Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



NEW YORK, DECEMBER 7, 1882. 



aoRBrnpomtmoE, 



Tun. Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 

 ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 

 Communications upon the subjects to which its pages are devoted are 

 respectfully invited. Anonymous communications will not be re- 

 garded. X.) name will be published except with writer's consent. 

 The. Editors are not responsible, for the views of correspondents. 



SUBSCRIPTIONS 

 May begin at any time. Subscription price, $4 per year ; $2 for six 

 months; to a club of three annual subscribers, three copies for $10; 

 Ave copies for (19. Bemit by registered letter, money-order, or draft, 

 payable to the Forest and Stream Publishing Company. The paper 

 may be obtained of newsdealers throughout the United States and 

 Canadas. On sale by the American Exchange, 449 Strand, "W". C, 

 London, England. Subscription agents for Great Britain— Messrs. 

 Sanisou Low, Marston. Searle and Eivington, 188 Fleet street, London. 



AD VERTISEMENTS. 

 Advertisements of an approved character only inserted. Inside 

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 \- !' ma'. ,, ,'i , - '■ i I. i... He inch, LTectisements should be sent 

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 Address all communications, 



Forest and Stream Publishing Co, 

 "Nos. 89 and 40 Pabk How. New Toek City. 



Barbed Wire Fences. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 

 South-Southerly. 



Ill ,.ve- ■.!;:- oi' 5 leeie. 



Birch and Paddle.— II. 



A .Munchausen Whole Stow. 



Wild Rice. 

 Natural History. 



The Pine Siskin. 



Hoop Snakes. 

 Came Bag and Gun. 



Wing-Shooting with the Rifle. 



Issaquena— Queen of the Doer. 



Gunning along the Sacramento. 



Ontario Deer Snooting. 



Great Deer Hunt at Sandwich. 



Philadelphia Notes. 



Is an Air Space Dangerous? 



■'!!■: V ■"■ :.!-' '.el .' 



Chicago Notes. 



Americans in Canadian Waters. 



St. .laekson and the Dog. 



e.nv. I Mini '.r.-aul f-.ehe.leie-' 

 SUA AND HlVEll FlSHIMG. 



Winter Talks on Summer Pas- 

 times.— IV. 

 My First Trout. 



Sea and River Fishing. 

 A Lecture, on Fishes. 

 Angler's Tournament Echoes. 

 National Rod and Reel Associ- 

 ation. 



FlSHCULTtTRE. 



Plants for Carp Ponds. 

 The Kennel,. 

 Eastern Field Trials. 

 The National Field Trials. 

 Robbin's Island Club's Field 

 Trials. 



e \ . . e: ' ..e i : ;.e:i . . I :<■; 



Newport vs. St. Louis. 



Chicago Thanksgiving Matches. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 

 Yachting and Canoeing. 



The Steam Yacht "A Booth." 



Handicaps. 



A San Francisco Single-Hander. 



Single Hand Yachts. 



Schoolmaster Needed. 



Prefers a Mate. 



Leave it Alone. 



Chicago "t achting. 



A Card. 



Chicago Y. C. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



Our Readers will confer a favor by sending us the names 

 of such 6/ $«$* ffieiuls as 



of the Forest and Stream, but who would presumably be 

 interested in the paper. 



TRAGEDY IN SPORT. 



OF course it was bound to come, sooner or later, and it 

 did happen on Thanksgiving Day, when, at a matinee 

 performance in Cincinnati, a variety actor, shooting at an 

 apple on the head of an actress, aimed a trifle too low, and, 

 with a bullet in her forehead, the girl fell forward dead. 

 It was a seaseless 'performance at best, but there was just 

 that, element of chance in it which mtide it interesting to 

 many. It was the hazardous nature of the effort which 

 made it tempting to the thousands who have thronged to 

 see the trick done in every city of the land. They did not 

 admire genuine marksmanship; they had no appreciation 

 of the real difficulties or real ease of the effort; they only 

 knew that there was a possibility of a tragedy, and that was 

 enough to insure a paying audience. The actor was doing 

 the backward shot, using a bit of mirror in which to take 

 bis sighte, and laying the barrel of the rifle backward over 

 his shoulder, at the trifling distance of thirty feet, it was 

 simply necessary to hold "dead on," and barring accidents 

 the result was a foregone one. But even with the chance 

 of accident reduced to one in a thousand, it was sure to 

 come. The man who pulled the trigger had intelligence to 

 know that, yet with this conviction that the fatal shot was 

 only a, matter of time, he. went on shooting and hitting, 

 until at last the shot, which he dreaded yet invited, came 

 ant! a life was yielded up. The explanation that the barrel 

 tipped up a little, owing to the loosening of the holding 

 spring, is immaterial. That is only one possible way of 

 bringing about the escape of the apple and the sending of 

 the bullet into the brain. 



