790 
FOREST AND STREAM 
Devoted to Field and Aquatic Sports, Practical natural 
Histor y, Fish Culture, the Protection of Game, Preserva¬ 
tion of Forests, and the Inculcation in Men and Women op 
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 2833.1 
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VAav publisher-inserting our prospectus as above one time, with 
brief ediforialnotico calling attention thereto,and sendingmarked 
copy to us, will receive the Forest and Stream for one year. 
NEW YORK. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1879. 
To Correspondents. 
All eomimmieationB whatever, intendedfor publication, must be 
accompanied with real name of the writer as a guaranty of good 
faith and be addressed to Forest and Stream Publishino Com¬ 
pany. Names will not be published if objection be made. Anony¬ 
mous communications will not be regarded. 
We cannot promise to return rejected manuscripts. 
Secretaries of Clubs and Associations are urged to favor us wtih 
brief notes of their movements and transactions. 
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may not be read with propriety tn the home circle. 
*> We cun not lie responsible for dereliction of mall service if money 
reunited to us is lost.. 
S3T Trade supplied by Amerioan News Company. 
Personal. —Fayet{e S. Giles, Esq., the original pro¬ 
moter of the Blooming Grove Park enterprise, arrived in 
New York last Friday in the steamer Amerique, from 
Europe. He is, at present, a resident of Geneva, Switzer¬ 
land. He is stopping at the Hoffman House. 
Personal. —Mr. Alex. Pope, jr., of Boston, author and 
artist of Upland Game Birds and Water Fowl of the Uni¬ 
ted States, has received from the Emperor of Russia an 
order for one of his wood carvings of birds, specimens of 
which have been so admired at Tiffany & Co,'sand 
Schaus,’ in this city, Mr. Pope is now engaged on a 
work similar in design to the Game Birds, the subject bo- 
ing the moBt celebrated dogs of every strain owned in this 
country. ___ __ 
Obituary.— Capt. E. B. Staples, of Sarasota, Florida, 
died at his home on October 21st, from hardship and ex¬ 
posure. He was a gentleman of education and refinement, 
but his necessities compelled him to find occupation 
among the common fishermen at one of the salting estab¬ 
lishments on the West Coast. He was well known to the 
readers of Forest and Stream as “ Major Sarasota,” hav¬ 
ing contributed a series of ten articles descriptive of coast 
life and cruising in that section. He was employed in 
the Custom House at Pensacola until two years ago, 
when his ill health compelled him to resign this position, 
and in this precarious condition he sought to earn bread 
for his family. He leaves a wife with a broken arm, and 
two 3 hildren to continue the battle of life. Perhaps some 
of our well-to-do readers will feel like contributing a mite 
to the widow. Remittances can be made directly to Sara¬ 
sota, or intrusted to our care, or sent to Dr. Chas. J. Ken¬ 
worthy, Jacksonville, Florida. 
A Desirable Florida Trip.— Dr. C. J. Kenworthy, of 
Jacksonville, Fla., sends us the name of a New York 
gentleman, well known to the Doctor and to our our¬ 
selves. who desires to find one or two comrades for a trip 
to the western coast of Florida this winter. Dr, Ken¬ 
worthy says, and we can endorse it, that this is an unu¬ 
sual opportunity to secure the companionship of a genial 
gentleman and an enthusiastic sportsman. Having spent 
four winters on the coast between Cedar Keys and Char¬ 
lotte Harbor, he is thoroughly conversant with the fish¬ 
ing grounds, etc. We shall be liappy to put any of our 
readers in communication with the gentleman; and Dr. 
Kenworthy offers, as usual, to give all Forest and 
Stream friends whatever practical aid he can, 
THE NATURAL LAW OF DISTRIBUTION. 
T HE very respectable source from which the follow¬ 
ing Criticism emanates entitles it to consideration, 
though the dogmatic attitude assumed by the writer is not 
at all consistent with his concealment of his own name, 
and the appointment of a friend as sponsor for his commu¬ 
nication i— 
San Francisco, Oct. 8th.—Editor Forest and Stream :— 
In your issue of Sept. 18th,, your editorial “A 
Western Fish Cultural Association,” contains the fol¬ 
lowing :— 
"Tlie American Fish Cultural Association, composed of natur¬ 
alists, fishermen, lish mongers, fish breeders, and others interested 
in the subject, is an institution which lias existed for many years, 
its scientific discussions have been learned and useful, but Its 
eoonomio results have uot been sensibly apparent. Transplanted 
fish we find cannot be made 1 o thrive in localities where they are 
uot indigenous; nor can foreign animals be permanently engrafted 
upon the fauna of another country. The Creator has managed 
the distribution of species, and man's efforts to change their 
habitat can never be more than partially successful. The cisco, 
thowhitefish and tho lake trout will always be most at home in 
the great lakes; the basses, tbe perches, and the esocidse in the. 
vast middle tier of States; the shad, the salmon and tho sti-ipod 
bass in the East; and the carps and the suckers in the warmer 
waters of the South and the. great plains. On the Paeifie coast is 
a system of fauna almost wholly distinct—barred out by an im¬ 
passable mountain range. Nay, more; all the combined science 
offish culture seems unable to rehabilitate fresh waters which 
have passed within the preoints of civilisation, or to produce by 
artificial propagation more than a flabby and insipid counterfeit 
of their natural denizens." 
