THE STOCKING OF OUR EASTERN. BAR¬ 
RENS WITH PINNATED GROUSE. 
O NE of our most excellent contributors, “Homo,” whose 
articles are always so much esteemed by our read¬ 
ers, has sent us a communication with the above heading, 
which we give in full herewith.. Gentlemen abroad are 
directing their attention to the introduction of this very 
same bird—the pinnated grouse, or prairie chicken 1 —and 
numerous inquiries have been sent to us from England in 
regard to their habits. 
In the last number of Forest and Stream we gave in a 
short paragraph an account of how pinnated grouse are 
now being successfully raised on Long Island. Our cor¬ 
respondent, who is fully informed as to the prior history of 
the birds, is perfectly right when he states that pinnated 
grouse existed many years ago in New Jersey. 
The plan proposed by “Homo” seems most excellent, and 
we believe to be eas}'- of execution. We look at these mat¬ 
ters not only with an eye to the pleasures of the field, but 
because they may be made productive of great good to the 
community at large. Any one who succeeds in introduc¬ 
ing game birds or animals into regions where they did not 
exist before has an equal merit with him who makes two 
blades of grass to grow where but one grew before. Ex¬ 
periments of this character are novel in the United States. 
We have been placed in such a fruitful soil, teeming with 
birds, beasts, and fishes, that of late years we have been 
careless, indifferent, and even culpably reckless in regard to 
them. It is the problem of the nineteenth century to cre¬ 
ate what has been so ruthlessly destroyed. The time will 
come when even the last of the pinnated grouse on the 
prairies will be shot. It behooves us, then, as the game is 
being exterminated in the far west, to reproduce it again in 
the nearer east. Homo writes:— ■ 
Editor Forest and Stream:— 
Many years ago the pinnated grouse, or prairie hen (Tetrao Cupido), 
frequented Long Island in considerable numbers, and was found on that 
tract of country situated between Hempstead Plain, on the west, and 
Shinnecock Plain, on the east, and the bird was then known to the inhab¬ 
itants as the “heath hen.” This district was covered with stunted trees, 
shrubs, and smaller plants. The trees, mostly of small growth, were* 
pitch pine and white oaks of inferior size, exactly resembling the scrub 
and barren regions of the lower counties of New Jersey, The pinnated 
grouse once thrived on Martha’s Vineyard, the country likewise of the 
same character, and we read of its having years since bred on the brushy 
plains of Burlington county, New Jersey, and in the scrub oaks of Po- 
cano, in Northampton county, Pennsylvania, and the barrens near the 
town of York, in the same State. 
The total extinction of this noble specimen of the grouse family in the 
east can be attributed directly to the lack of proper protective laws in 
their behalf; the shooting of the young birds was allowed at any time, 
and the persecution began as early as June and continued each year until 
the pinnated grouse now cannot be found nearer than the great grass 
plains of our western States. In the counties of Burlington, Cape May, 
Atlantic, Cumberland, and Gloucester, of New Jersey, excellent ground, 
well adapted to the introduction of the prairie hen, can be found large 
tracts of barrens, almost devoid of water, and overgrown with stunted 
oaks, ferns, and whortleberry bushes, in which I am satisfied they would 
thrive and increase. 
I have been urged by a prominent member of the Philadelphia Sports¬ 
man’s Club, well informed as to the habits of this bird, to make use of 
your columns as a medium for calling the attention of the several game 
protective societies and sportsmen clubs of New York, Pennsylvania, 
and New Jersey to the fact that we have almost at our very doors a fine 
field for the initiation of an enterprise for restocking barren grounds with 
the prairie hen. When it is known that the bird once afforded fine shoot¬ 
ing in the very regions spoken of, the success of the “replanting” of this 
game will not admit of a doubt. It is proposed that a fund be raised by 
the different clubs, and a competent person be sent west to purchase a 
sufficient number of both the pinnated and sharp tail grouse to stock the 
counties to be agreed upon, and in which the societies are most interest¬ 
ed ; the birds carefully cooped in pairs in low boxes with padded tops, 
and on their arrival let out in such a manner as not to have them pack 
together, but to breed during the first season. A law guarding the grouse 
for five years would then be necessary, and a prohibition against shoot¬ 
ing them, when the five years have terminated, before the 15th of Sep¬ 
tember and after the 1st of January in every year should be passed. We 
could then enjoy “chicken shooting” without seeking it hundreds of 
miles westward. “Homo.” 
