830 
' FOREST AND STREAM. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 
Devoted to Field and Aquatic Sports, Practical Natural 
Hjbtoby, Fish Culture, tub Protection op Game, Preserva¬ 
tion op 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 8882.1 
TERMS, FOUR DOLLARS A YEAR, STRICTLY XN ADVANCE. 
Advertising Rates, 
Inside pages, nonparlel type, 25 cents per line; outside page, 10 
oents Special rates for three, six and twelve months. Notices in 
editorial column, 50 cents per line—eight words to the line, and 
twelve lines to one inch. _ . . , 
Advertisements should be sent in by Saturday of each week, if 
P< Al| b transient advertisements must be accompanied with the 
money or they will not be inserted. 
jjo advertisement or business notioe of an immoral character 
^ll be received on any terms. 
*,*An v publisher inserting our prospectus as above one time, with 
brief editorial notice calling attention thereto,and sending marked 
copy to us, will receive the Forest and Stream for one year. 
NEW YORK, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20,1879. 
To Correspondents. 
All communications whatever, Intended for publication, must be 
accompanied with real name of the writer as a guaranty of good 
faith and bo addressed to Forest and Stream Purlisionq Com¬ 
pany. Names will not be published if objection bernade. 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 
thepaper that 
• Wbcau notheres ponaiSef onderellction of mull service if money 
:emited to us is lost. 
Newfoundland’s Hospitality.— The passengers of the 
steamship Arizona, who were detained at St, John, New¬ 
foundland, the other day, after the collision of that 
steamer with an iceberg, found the people of that queer 
town decidedly hospitable. Among the names of those 
who ministered to their comfort and helped to relieve 
the vexation of delay, we notice that of our correspond¬ 
ent, Mr. M. M. Harvey. Several shooting parties were 
organized, but the ferae naturae had not enough patriot¬ 
ism to present themselves for slaughter, and so the bags 
were not extraordinary. But several men may now re¬ 
late personal reminiscences of sport in Newfoundland 
who never had any expectation of a hunting trip there. 
Among the passengers thus entertained were Dr. E. A. 
Crane and wife, whose departure from New York we 
had previously announced. Dr. Crane is at present the 
publisher of the American Register at Paris, where he has 
resided for fifteen years. Old schoolday memories are 
associated with Mb name. 
American Institute Fair. —The fair is wonderfully 
omplete and interesting. The vast building is literally 
jammed with new and beautiful goods of all kinds and 
descriptions. There is something to interest everybody. 
There are very many beautiful and useful household goods, 
for the kitchen, the parlor, the library, the bed-chamber, 
and the ladies, boudoir; the display of fine American 
china, fully equal to the best of foreign make, is very large 
and much admired; sewing macliines and their attach¬ 
ments are also numerous; but to mention all the attract¬ 
ions is simply impossible. 
Machinery Hall, always a point of attraction, iB tMs 
year particularly full of large and small interesting en¬ 
gines, all in full running order. Here a well-boring com¬ 
pany are sinking an artesian well wMch is to supply water 
for the entire vast Institute building. It has already 
reached a depth of nearly ninety feet, over seventy of it 
through solid rock, and is steadily going deeper at the rate 
of about twelve to fifteen feet per day. 
The Art Gallery is handsomely arranged and has an ex¬ 
cellent display of beautiful photographs, and fine speci¬ 
mens of free hand crayon drawing. A grand concert is 
given by Downing’s celebrated 9th Regiment band, who 
perform selections from Wagner, Strauss, Gounod, Mo¬ 
zart, Hotow, and other well known composers. 
The fair closes on the 29 th inst., and we cordially advise 
our readers to pay at least one visit to what is just now 
on# of the most attractive spots in New York, the Ameri¬ 
can Institute Fair. 
LONG DISTANCE WALKING. 
R EFERRING to the most conspicuous of the recent 
pedestrian competitions, it is a remarkable fact, al¬ 
ready noted, that champion walkers, so designated, who 
had previously earned high scores by prodigious efforts, 
signally failed to repeat their performances, or to accom¬ 
plish anything like what the public were led to expect 
from their earlier records. Evidently their capability had 
become impaired by their having previously taxed their 
physical powers to their utmost limit. Repeated drains 
inevitably exhaust the system and place it beyond the 
ability of the strongest constitution to entirely recuper¬ 
ate. Those who overtax nature must pay the penalty, 
and the same fate which overtook Weston, Brown and 
O'Leary, is undoubtedly in store for other victors, should 
their powers of endurance be repeatedly overstrained. 
