FOREST AND STREAM, 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL, 
Duvoted to Fibld and Aquatic Spouts, Practical Natural 
History, Fish Culture, the Protection of Game, Preserva¬ 
tion or Forests, and the Inculcation ln Men and Women of 
a Healthy Interest in Out-Door Recreation and Study : 
PUBLISHED BY 
FOREST AN1> STREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
—AT— 
HO. Ill PULTON STREET, NEW YORK. 
[Post Office Box 2832.1 
TERMS, FOUR DOLLARS A YEAR, STRICTLY IN ADVANCE. 
Advertising Rates. 
Inside pages, nonpariel type, 25 cents per line; outside page, 40 
cents. Special rates lor three, six and twelve months. Notices tn 
editorial column, 50 cents per line—eight words to the line,and 
twelve lines to one inch. 
Advertisements should he sent m by Saturday of each week, it 
possible. • 
All transient advertisements must bo accompanied with the 
money or they will not be inserted. 
i’o advertisement or business notice of an immoral character 
vrtil be received on any terms. 
%’Any publisher Inserting our prospectus as above one time, with 
brief editorialnotice calling attention thereto,and sending marked 
copy to ns, will receive the Forest and Stream for one year. 
NEW YORK, THURSDAY, DECEMBER IS, 1879. 
To Correspondents. 
All communications 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 Publishing Com¬ 
pany. NameswiLLnot 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 aro urged to favor us wtih 
brief notes of their movements and transactions. 
Nothing will he admitted to any department of thepaper that 
may not be read with propriety in the home circle. 
•We cannotbe responsible for dereliction of mail service if money 
remited to us is lost. 
Trade supplied by American News Company. 
Izaak Walton on tbe News Stands. —The English 
Fishing Gazette has for a portion of its title-piece a hand¬ 
some vignette of the patron saint of the craft, Izaak Wal¬ 
ton. The good old soul could hardly have dreamed of thus 
achieving the news-stand fame of these latter days, for that 
peculiar institution itself sprung into sudden existence 
long after his day. Nor could the most sanguine angler 
of those days have anticipated a time when a Fishing Ga¬ 
zette should be published weekly—-its sixteen pages de¬ 
voted solely to the rod and hne. Could the old gentleman 
walk among us for a day or two, his astonishment at all 
the new-fangled piscatorial contrivances of the London of 
the present, would culminate when he beheld his own 
genial self in antique dress thus displayed on the street 
corner, in railroad depot, and hotel corridor. There he is, 
encircled by the legend, “Born, 1593—Izaak Walton: 
died, 1688,'’ which ho that runs may read. And the most 
careless passer by, it seems to us, should stop to look for 
a moment at the kindly face there, with the long locks of 
the day, the broad collar, and the coat with the lace and 
the great buttons, Walton is preaching to-day, as he 
preached two hundred years ago, a gospel of the woods 
and streams, and the things of nature as God made them 
for man. The editor of the Fishing Gazette has put on 
either side of the central vignette a scene from this out- 
of-doors world—on the right, the sea with the rising sun, 
and on the left a stream with village and stretch of wood¬ 
land ; and the busy worker in the very heart of London 
town, may here catch a glimpse of the old familiar days 
of his childhood, and snuff again the salt breeze of his 
seaside home. It would be a vain subject of conjecture, 
but we are confident that this portrait of the father of 
angling, and these enticing sketohes, must have lured 
many a man out from the city walls for a tramp beside 
the river with rod and creel and lightsome heart, 
- »« ■ > ' * - 
A Suggestion to Postmaster Key. —The Post-Office 
Department now requires all letter writers to include the 
county, as well as the town, in the addresses of their 
missives, Now, if the Department itself would only re¬ 
quire all postmasters to incorporate the counties in their 
official post-mark stamps, it would be of material assist¬ 
ance it) imparting to tire public a knowledge of geography 
of which they seem to be generally deficient; Possibly, 
however, the sale of the “ Postal Guide” is of paramount 
consideration. 
England and Turkey.— About 10,000 turkeys have 
been shipped from Canada to England, Christinas! 
THE FORESTER SCHOOL OF BATHOS. 