-- 
Where our Furs Come From. —The Ottawa Citizen 
mentions the presence in town of a Mr. P. Stearne, of 
Adams, New York, who is buying up furs for the Ameri¬ 
can market. He takes away from Canada every season 
$120,000 to $150,000 worth of furs and peltries. Mink are 
now worth from $2 75 to $8 for average qualities of Ca¬ 
nadian mink, and $3 50 to $4 for prime dark mink; prime 
muskrat, large, fall catch, 12-^-to 15 cents; martin, $2; otter, 
$8 to $10; beaver, $2 per pound; fisher, $7 each; fox, 
$1 50. During two days Mr. Stearne shipped to Leipsic 
50,000 muskrat skins. Speaking of the fabulous value of 
black fox skins, Mr. Stearne says that he has never seen 
one in that section. They come from Labrador or Hud¬ 
son’s Bay. One was caught in Malone, New York, two 
years ago, and the skin sold for $100. He gets but four or 
five silver grey fox skins each year. A year ago there was 
a great demand for this kind of fur for trimmings on vel¬ 
vet and seal; but this year it went out of fashion, and skins 
that used to bring $500 are not worth more than $35 or $40 
this winter. It is a fancy article to deal in. The best furs 
come from the Gatineau. Lievres, and Temiscamingne. 
Mr. Stearne says:— 
“I find that there is not as much fur shipped from Canada 
now as there used to be. The people here, like in the Uni¬ 
ted States, are becoming more wealthy and fashionable, 
and wear fine fur themselves instead of sending it to Eu¬ 
rope. We ship large numbers of muskrat to the old coun¬ 
try. The catch of Canada and the United States of musk¬ 
rats is about five million skins annually; of that number 
two millions are caught in Canada. Western mink we 
generally send to Europe, as it is inferior; the finer kinds 
sell better in this country. In fact, we import the finest 
skins from the Hudson’s Bay stores in London. The best 
otter we get is from below Quebec, where it is larger and 
blacker than it generally is here; fisher is also better at 
Quebec. The muskrat we get here is muck finer than 
FOREST AND STEEAM. 
what we get along the St. Lawrence, but the skins are 
smaller. We used to pay higher prices for^hem here, but 
since the art of coloring furs has been brought to such a 
perfection we pay more for size than for color. Beaver is 
lower this year than it was last. It was used extensively 
for trimmingladies’ seal jackets; now they use the seal 
without tlie^ beaver trimming. Skunk and racoon skins 
we get principally in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and New 
York States. These furs are much finer and darker m the 
United States than in Canada, although mink, martin,” otter, 
etc., are much coarser than in Canada. Large quantities 
of coon skins are brought over here every year from the 
United States to be worked into fur overcoats. Mr. Stearne 
says one of the best recipes for preserving furs from moths 
is simply to pack them in a box lined with tar paper, such 
as is used for roofing.” 
• - - 
The Ptarmigan, (Lagopus vulgar is .)—This beautiful 
bird, with his snow-white winter plumage, contrasting with 
the black on the tail feathers, with the peculiar feet all 
covered with down to the end of the toes, is now coming 
in quantity into our markets. Some years ggo a few pairs 
only were seen, but to-day many thousands are shipped 
from Labrador and Northern British America, to add to 
the long list of game birds required by omniverous New 
York. The birds are collected at Montreal, from whence 
they are shipped to our large dealers, and will continue ar¬ 
riving from now until the end of April. If the history of 
the methods of transportation of these birds could only be 
told, they would repeat the story of the “Lone Land” so 
graphically described by Captain Butler, of dreary, solitary 
wastes of snow, of the long tramp in icy Labrador, or 
Ruperts Land, of the dog-sled, of trading posts far away 
from civilization. We have shot many a ptarmigan when 
journeying from Churchill River to Great Bear Lake, and 
also collected them in Labrador for mounting. We did not 
think them hard birds to kill; though flying faster than the 
pinnated grouse, they were not as rapid as the ruffed 
grouse. As food, we found them excellent, though during 
mid winter, from feeding on the laurel, they were a trifle 
bitter. 
