 

 at. But this is all altered within a very few years. The 

 British snob soon followed, and forthwith he took his 

 abominable annual holiday and toured the country, and 

 set off in shoals in pursuit of the object of his worship and 

 adoration, the nob of his own land. Throwing his spare 

 cash about like the idiot he is — transporting his nasty little 

 vices and manners along with him, aping all that is bad in 

 his model, and unable to understand or imitate the good, 

 he has played the same pranks there that he has all over 

 the world , and so the natives become grasping, and salmon 

 fishing is, save at high prices and long leases, not to be 

 had." 



If British writers criticise people of other countries 

 rather sharply, it must be confessed that they do not spare 

 their own countrymen. S. C. C. 



<«~»^. 



Norfolk Harbor Frozen Over. — A Norfolk (Va.) cor- 

 respondent, who sends us some frigid meteorological data 

 from that locality, says the harbor was sKimmed over with 

 ice on the 3d of January, and remarks sardonically, "if it 

 keeps on this way much longer we shall have a 'solid 



South.'" 



-**+• ■ 



A Shipwrecked Naturalist. — Our enterprising friend 

 "Fred Beverly," who sailed last month for Martinique on 

 a collecting tour, has had bad luck at the outset, the vessel 

 in which he sailed having ran upon the outer reef at Ber- 

 muda, in a Heavy blow. Ober waded eight miles to land. 

 The vessel is in St. Georges for repairs, where are also 



twenty other vessels in like predicament, 



-s&*~e»- 



— Madame Nilsson sings at Vieuna in January, Madame 

 Patti in March and April, and Madame Lucca in May, 