I do not desire to discuss the question whether a West¬ 
ern Fish Cultural Association is advisable or practical, 
but I do wish to combat the correctness of the con¬ 
clusions in the above quotation from your leader of 
Sept, 18th, 
Horses, cattle, asses, goats and sheep were not natives 
of this continent. Yet they seem to have been “perman¬ 
ently engrafted on the fauna of the country.” Wheat, 
rye, oats, barley, and other cereals, are all imported 
plants, natives oi other countries, and seem to have been 
permanently added to the flora of the country, The 
English Pheasant is a native of the country about the 
Caspian Sea, yet it seems to have been permanently added 
to Great Britain and the North of Europe, Catfish, (im- 
iurus albidis) natives of the Schuylkill and Raritan, from 
sixty-nine fish taken to the Pacific coast, where the 
Creator did not “manage” to distribute any of tbe 
species, have increased to millions, and are in nearly all 
of the rivers and lakes of California, a strip of territory 
seven hundred miles long and one hundred and fifty wide. 
They are as regularly Bold in all the markets as the most 
numerous and common Pacific coast fish. Carp, origi¬ 
nally from China, have been spread over all of Europe, 
and seem to be “permanently engrafted ” among the fish 
of that country. Nine brought from Hamburg to Cali¬ 
fornia, in 1872, have increased until some rivers and lakes 
are filled with them, and they form a material source of 
supply of fish food to numerous people of the counties 
away from the coast. 
Less than a million young shad from the Hudson, 
placed in the Sacramento River, are filling our rivers and 
bays with this luxury. In five years from the first 
planting of 100,000, shad in their season were regularly 
on the fish stalls of the markets of San Francisco, selling 
it is true at 75 cents per pound, but sufficiently numer¬ 
ous for all who would pay that price. 
If it were true that foreign animals, fish, birds, and 
plants could not be permanently grafted on the life of 
another country, the Editor of Forest and Stream 
would never have existed in America. H. D, D. 
We regret that exacting demands upon our space have 
prevented our giving attention to the above sooner, for 
we really have been impatient to demolish our disputa¬ 
tious friend. Of course we have sufficient regard for our 
editorial reputation not to make scientific statements ex¬ 
cept upon a basis of study and careful investigation. We 
know that the interesting statements made in the fore¬ 
going communication as to the successes in fish culture, 
are facts. They are the gratifying results of persistent 
efforts of intelligent men, and show how much men can do 
—not in setting aside the natural distribution of the 
species, but in adapting the indigenous creatures of a 
giveu habitat to a foreign locality. All these suoceBses 
were duly announced in these columns as they occurred, 
and most of them were first made public through the 
medium of this paper. Nevertheless, we thank our cor¬ 
respondent for again giving them deserved prominence 
by re-enumerating them, though we had not forgotten 
them. It is very true that the climatic zone which ex¬ 
tends from the Atlantic to the Pacific is so nearly uni¬ 
form in its conditions as to render the transplanting and 
aeclimatation of some of its fishes comparatively easy, 
Some species may even thrive by tbe interchange; yet 
we doubt if any of us will live to find the number very 
large, or that man’s efforts to change the natural distri¬ 
bution of species will even be “ more than partially suc¬ 
cessful,” as we have stated in the paragraph under dis¬ 
cussion. 
Just here we may say that, in throwing down a chal¬ 
lenge to us, our correspondent has not treated our prem¬ 
ises fairly; else he would have accepted our qualification 
contained in the word “partially.” We did not make 
the broad, sweeping assertion which his charge implies, 
because we used the statement that “ transplanted fish 
and foreign animals cannot be permanently engrafted 
upon the fauna of another country ” in their entirety and 
aggregation, but only partially.* The word “distribu- 
*We may In terpolate here that potato hues are one undoubted ex¬ 
ception to the general law.) (As far as investigation has discovered, 
tUey -will thrive anwlwre. 
tion” implies in itself that some creatures are better 
fitted for existence in one locality than another; the term 
“habitat” signifies separate locality. 