The slaughterer was promptly acquitted on the curious 

 ground that he did not intend what lie had courted, and the 

 way is clear for some other similar fool to take the chances, 

 take the gate money, and ultimately lake the life. The 

 statute book of almost every State in the Union has the 

 clause which makes it, a misdemeanor to point a weapon 



either playfully or wantonly at another person, very 

 properly not making any distinction whatever between 

 loaded and empty weapons. This man. with his deadly 

 stage toy, has been going the country over breaking the law 

 of every State, and yet nobody seems to have made it, his 

 official business to cheek the law-breaker. 



The whole matter of legislation touching firearms is in a 

 state of contradiction. The. Constitution says that the 

 right of the citizens to bear arms shall not be infringed, and 

 this is very proper, but every effort of the law-maker and the 

 law-enforcer should be directed against any senseless play 

 with so potent a machine of mischief as a weapon may in a 

 second become. 



In ten years' acquaintance with Creedmoor and other 

 ranges we do not recall a single instauce of a rifleman of 

 prominence indulging in such an idiotic act as the pointing 

 of his rifle at another person. Now and then a half drunken 

 militiaman might be seea in the act, but the man who can 

 really shoot, who knows a gun well enough to use it with 

 effect, knows that it is not a plaything. 



The actor who has just committed a homicide may have 

 been a good shot, he may have known how deadly a pastime 

 he was indulging in, but there was the ignorant mob before 

 the footlights to be catered to. It was his business to get 

 their money and he. drew them to his show by coming down 

 to their low appreciation of what is attractive, and as they 

 nightly demanded to see how near he could come to enact- 

 ing a tragedy before them, he met their desires all too fully 

 and did indeed give them a real victim to look upon. 



It is manifestly idle to think of punishing the accessories 

 in this case, but if the principals are to go tree because there 

 is no specific enactment to cover the case, then one ought 

 to he passed without delay. It is carrying realism on the 

 stage too far when such an event as this happens. Fine 

 marksmanship may be shown in a split card or a well 

 grouped pasteboard target, but if the public insist upon a 

 human target, as in this case, theu the cruel senseless de- 

 mand should not he met. 



A New Bullet. —To arrest the bounding buck and 

 bring him to the ground insensible and yet unwounded ; to 

 prostrate the grizzly bear by an agency against which his 

 brute force is helpless; to secure a coveted ornithological 

 specimen without ruffling its feathers or staining them with 

 blood; these and many like feats are made possible by the 

 newly devised bullet, the freshest fruit, of German inventive 

 genius. This marvelous piece of ammunition is composed 

 of a brittle, substance containing within a powerful ames- 

 thetic. When the bullet strikes the object aimed 

 at it at once breaks and sets free the anaesthetic, which 

 instantaneously produces in the victim complete in- 

 sensibility, warranted to continue for twelve hour, 

 The invention is designed by its philanthropic discov- 

 erer to bring about an alleviation of the honors of war; 

 he urges that by the adoption of his device whole battalions 

 and armies may be prostrated on the field of battle, whence 

 they may be borne away in ambulances to prison, to return 

 again, after the recapitulation, to the bosoms of their joyful 

 families. But whether or not our sanguine German friend 

 succeeds in rendering less bloody the frays of- nations, he 

 may he assured of the gratitude of grizzly bear hunters, 

 who will henceforth pursue, their favorite pastime without 

 risking the integrity of their own scalps. Another invi 

 tion, which we likewise owe to Germany, is an engine in 

 which gunpowder is substituted for water, and the gases 

 generated by its combustion supply the motive power in 

 plaoe of steam. The principle upon which it works is sim- 

 ilar to that of the steam engine. A piston iu it hollow cyl- 

 inder is set, in motion and driven to and fro by the ignition 

 of small quantities of gunpowder, first on one side and then 

 on the other. 



A Holiday Hint.— Iu the advertising pages «f this 

 journal will be found a very complete directory of dealers 



iu sportsmen's goods. At, thene establishments will be 

 found a thousand and one artioleS of beauty and worth, 

 any one of which will prove a most, acceptable gift to one 

 with tastes for the recreations of forest and stream. 



Game Seasons. — We republish for convenience of refer- 

 ence full list of the, game and fish seasons originally printed 

 in our issue of July 20. Owing to the pressure upon our 

 space by the very full report, of the field trials, we are com- 

 pelled to defer to our next issue the supplementary table, 

 "Schedule B," which gives the exceptions, local laws, etc. 