W E have already spoken of the fashion set by Fores¬ 
ter, and followed by his disciples, of making the 
potations of the sportsman a prominent feature of field 
stories : and we have sometimes thought that the author 
has had a very appreciable influence upon the literary 
style of amateur writers upon sporting topics. There is a 
class of young rhapsodista who profess to find in Forester 
beauty of sentiment and style exhibited by no other Eng¬ 
lish author; and who, consequently, model their own ef¬ 
fusions after his style. Now. without detracting in the 
'least from Forester’s deserved great fame, we ma.y sug¬ 
gest that in common with many writers of his time, he 
is somewhat out of fashion so far as mode of expres¬ 
sion is concerned. The adjective does not play so impor¬ 
tant a part now as it did then, We have now-a-days less 
of vague, expansive soaring, and more of common sense, 
straightforward, plain English prose, One reason of this 
is, that one hundred authors are now writing where ten 
were writing then. To find an audience the one hundred 
must be much more terse and explicit than it was neces¬ 
sary for the ten to be. Washingtonlrving’s Sketch Book 
is not read as much as formerly ; not alone because it is 
crowded out by the thousand and one new hooks of like 
character, hut because its style is too rambling and dif¬ 
fuse for the day. The intensity and compactness which 
mark the American’s character in other fields, has its in¬ 
fluence also in literature. In this literary world it is true 
this new order of things may be a mistake, but at all 
events the tendency becomes well defined to anyone who 
will take the pains to compare the old and the new books 
in his library. 
We have, in the writings of some of the self-constitu¬ 
ted sporting literature oracles of the day, a survival of the 
crudities and faults of the American literature of the 
past. This is not difficult to explain. It is always easier 
to imitate faults than excellencies to catch the hollow 
form of a writer’s style without at all entering into the 
spirit of his writings. And, again, the influence of a 
Writer who is the only author, or one of a very few 
authors, read by the amateur wielder of the pen, is so un¬ 
mistakable that he falls unconsciously into the same set 
phrases and turns of expression. When a young man 
says of Frank Forester’s writings, that “All bear the in¬ 
delible impress of a master min d, and have the qualities 
of imperishable works,” and that “the bright thoughts 
of his siu-passmg genius, as embalmed in his writings, 
will ever remain a grand and indestructible monument 
to his memory, more durable than bronze or granite me¬ 
morial, as these shall remain fresh and beautiful when 
the more perishable material would have crumbled or 
been consumed by rust; ” and, still farther, that “the 
spirit of Herbert is still with us,” and that “we feel its 
presence : we are cheered by the inspired teachings, and 
under the consolation thus afforded, are better able to 
bear the loss of (his material form and awe-inspiring pres¬ 
ence ; ” and when we read such stuff as this, written by 
a person of the masculine gender, and published in the 
Year of Our Grace, One thousand, eight hundred and sev¬ 
enty-nine, we may safely conclude that something more 
than the literary taste of the writer is affected by the de¬ 
votion to “ the lamented master of the oraft; ” a devotion 
so intense, indeed, that we are ^threatened with its out¬ 
growth at a futiire date, in the shape of a “ work,” illus¬ 
trative of the literary achievements of the spirit afore¬ 
said. 
It is a relief to turn from this balloon style of adjective 
flying to the numberless common sense and valuable 
papers which are written by sportsmen, for sportsmen, 
and published in the sportsmen’s journals of the day. 
The Forester school is only a little orbit within itself, 
growing graduallyjsmaller from year to year. The ma¬ 
jority of those who employ their pens in writing to For¬ 
est and Stream, even though they are non-professional 
writers, put their ideas into plain, intelligible prose. Were 
this not the case we should long since have been forced to 
suspend publication; for, however much the Forester 
Bchool may enjoy composing their effusions, it is certain 
that people will not pay four dollars per jyeaa? for the 
privilege of reading them. 
While the writings of Forester hold a deservedly high 
place in the library of the sportsman, and are likely to 
maintain that place for a long time to come, we are 
gratified to seethe influence of their1style gradually de¬ 
creasing among writers. 
Some have been found to argue that composition is a 
direct means of culture; that if a person has appeared in 
print—even though it be only sandwiched in among the 
advertising columns of a tailor’s monthly—it is a step in 
intellectual growth. The mere publication of the article 
does not, in itself, argue such an advance, but its subject 
matter may. Possibly, too, even in the latter case, it 
would have been better worth the literary aspirant's time 
and trouble to have absorbed the writings of some stand¬ 
ard thinker, than to have palmed hisjown crudities olf 
upon the world. 
The best writing is that of him who has something to 
say. The plain statement of an observation in natural 
history, projectiles, or mechanics, a practical description 
of a shooting cr fishing trip, and ^kindred communica, 
tions, are more useful to the sportsman than all the infla¬ 
tions of the aping imitators of blank verse. Posing on 
the pinnacle of a church steeple may make the populace 
open wide its mouth in wonder, hut it is, on the whole- 
neither a useful nor a lucrative performance. 
