570 FOREST AND STREAM. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 
Devoted to Fi rt.d and Aquatic Sports, Practioal Natural 
History, Fish Culture, the Protection of Game, Preserva¬ 
tion of Forests, and the Inculcation in Men and Women of 
a Healthy Interest in Out-Door Recreation and Study : 
PUBLISHED BY 
FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
—AT— 
NO. Ill FULTON STREET, NEW YORK. 
[Post Office Box 8833.] 
TERMS, FOUR DOLLABB A YEAR, STRICTLY IN ADVANCE. 
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possible. 
All transient advertisements must be accompanied with the 
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No advertisement or business notice of an immoral character 
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*«*Anv publisher Inserting ourprospeotus as above one tim e, with 
brief editorial notice calling atten tion thereto,and sending marked 
copy to us, will receive the Forest and Stream for one year. 
NEW YORK, THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 1879. 
To Correspondents. 
All communications whatever, intended for publication, must be 
accompanied with real name of the writer as a guaranty of good 
faith and be addressed to Forest and Stream Publishing Com¬ 
pany. Nnmeswfll not be published if objection bemado. Anony¬ 
mous communications will not be regarded. 
We cannot promise to return rejected manuscripts. 
Secretaries of Clubs and Assooiations are urged to favor us wtih 
brief notes of their movements and transactions. 
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 dereliction of mail service if money 
romited to us is lost. 
ty Trade supplied by American News Company. 
— Pomeroy's Democrat, published at La Crosse, Wiscon¬ 
sin, claims to be the leading Greenback party organ of 
the United States, circulating in every State and territory. 
It is sent to subscribers at $1 per year. 
—The September number of the Poultry Monthly con¬ 
tains an unusual amount and variety of valuable matter 
for poultry and pet stock raisers. The Monthly is 
achieving a well-merited success. 
The Rev. Dr. Edward Eggleston, of Brooklyn, is in 
the Adirondacks, getting all the benefit possible from 
what he is pleased to term the “great family remedy” 
—a trip to the woods. 
—It is proposed by a number of Georgia gentlemen to 
erect a monument to the brave Sergeant Jasper, who fell 
in the attack on Savannah October 9, 1779. The more 
monuments we have in America to commemorate the 
loyal deeds of loyal men, the greater will be the incite¬ 
ment of bronze and marble to emulation of heroic daring, 
We bespeak for the Jasper Monumental Association the 
success it deserves. The corresponding secretary is Mr. 
D. J. Foley, Savannah, Georgia. 
“ Camp Gumption.” —If Eve did not enjoy the Garden of 
Eden a great deal more than her lord and master did, 
she was no fair prototype of her sex. A woman, bless 
her, will see more beauty in a wayside weed than the 
man who walks with her would discover in a whole con¬ 
servatory of exotics. So we have always found that in 
the woods the girls had a thousand ways of finding 
pleasure where their masculine escorts would only yawn 
and look bored. When the better halves of creation do 
go off alone by themselves, no matter in what- part of the 
world it may be, they always manage to find more of the 
Garden of Eden than ever was discovered by the Ori¬ 
entalists and Eastern explorers. Just now we note that 
a party of some half dozen young New England girls 
have pitched their tents on the shores of a New Hamp¬ 
shire lake, where they have established a community 
something like the fabled island of the Amazons. They 
are fitted out with tents, horses and carriages, boats and 
all camping paraphernalia; while a man servant does the 
heavy work. The time is spent in fishing, rowing, driv¬ 
ing, etc., with singing, reading, recitations and games. 
The camp is very fittingly termed “Camp Gumption,” 
and each member of the band calls herself “ a gump.” 
May their tribe increase ! 
—See advertisement of a new glass-ball trap in another 
eolumn, 
CALL OFF THE HOUNDS! 
I F there was ever a proceeding mean and disgraceful, 
it is the hunting of the Rev. W. H. H. Murray. The 
persecution of brothers Beecher and Talmadge can¬ 
not hold a candle to it for littleness—for that parsimony 
of charity, brotherly kindness, and good will to man, 
which one's natural instinct ought to prompt toward a 
pereon in distress. What is the crime? Where the blame? 
Is it sinful for a clergyman to be a sportsman ? Is it a 
crime for a clergyman to love the home? or to invest 
money in a journal intended to inculcate good morals 
and good taste? or to put hard earnings into a com¬ 
mercial enterprise? Is it sinful, so long as these pur¬ 
suits and interests make not diversion from the main 
object and devotion of his mini sterial work ? If not, and 
if a jury of laymen, who chuckle when purity is ever so 
slightly smirched, are to sit upon the case of the hunted 
Murray, then two hundred other clergymen, who are 
subscribers of Forest and Stream, stand ready to fore- 
fend the outrageous shafts which cloud the air; and be¬ 
hind them stand ten thousand more of our subscribers, 
in solid phalanx, to back them. If we have any cog¬ 
nizance of the personal character of a constituency with 
whom wo are in daily and constant communication, we 
do not err in what we say, and our pledge will be assured 
by a voice unanimous. 