BARBED WIRE FENCES. 

 r T , HEY are cheap, effective, and take up almost no room 

 -*- at, all, but. the men who shoot do not like them. These 

 ordinary barbed wire fences, which have within the past 

 few years so multiplied throughout this country and es- 

 pecially in the West, often cause very serious injury to 

 dogs, which, coming in contact with them, when running 

 at a high rate of speed, may be badly torn. The danger is 

 a new and serious one. It is true that dogs soon learn the 

 danger which is concealed in the almost invisible wires 

 which mark the boundaries of a field, but in acquiring this 

 knowledge they are likely to suffer severely. 



A correspondent voices a sentiment, which we believe to 

 be widespread, in the following letter: 



Can you give any information to me and others of your readers as 

 to the liability of those wbo maintain these fences, for injuries in- 

 nieti it to man or beast by their means? Surely spring guns or pit- 

 falls are not, legal, even as against trespassers. I think it was settled 

 long ago in England that owners of la,, eeie.Y ,', h- ,i, i riair- 



ages, and also criminally iu case of serious damage to the person. I 

 cann»t see why the same principle should not apply to these cruel 

 wire fences. 



I have- known of yonng cqlts being disembowled by them in the 

 West; fortunately the colts and the fences belonged to the same per- 

 son. Only to-day I just managed to save my dogs from dashing upon 

 one of them where destruction would have been certain at the pace 

 they were going. A common moral sense and regard for the prop- 

 erty of others ought to have prevented their use. What is the law? 

 It interests everyone to know, and sportsmen especially. D. 



It is a di iti cult matter to answer satisfactorily the in- 

 quiries here made. We think, however, that there have 

 been no statutes passed which take cognizance of these 

 barbed wire fences, nor are there, so far as we are aware, 

 any decisions which at all bear upon the point. The fence 

 is the actual property of the landowner; it is erected for the 

 double purpose of confining his own stock and keeping off 

 trespassers, Probably no one has any right to touch it, to 

 lean up agaimst it, or to get over or through it. If the land- 

 holder permits individuals to cross his property it is only by 

 courtesy that the privilege is granted. It may very likely be 

 the case that some farmers put up these fences for the 

 especial purpose of keeping off men and dogs. 



And we. are inclined to think that the law as it stands at 

 present is on their side. The English decisions would cer- 

 tainly seem to point to this conclusion, as any one who will 

 take the trouble to look the matter up will see. In S Fisher's 

 Dig. 6105 (title Nuisance, I,, 7(c)) this subject is treated 

 very fully. It would occupy too much space to quote at 

 length what is said on this point, but the sum and substance 

 of it, is that a man may keep about what, he pleases on his 

 own land unless forbidden by statute. 



It may certainly be doubted whether a man has a right to 

 hang razor blades among his grape vines to protect them 

 from thieves, or to balance a dynamite cartridge over the 

 door of his chicken house to protect his hen roosts, yet 

 those who consider that a trespasser crosses a- fence at his 

 own peril commit themselves to this view. 



Whatever the law may now be, it seems clear that these 

 barbed wire fences may do a great deal of damage, and that 

 their use ought to be in some way restricted. A plain wire 

 fence, especially if it has a rail or pole at the top, is quite as 

 efficacious in restraining the vagrant cattle as one formed of 

 these dangerous and yet invisible threads bristling with spikes. 



We desire nothing more than that the rights of the farm- 

 ers should be protected in all possible ways, but these 

 fences arc so dangerous to animals of all kinds that it seems 

 that their use should be in some way modified. 



At the same time, as things are at present, the barbed 

 fences will stand. Any one can of course begin a suit for 

 damages for injuries inflicted, and have the matter tested 

 in the courts. But we think that the sportsman had better 

 make up his mind to regard these barbed fences as a new 

 factor wmich has some into the carrying on of a day's shoot- 

 ing, and to protect himself against them by such means as 

 he can best employ, without interfering with the rights of 

 the land owner. 



Death of Samuel Remington. — Mr. Samuel Reming- 

 ton, president of the firm of E. Remington A Sons, died 

 at his residence in this city last Friday, December 1, aged 

 65 years. He was the financial manager of the company, 

 and for many years the European agent, iu which posi- 

 tion he secured for the Remingtons their large foreign con- 

 tracts, notably those of Egypt and Spain. He was an 

 energetic worker, was possessed of liberal business views, 

 and joined with his brothers in their schemes of philan- 

 thropy, among which was the endowment of Syracuse 

 University. Mr Remington leaves a widow, three sons 

 and a daughter. 