A GLANCE AT THE PAST CRICKET 
SEASON. 
As loaves oil trees the life of man is found, 
Now green in youth, now withering On the ground; 
Another race the following spring supplies— 
They fall successive, and successive rise. 
So generations in their course decay. 
So flourish these when those have passed away. * * 
C ONSIDERING the immense extent of the American 
continent, and the great increase of the game, 
which, in many places, is but yet imperfectly understood 
and reported, it is almost impossible to give a correct re¬ 
sume of the season of 1879, 
Geographically, cricket is played from Nova Scotia in 
the East, to San Francisco in the West; while it is not 
unknown in Manitoba in the North, or Louisiana in the 
South, Even the disciples of Joseph Smith have been 
found, during the past season, trundling the ball at Salt 
Lake City, and the moonshiners of North Carolina, de¬ 
serting their mountain stills to follow the same recrea¬ 
tion. Notwithstanding that the game has Bprung into 
life in many queer, out-of-the-way places, its marked in¬ 
crease in popularity has been more fully illustrated in the 
Middle States—27,000 persons alone witnessing one match 
in Philadelphia: and in the Dominion of Canada we also 
find thegame has been extensively patronized. Itwillbe 
perfectly safe to say, that over a hundred regularly organ¬ 
ized clubs have been formed, many of whom have en¬ 
gaged in both local and foreign matches. Although it is 
true that the visits of both the Irish and English teams and 
the Canadian matches, have given the game an impetus 
yet early in the year, before their coming, it could be 
seen that the game had never before found such a strong 
foot-hold. It began to crop up in our finest colleges and 
schools, and it is to these institutions that thegame must 
look for its strongest support and best exponents, 
Glancing baokwards twenty years, we see the school¬ 
boy with his home made bat, weighing at least three 
pounds, content to play his Saturday game on some well- 
worn and hardened spot on any rough unfenced common; 
and' only too happy if left unmolested. When some out- 
of-town eleven put in an appearance, he would beg a day 
off from school, and from the sharp edge of a post and 
rail fence, watch the game in silent earnest. With 
solemn awe, would he look up in the face of “ the profes¬ 
sional,” and take in his make np from cap to spikes, and 
0 n the Saturday following he would limp home with 
larger lumps than ever on his legs. Is that the case of 
to-day? Not by a great deal. The scholar, now, when 
not occupied by “ taking a few ” from his club’s profes¬ 
sional, can be seen sitting on the club house porch, with 
one of “ Oohbet’shest” between his well padded knees, 
criticising the play of his elders with a deal more truth 
than poetry- Mr. Daft is no terror to him; he even 
doubts if Shaw can readily get his wicket, This boy has 
learnt the game and has had his practice on a first class 
wicket where he knows no fear, and besides this has had 
good tuition from those who know the game, and he has 
acquired confidence. It is this class which is now filling 
many of our best elevens, and doing good service for 
their clubs. Nor should we, in our retrospect, forget the 
great improvement made in our cricket grounds, for it is 
mainly due to their excellence that the tyrogetsliis fond¬ 
ness for the game, and the plucky one becomes a player. 
We cannot urge too strongly the absolute necessity of 
having good grounds upon which to play. They cannot be 
too level or well cared for. 
Besides the new clubs we have mentioned, there is 
every reason to believe that a large majority of the old 
organizations have had many new recruits, and retained 
their old members. There is no reason why every club 
in the country should not be in a flourishing and pros¬ 
perous condition ; and when it is seen that any are run¬ 
ning down and losing caste, the cause can generally be 
traced to a lukewarm and inefficient management. Too 
many clubs are saddled by some autocrat—some “old 
man of the sea,” and the sooner these organizations free 
themselves of their burden, the better it will be for the 
game of cricket. 
The season opened early in May with a match played 
at Hoboken, between an eleven including seven of Lord 
Harris’Australian team, and an amalgamated team made 
up of New York and Philadelphia players. The next im¬ 
portant feature was the United States-Canada match, 
played in August at Ottawa, and then followed the suc¬ 
cessful tour of the Hamilton Club, while later on oame 
the amateur Irish and professional English elevens. 
Sandwiched between these great events were innumer¬ 
able local matches and several minor tours, of which those 
of the Peninsular and Staten Island Clubs come fore¬ 
most. Never before in the history of American cricket 
were there so many matches played, or so many scores 
of games recorded. Heretofore cricket has been 
confined to certain localities, but last season the game 