It is noteworthy also, that the professional walkers, bo 
styled, are not habitual walkers, like infantry soldiers, 
plainsmen, and some Indian tribes, and that in the Rowell 
contest they easily defeated the “wheelbarrow man," 
who had journeyed on foot across the continent; the 
California scout and hunter, the letter-carrier who makes 
his daily rounds year in and year out; and other senter¬ 
ing the lists of competitors whose avocations keep 
them continually on their feet and their muscles in con¬ 
stant, healthy play. Professional walkers qualify them¬ 
selves for special efforts by a system of training and a 
proper regimen continued throughout a prescribed period, 
but no qualification will enable them to sustain the wear 
and tear of continued physical abuse. They must break 
down soon and be incapacitated forever thereafter, while 
the soldier, the Indian runner, and the nomadic trapper 
will endure to a good athletic old age. Their sinews and 
muscles are kept hard and flexible by constant usage, so 
that they can sustain a given amount of prolonged jour¬ 
neying without excessive fatigue or detriment. Perhaps 
the maximum distance would be fifty miles per day. 
Gen. Grant, in one of his characteristic little speeches, 
remarked that we have no “ standing ” army, because 
our soldiers are constantly on the move, Certainlyfno 
body of troops are kept in more constant active service 
than our forces on the frontier and in the Indian coun¬ 
try. What they can accomplish when necessity requires 
is illustrated by Gen. Merritt's recent march into the In¬ 
dian country, when the soldiers tramped from seventy to 
eighty miles a day over rough broken ground, encum¬ 
bered with the heavy weight of guns and accoutrements, 
while the best of our go-as-you-please pedestrians, with 
the finest of tracks, the most careful attention, the 
choicest food and the airiest costumes, accomplished a 
little more than a hundred miles in their best single day’s 
walk. 
In days past hundreds of emigrant and traders’ trains 
have crossed the plains to the Rocky Mountains, the 
journey occupying several weeks, and sometimes months. 
The average rate of speed was about two and a half 
miles per hour. At this gait thirty miles can be comfort¬ 
ably overcome in twelve walking hours. The approved 
practice was to break camp at daylight, wMch in mid¬ 
summer occurs before 4 o’clock, start out on a cup of 
coffee and a biscuit, travel until 7 o’clock (seven and a 
half miles), then take a hearty breakfast for an hour, 
then travel until 12 o’olock (ten miles); halt for two 
hours during the heat of the day, and complete the re¬ 
maining twelve and a half miles in time to make camp 
again before sundown, thus allowing at least eight full 
hours for rest and sleep. By tMs system a journey can 
be indefinitely prolonged; and by some such division 
of time the wheelbarrow man was enabled to accom¬ 
plish Mb 8,000 mile journey with comparative ease in 
the short time he did. 
Tliree mil es an hour is as fast as a man can comfort¬ 
ably walk for prolonged distances. Four miles an hour 
is very fast walking, and we doubt if such a gait would 
accomplish as much in the long run as a less rate of 
speed. Should any of our sportsmen undertake long 
pedestrian journeys, as they sometimes incline to do, 
we advise them to try the plan suggested. We have 
tried it ourselves for three months at a time, and know 
how it works. It is quite likely that sportsmen in quest 
of prairie fowl often walk fully thirty miles a day with¬ 
out being aware of the distance, and they do this day 
after day without conscious fatigue. We would recom¬ 
mend in this connection for study, a little book recently 
published by the Harper Brothers, entitled “A Manual 
for Muscular Development,” by William Blakie, a gen¬ 
tleman who has devoted years of thought and work to 
the problem of physical education. 
—The new village barber, instead of setting up the reg¬ 
ulation striped pole for a sign, placed a plump barn-yard 
fowl—a hen—over Ms door. When asked what his idea 
was in doing so, he replied: “Why, don’t you see ? Out- 
cut-cut—hair, cut 1 ” We did'nt take that into our cackle- 
ation. 
—While in New Jersey the other day, we chanced to 
meet four hunters with guns coming along the road, but 
we were not credulous enough to make it a four-gun con¬ 
clusion that they would kill anything. 