—--«*■♦-«>-- 
Obituary.— There died at Vernon, Conn., on the 13th of 
March, aged sixty-three, Christian Sharpe, the inventor of 
the Sharpe Rifle. To wonderful ingenuity Mr. Sharpe ad¬ 
ded a singular amount of patient toil and industry. His 
reputation as an inventor must not rest alone in the ingen¬ 
ious system of breech-loading, which originated with him¬ 
self. Sharpe twenty years ago fully appreciated the future 
of his arm of predilection, the rifle, and we believe him to 
have been the first person in the United States who insisted 
that metallic cartridges,(an idea at first thought impossible,) 
would in time be the necessary adjunct of all breech-loading 
arms. Christian Sharpe, with Samuel Colt and Elias Howe 
may be considered as among the greatest of the inventors 
of the last fifty years. 
—We have had the pleasure of a visit from Theodore W. 
Sterling, Esq., of St. Louis, whose name is familiar to our 
readers, as having been prominent in the organization of 
the Missouri Association for the protection of game. A 
thorough acquaintance with the birds, beasts and fishes of 
the West, has made Mr. Sterling one of the strongest ad¬ 
vocates of our comprehensive system for the preservation 
of game in certain geographical zones, as fully detailed by 
us in our last number. Mr. Sterling is now on his way to 
Europe, and whilst in England will witness some of the 
coming field trials. It is the intention of this gentleman to 
purchase some of the best stock of pointers and setters for 
introduction into the United States. 
-- 
—We particularly call the attention of our readers to 
the advertisement of the well-known house of Lord & 
Taylor. The sportsman can find there the flannel shirts 
fitted for the woods, and even the daintier yachtsman can 
get there the finer linen, to be sported on festive occasions. 
Those who indulge in cigars can buy of Lord & 
Taylor their smoking jackets, and those given to billiards, 
their biiliard jackets. Messrs. Lord & Taylor have a 
kind of universal establishment. You can get any kind of 
an outfit there you desire if you are a man, and should you 
have a wife—why, we fancy the lady could be suited with 
all that is gorgeous, beautiful or in good taste, in the way 
of dresses. 
—The plan ot the Agassiz memorial committee of Boston 
contemplates the permanent endowment of the Museum 
of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, requiring at least 
$300,000, about one-third to be used in enlarging the build¬ 
ing, and two thirds to be funded. Subscriptions may be 
sent to S. B. Schlesinger, 6 Oliver street, Boston. A large 
sum has already been raised. 
—Already many changes have been rung upon our story 
of the “Oyster Fiend,” and now a very clever version ap¬ 
pears in the Amherst Student , quite as good, perhaps, as the 
one that was written for us by our own correspondent J. B. 
Matthews, in Vol. 1, No. 24. It is long, but we may find 
room for it some day. 
•--— 
Newfoundland. —As will be seen in a letter printed 
elsewhere, we shall soon begin the publication of a series 
of articles describing the interior of Newfoundland, of 
which the world now knows nothing. 
-- 
—Mr. Chadwick, the author of the Standard Base Ball 
Books of America, was the recipient of a special resolution 
of thanks from the recent Base Ball Convention in Boston 
for his revised code of rules of the same which the Conven¬ 
tion adopted almost as a whole. He has also written a new 
base ball book for England, which Messrs. Routledge, of 
London, will publish in April. 
§9 
jg porting Jf« from ^fbt[OUtl. 
—If the name of Admiral Rouse does not go down to pos¬ 
terity, as* among the most famed of English sailors, at 
least it will have some notoriety as belonging to a distin¬ 
guished turfman. This doughty racing seaman comments 
upon that constant cry, “that the breed of the horse is de¬ 
teriorating in the old country.” The Admiral declares that 
this story, like that of “wolf, wolf !” is centuries old, and 
that in 1756 precisely the same thing was said. He then 
pours a broadside into those who preach “the deteriorating 
horse theory,” calling them “persons qualified for a lunatic 
asylum,” and that the idea they advance is “absurd non- 
sence.” He states that there are to-day in England “two 
thousand more horses running longer distances and carrying 
heavier weights than there were twenty years ago, and that 
in France and Germany the cleverest and most successful 
sportsmen run two year olds for the earliest spring races 
without damage to their future prospects.” The Admiral 
being then strongly in favor of racing two year olds, argues 
that this running of equine babies, is the only way in which 
young horses of merit, strength and bottom can be culled 
from the general herd, and he endeavors to show how in 
modem racing history, we are even much more humane 
than w r ere the turfmen of old, because we discard to-day 
the long distances horses used to run, distance being with 
our grandsires the great criterion of the value of the horse. 