And now, since the types and telegraph have been busy 
for a month from Maine to San Francisco in the effort to 
malign and traduce—finding nothing but pecuniary mis¬ 
fortune to base their calumny upon, let us ask if it be not 
the quintessence of jealousy which prompted the persecu¬ 
tion ? Would not those pious Pharisees, who sneer and 
gibe, be themselves proud of Mr. Murray’s well-earned 
reputation as preacher and author; and rejoice in the ac¬ 
cumulation of worldly goods which he was supposed, till 
now, to be possessed of ? If they do not own fine stock 
farms, would they not be glad to do so ? Would they 
not be content with investments which pay good divi¬ 
dends? 
There are religious sects who teach that the glorifica¬ 
tion of the Creator consists in mortifying the flesh, sub¬ 
duing all the natural instincts which that Creator has 
implanted, and in living on charity; but we do not be¬ 
lieve that the universal sentiment requires that a clergy¬ 
man shall be a pauper, or if left a legacy, shall bestow it 
all upon church work and charity. The worst feature of 
this whole business is that a hundred editors, who never 
saw Mr. Murray, are so ready to rejoice over his pecuni¬ 
ary failure, and to attribute it to bis dabbling in worldly 
matters. We do not know what the exact condition of 
Mr. Murray’s financial affairs may be at present, but we 
have every reason to suspect that his embarrassment has 
been caused solely by his newspaper venture. We know 
by long experience what a hill of difficulty a publisher 
has to climb to attain success, and what an absorber of 
avails' le funds a journal newly started is. Statistics 
show that forty-nine*of every fifty ventures fail, and we are 
aware of the struggle and self-sacrifice which Mr. Murray 
has made to establish the Oolclen Rule. Most beautiful 
is that title, and most noble its inception. We believe 
that it was the preacher’s own good heart which prompt¬ 
ed him to adopt it for his paper, and that in his walks 
with his fellow men he endeavored to follow that golden 
rule, and “ do unto others as he would be done by.” But 
alas ! for human charity ! Those whom he would serve 
have turned on him, and flung his precepts in his [face ! 
All good sportsmen who have the kinship of the frater¬ 
nity at heart, should rise up to defend his good name and 
fame. The time will soon come when those who have 
maligned him will hide their heads for shame. 
Preparatory Naval and Commercial School.— School 
Ships and Training Schools are good institutions, and we 
are glad that we are about to have more of them. Quite 
recently an academy of this sort was opened at Annapolis 
under Capt. Wilkinson, formerly of the U. S. Navy, and 
a most competent disciplinarian and instructor With a 
coips of skilled assistants. Many worthy young men go 
to sea without that preparation which a few months of 
judicious study would afford, and their ignorance there¬ 
fore closes to them the avenues of promotion, and keeps 
them always before the mast. This new school at Annap¬ 
olis proposes to instruct youths so thoroughly that they 
will need the experience of only one or two voyages to fit 
them to take oommand of a ship. No doubt many marine 
disasters are due to inoompetenoy. Few merohant cap¬ 
tains are able to rate their chronometers, ascertain varia¬ 
tions of the compass, or to solve other equally important 
problems on which the safety of a ship may depend. We 
take groat pleasure in recommending to this academy any 
of our acquaintances who may have sons intended for the 
merchant service. The session wifi commence Sept. 35th. 
The fireworks at Brighton Beach last Tuesday evening 
far surpassed in novel combination of colors, ingenuity of 
device and perfection of movement any pyrotechnic dis¬ 
play hitherto given in America. The attractions at 
Coney Island the coming month promise to be more 
numerous ^and varied than ever. 
Fat Men's Acc lama tion —The Fat Men held their four¬ 
teenth annual convention and clam-bake at Gregory’s 
Point, Conn., last Thursday. The Fat Men, like the old 
woman of the nursery rhyme, live only upon viotuals and 
drink. The victuals on the present occasion consisted of 
three barrels of sweet potatoes, seventy-five bushels of 
clams, 1,500 pounds of fish, 4,000 ears of com, 14,000pounds 
of lobsters and 1,000 chickens. There were 300 Fat Men and 
an unnumbered multitude of lean and hungry inhabitants 
who had come from far and near to snuff the savory odor of 
the clams, and perchance pick up here and there a discard¬ 
ed corn-cob. Some conception of the magnitude of the Fat 
Men’s annual feasts may be gathered from the fact that 
the grass covered mound, formed by the clam-shells anct 
refuse of the original clam-hake, fourteen years ago, was. 
recently excavated by a Connecticut archaeologist, under- 
the impression that it was a newly discovered Indian, 
mound. 