The Snake-Stones of India.— The snake-stone is cred¬ 
ited with extraordinary power as an antidote for the 
bite of the dreaded cobra, and it is believed is generally 
used by the notorious snake-charmers. A Bombay cor¬ 
respondent of the New York Sun (a journal, by the way, 
wMch enjoys a sort of monopoly in snake stories and the 
natural Mstory of snakes) states that he saw a chicken die 
in a few seconds from the bite of a cobra, wMch at the 
same time had bitten the hand of a snake-charmer who 
was giving exMbitions. The juggler showed no alarm, 
but quietly applied to the wound “ a dark, hard substance 
about the size of a vest-button,” wMch resembled a shell 
cameo and felt more like a fine-grained hone than any¬ 
thing else.” This was one of the famous “ mad-stones of 
India.” No injury resulted from the bite. The effective 
and marvellous properties of this antidote are more sin¬ 
gularly illustrated by the following incident given by the 
narrator. He writes : 
The Rajpoot, taking the stone between his thumb and 
finger, held it out towards the serpent, whose rage seemed 
not to have at all subsided. As though some electric 
current had suddenly Btruck it, the reptile drew back its 
head as far as it could, and, without attempting to strike, 
Mssed less and less violently, swayed from one side to the 
other, folded its hood, loosened its coil, and sank lower 
and lower until it lay, silent and relaxed, on the floor, the 
charmer constantly pushing the mad-stone nearer and 
nearer towards its head until he touched the skin, and 
held it there. 
Then, next, the writer, who shows himself to be pos¬ 
sessed of extraordinary nerve, “ took the stone in my own 
hands, and, first arousing the snake by teasing it until 
it had risen in rage at me, and was hissing as venom¬ 
ously as before, I moved it towards him. The result was 
as before, the snake coming rapidly under the power of 
the stone, uncoiling itself, staggering, and falling limp 
in a heap.” 
These are certainly extraordinary statements, wMch 
seem to establish in the most incredulous a belief in the 
efficacy of the snake-stones. The writer declines to ex¬ 
plain the seeming mystery ; but he remarks incidentally, 
and with candor, that Dr. Fayrer, in his splendidly illus¬ 
trated work on the Indian “ Thanatophidia,” expresses 
his entire disbelief in the virtue of these mad-stones, and 
describes his ineffectual attempts to save with them the 
lives of dogs wMch had been bitten by cobras ; also that 
he had been told that a standing reward of some thou¬ 
sands of rupees is offered by the British Government for 
a stone or any other antidote to tMs deadly poison. 
So it would Beem that the apparent immunity of the 
snake-charmer may be only a juggling trick after all. 
The origin of these snake-stones is described to be in 
the roof of the mouth of about one cobra in a hundred. 
It is not attached to the bone of the skull, but may be 
separated by simply cutting the skin which covers it. 
The mouth will bleed profusely after the operation, and 
the snake will survive only four or five days. 
Newspaper Zoology.— The animals did not all go into 
the Ark. Not that the Ark could not have held them. 
Not that Noah, the first great Bamum of his race, failed 
to obtain specimens through any lack of enterprise. Had 
that venerable sailor and menagerie man sent his trusty 
agents into the uttermost wildernesses of Africa and 
South America he could not have procured one of these 
creatures, muoh less two. They were omitted in the orig¬ 
inal scheme of creation. The world was not big enough 
for them in those days. It has only been since the devel¬ 
opment of this g-r-e-a-t and glorious country that these 
creatures have been created—or manufactured—to fill it. 
There is for example the great fiery serpent, half a mile 
long and as big around as a meeting-house, wMch rolls 
in convoluting folds over the boundless prairies, only to 
lose itself at length in the mighty flood of the Mississippi. 
As a general thing the whole State—men, women, chil¬ 
dren, militia, dogs, railroad trains and old Revolution¬ 
ary muskets—pursue the monster through the fields and 
forests and the newspaper columns. Save a few small 
boys and one or two infant girls this creature rarely de¬ 
stroys human life. Of an entirely different species is the 
peripatetic rooster, wMch flops headlessly o’er the land, 
usually starting somewhere at the West and making his 
way toward the Orient. Martin Ryan or Daniel Jones 
or Thomas Parsons, an agent, telegraph operator, or at 
least a switch-tender on the A. B. C. D. E. F. W. X. Y. Z. 
Railroad, captures a rooster, and with the assistance of 
his brother succeeds in chopping the beast’s head off. In 
about half an hour the decapitated object arises, flops its 
wings, and crows. Then Martin Ryan turns showman, 
takes the rooster—carefully preserving the head in a glass 
jar—and proceeds to gather in the golden eggs. (N. B.— 
Roosters don’t generally lay eggs, but headless roosters 
do lay the kind aforesaid). 
These are but two specimens of a vast number of zoo¬ 
logical monstrosities, wMch we read of almost every day 
in the newspapers. Does any one know where they real¬ 
ly come from? From the eye of the reporter. A pretty 
big eye that is, too. Does any one know what becomes 
of them? Some of them we have taken pains to follow. 
They are lost in the Mississippi; they run down huge cav¬ 
erns in the earth, or they are garnered into the dead 