The Admiral’s lather positive ideas are met squarely by his 
opponents, who, adverse to two year old racing, assert that 
it is unnatural, and that though from time to time we may 
get up both speed and endurance in very young horses, 
whose frames cannot be thoroughly matured, it impahs the 
future usefulness of the horse and prevents his becoming 
the origin of a noble race of future animals. Fashion, 
speculation, the pockets of the trainer, have a great deal to 
do with this subject of running two year olds, because they 
do not like to have their capital remain dormant until the 
horses they are working have arrived at a proper age. We 
never can be made to believe that Admiral Rouse or any 
body else, even by the most careful and judicious training 
or selection,can run counter to nature’s laws, whether it be 
to make a child of ten years’ old do the mental or physical 
labor of the young man of twenty, or a two year old horse 
the work of an animal of four or five years’ old. As to 
gambling on race horses, Admiral Rouse, says: “Racing 
has been and always will be in the United Kingdom a 
gambling speculation.” He tells us too, “that in his time 
gambling at races has fallen off fifty per cent, but that turf 
morality has improved and the greatest gamblers are men 
who never kept a race horse or subscribed to a plate, and 
who occasionally send from £5,000 to £10,000 into the 
market to back a Derby horse, and the stigma of excessive 
gambling is accredited to the turf.” If in England gamb¬ 
ling at races has gone through its transition period from 
being very bad to something better, (if better it can be,) as 
we have just started it in the United States on the improved 
English style, with “books” and all. that kind of thing, we 
may expect at least for the present, a pretty state of things, 
until we arrive at that higher stage of turf morals which 
Admiral Rouse seems to intimate is possible. 
—Pisciculture in Scotland, particularly directed to the 
preservation of the salmon, is giving the grandest of re¬ 
sults. Salmon have never been so plenly in the London 
markets. Some years ago they were worth five shillings a 
pound, and to-day the editor of Land and Water says he has 
bought salmon at a shilling a pound. Later accounts tell 
us, too, that English waters have also their salmon harvest, 
the take in the first fortnight being large beyond all pre¬ 
cedent. Not only is the quantity most notable, but the in¬ 
crease is in the size. At Bolton a forty pound fish was 
caught, at Worcester a thirty-nine pound one. Please 
gracious, the time, we trust, is not far distant when salmon 
will be quite as abundant and even cheaper on this side of 
the water. Then again we have to herald what seems to be 
the very first catch of salmon in Tasmania, the reward of 
thirty pounds for the first fish having-been claimed for a 
grilse of almost three pounds, caught in a tidal pool of the 
River Derwent. English trout, thanks to the exertions of 
Mr. Francis Francis of the Field, and of Mr. Frank Buck- 
land of Land and Water , have been raised in New Zealand. 
We believe that in Australia our California salmon would 
do better than their Scotch fish. The Tasmanian salmon 
is another plume in the caps of the Pisciculturists. 
The Irish Rifle Match. —The president of the Ama¬ 
teur Club who have taken up the Irish challenge, has re¬ 
ceived the following letter from Messrs. E. Remington & 
Sons:— 
Irion, N. Y., March 14,1874. 
Col. Geo. W. Wingate, Esq., President Amateur Rifle Club , New York: 
Dear Sir— The action of the Amateur Rifle Club in accepting, on be¬ 
half of American riflemen, the challenge from the Irish eight, who won 
the Elcho Shield at Wimbledon, in 1873, is one that should recommend 
itself to all. We feel confident not only that riflemen can be found in 
America who are as skillful as any who have appeared at Wimbledon 
but that our American rifles need fear no comparison with the Irish 
“Rigby,” or with any other rifles of foreign make. Although your club 
is comparatively young, you have shown a proper spirit in accepting 
this challenge, and it is proper that all who are interested in sustaining 
the reputation of this country as the home of the rifleman, should aid and 
assist you. As an earnest of the interest with which we regard the un¬ 
dertaking of your club, we request them to accept the enclosed check for 
$250, as our contribution toward their expenses in connection with this 
trial of skill. Yours very respectfully, E. Remington & Sons. 
W. C. Squire, Secretary. 
We believe we can state on the best authority that, with 
his usual liberality, James Gordon Bennett, Esq., will offer 
a very handsome amount of money, to be used as prizes 
for the future rifle contests at Creedmoor of the'N, R: A. 