Huge in the individual waist-measurements of its com¬ 
ponent members and stupendous in the enormous aggre¬ 
gation of its colossal congregated physical vastness, the 
Fat Men's Association possesses a correllative expansive¬ 
ness of magnanimity and a voluminousness of cbivalric 
generosity which is all-embracing in its convocation of 
beatific immensity. Its constitution recognizes no dis¬ 
tinctions of race, creed, political belief, nor previous con¬ 
dition of attenuated emaciation. In deliberating upon' 
the weighty claims of a candidate for admission into its. 
Cyclopean fold, the Fat Men's Association regards only the; 
size of pants worn by the applicant, and the number of 
square yards of canvas be must lower when exhorted tO' 
pull down his vest. The question is simply and solely one 
of avoirdupois, just as it was in Holland in the good old 
days of the sorcerer’s scales. In those times the man or 
woman accused of being in league with the Devil was/ 
promptly plumped into the scales. If the beam did not tip- 
at a cert ain fixed number of pounds, the evidence was con¬ 
clusive ; the convicted wretch was packed off to be roasted. 
So are the F. M. A. candidates weighed in the balance ; 
happy fat men if they be not found wanting ! It were 
needless to say that no fictitious obesity avails here. No 
emulous frog who has blown himself up with voluminous 
tailoric devices passes here for the ox he is not. No scaly 
deceptions carry any weight. Levity meets its own de¬ 
served chagrin. 
If any of our readers are disposed to make light of the 
Fat Men’s Association, let them reflect upon the gravity of 
the members as here set forth. (The compositor will re¬ 
frain from adding extra ciphers.) The newly elected 
President, Mr. Willard Perkins, of Waterbury, Conn., 
weighs, or did weigh before the dinner, 396 pounds. We 
may safely count on his having brought the figure up to- 
400 during the feast. The retiring President, Mr. C. W. 
Bradley, tipped the beam at 313 pounds. The following, 
gentlemen, with the appended weights, were made vice- 
presidents : — H. D. Busch, of Hoboken, 411 ; Patrick 
Murphy, of Saugatuck, Conn., 378 ; J. E. Wheeler, of 
Saugatuck, Conn., 375 ; W. B. Sharp, of Danbury, Conn., 
213 ; Andrew Hull, of Danbury Conn., 220; Theodore 
M. Amsdell, of Albany, 220 : William Werner, of New 
York, 220 ; A. Wallace, of Bridgeport, Conn., 220; Wil¬ 
liam H. Risley, of Berlin, Conn., 225 ; James Hillender of 
New York, 255, and J. A. Kerr, of New York, 227. 
Among the other colossi were James Covert, who tips the 
beam at 800; Charles S. Warren, who is eighteen years 
old, and brings it down to 279 ; A. King, at 320, R. S. 
Roy, at 297, D. McCormack at 308 and James Norton at 
358. _ _ _ 
THE PHILOSOPHY OF FIELD SPORTS. 
A FRIEND of mine having a Chinese servant whose 
pronunciation of “r”, when asking a guest if he 
would have some rice pudding, was not remarkably 
appetizing, undertook to teach him to pronounce “r” 
correctly. 
“Now, sir,” said my friend, “say ahrrr." 
Sin (slowly and distinctly)— 1 “ ahrrrrr." 
“Now, say rrrrice" said his teacher, 
gin (slowly and distinctly)— “ lUice." 
Teacher—“No, no; say rrrrrr." 
Sin (slowly and distinctly) rrrrirr." 
Teacher—“Now, say rmrabbit.’’ 
Sin (slowly and distinctly) “ Ullabbit .” 
The difference between the abstract and the concrete is 
as puzzling to many of us as it was to Sin. However 
well we may know a thing theoretically, our knowledge 
often vanishes when we attempt to use it in facing reality. 
And nowhere is this more the case than in the soience of 
hunting. Take the best judge of distance that ever shot 
at Creedmoor, place him in the field, show him a stump 
or stone 200 yards away, and he will say, “It's about 200 
yards.” But put a deer there and let him kill it, and he 
will be very apt to say “400 yards”, and will firmly be¬ 
lieve it. So long as there is nothing to look at but distance 
in the abstract, he will say “ahrrr" as correctly as the 
Chinaman did; hut make it concrete by putting the deer 
there, and he will pronounce it “lllabbit" almost every 
time. This difficulty renders almost worthless all that 
part of our information about the distance game can be 
killed, or rather shot at to advantage, with either rifle 
or gun, and throws a miserable uncertainty upon most 
all other points that can be determined only by field 
experience. 