Our friend has gone far out of his way in begging the 
question. But since he has done so, let us see how nearly 
he has established his point as respects his horses, cattle, 
asses, goats, sheep, &c. It will be easy to refer to Wal¬ 
lace’s great work on the “Geographical Distribution of 
A ni m als.” There we discover that in Tertiary time no 
less than thirty distinct species of equine animals existed 
in Am erica, and some of them (those which appeared in the 
Pliocene) were not apparently different from the modern 
horse. These only became extinct at a comparatively 
recent period, for several species existed during tho 
Quaternary period. One breed of English cattle, from 
which some of our native stock may well have descended, 
are believed to be the direct and unmixed descendants 
of the European Urus, which eminent naturalists have 
pronounced not to differ more than specifically from the 
bison of our West. The sheep is considered by natural¬ 
ists to have been directly derived from an Old World 
species of monplon, or argali, wliich differs very slightly 
from our Rocky Mountain bighorn. Domestication has 
caused the variation which we see at present between the 
wild and the domestic species. As to the so-called Eng¬ 
lish pheasant, instanced by our “senior wrangler,” it 
certainly does well in Great Britain, but it is to all in¬ 
tents and purposes a domestic fowl, being protected in 
every way, and the eggs usually hatched by barn-door 
hens. The races of men, although World’s inhabitants, 
existing in all countries and climates, do not thrive 
equally well in all zones. 
It is apparent that if an animal be transported from one 
part of tbe globe to another, and placed in a situation 
where the conditions of its new life are not materially 
different from those of its native habitat— i. e., where 
climate is essentially the same, food similar and equally 
abundant, and the character of the country fitted to the 
peculiar wants of the species, it will flourish, unless ex¬ 
posed to the attacks of enemies. On the other hand, if 
an animal of the tropics be transferred to temperate 
or arctic climes, or vice versa, it will not survive the 
changes of its environment; it must sooner or later 
perish. 
--- » ■ e»- 
Some Sportsmen’s Finds.— The “sportsman” is com¬ 
ing to he as much of a hero in yarn spinning as the fish¬ 
erman used to be. If anything strange is discovered in 
the woods or on the mountain tops it was “ a sportsman ’’ 
who did it. The papers of the past few months have con¬ 
tained from time to time mention of a sportsman who, 
like Ali Baba, discovered a pot of buried treasure; a 
sportsman who found a man hanging to a tree; another 
who found himself lost, and a fourth—this species is very 
rare—who, having been found guilty by the judge, found 
himself in jail for bre akin g the game laws. In France 
they have permits de chasse, with which the would-be 
sportsman must be equipped before going forth to the 
fray. Hence, when a young gentleman arms himself 
with a permit de chasse and a blunderbuss and leaves 
home, the natural presumption is that he has gone to gun 
the wild bird of the wilderness. So when M. Angost, the 
treasurer of a great Parisian mercantile house, left home 
the other day for a hunting frolic, his wife kissed him 
good-bye, besecclied him with tears streaming down her 
cheeks not to let himself that horrid gun shoot, and sat 
her down, like Penelope, to sigh for his return. The day 
appointed for his coming passed by—no husband. Time 
went on, and no treasurer. The wife became anxious 
about her spouse ; the firm about their money, of which 
large sums had been entrusted to the keeping of tbe ab¬ 
sconded man, Finally the safe was broken open, and— 
the money was there, ever sou of it. Hardly had they 
counted it before the missing sportsman appeared. Con¬ 
fusion reigned supreme. The employers made their best 
apologies for their distrust, aud the distracted wife—well, 
it had been well for that husband had he never returned. 
For instead of hunting, as it. leaked out, he had been off 
on an excursion, a la Rinaldo and Armida, with an old 
flame. The quail never piped again for that man. Not 
to he outdone by the French, the American story-teller 
comes forward with his little tale, which is equally char¬ 
acteristic of the genius of the Yankee imagination. The 
daily papers last Sunday contained telegraphic reports 
from Pownal, Vt., something to this effect :— 
Much excitement prevails among the sportsmen of this 
vicinity over the story that a wild man was seen on Fri¬ 
day last by twoyoung men while hunting in the moun¬ 
tains south of WiUiamstown. They describe the creature 
as about five feet high, resembling a man in form 
and movement, but covered all over with bright red hair, 
and having a long straggling heard, and with very wild 
eyes. When first seen the creature sprang from behind 
a rocky cliff and started for the woods near by, wben, 
mistaking it for a bear or other wild animal, one of the 
men fired aud, it is thought, wounded it, for, with fierce 
ories of pain and rage, it turned on its assailants, driving 
them before it at high speed. They lost their guns ana 
amm unition in their flight, and dared not not return for 
fear of encountering the strange being. 
There is an old story, tola many years ago, of a 
strange animal frequently seen along the range of the 
Green Mountains, resembling a man in appearance, but 
so wild that no one could approach it near enough to tell 
what it was or where it dwelt. From time to time hunt- 
