Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 

 Six Months, $3. j 



NEW YORK, JUNE 19, 1884. 



f VOL. XXII.— No. 21. 



) Nos. 39 & 40 Park Row, New York. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 

 The 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. No name will be published except with writer's consent. 

 The Editors are not responsible for the views of correspondents. 



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Address all communications, 



Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 

 Nos. 39 and 40 Park Row. New York City. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



June Woodcock. 



Nevr York Moves to Increase 

 the Oyster. 



The Pointer Discussion. 



The Adirondack Forests. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Uncle Lisha's Shop.— in. 



A Summer Camp Ground. 

 Natural History. 



A Bit of a Sermon. 



North American Birds. 



Seasons and Biros of the Prairie 



The Couesian Period? 



Rodents as Carnivores. 



Fish and Snakes. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



The White Deer. 



A Sunday Deer. 



'Coons and 'Coon-Hunting. 



A Pen and Ink Sketch. 

 Camp Fire Flickering^. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Camps of the Kingfishers.— vi. 



Rangeley Waters. 



Rod-Joints and Reel-Seats. 



Salmon Casting in England. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



Salt as an Agent for the De- 

 struction of the Fish Fungus. 



The Kennel. 



"American Kennel Register." 



Pointers at New York. 



Minstrel. 



The Chicago Dog Show. 



A Protest. 



The Bench Show Association. 



English Kennel Notes, 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



Boston Gun Club. 



Connecticut State Shoot. 

 Canoeing. 



Potowonoc C. C. 



Knickerbocker C. C. Regatta. 



Connecticut River Meet, Mav 30. 



The Galley Fire. 

 Canoe and Camp Cookery. 

 Yachting. 



New York Y. C. 



Seawanhaka Corinthian Y. C. 



Hudson River Y. C. 



Jersey City Y. C. 



Boston Y. C. 



Around Long Island. 



Spring Matches on New Y'ork 

 Bay. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 

 Publishers' Department. 



JUNE WOODCOCK. 

 I? VERY year, as regularly as the seasons roll around, 

 -*-' come the complaints of those various individuals who 

 go out for game-bird fledglings. Our correspondents are 

 quite inclined to find fault with the exploits of these gentle- 

 men, and usually heap abuse upon them. This spirit is 

 hardly commendable. Undoubtedly the aggravation is great, 

 and writers lose their temper only under great provocation. 

 They see the game birds destroyed out of season; and then 

 they fly into a passion and write to us to denounce the men 

 who cause their woe. This is, we need not say, entirely 

 wrong. Instead of getting mad and writing to a distant 

 newspaper about it, they might better keep their temper and 

 secure the punishment of the bird destroyer. 



There are two classes of these destroyers of the early bird. 

 Each is made up of individuals whose mental and moral 

 development has been stunted. There is the man who has 

 some dogs to break, and thinks that he must go into the 

 game covers in the spring, rout the mother bird from her 

 nest and let his canine pupil poke its nose into the eggs. 

 Later in the season, if his pups can manage to catch some of 

 the fledglings, so much the better. He lacks the sense re- 

 quisite to comprehend that a bird chewed up by a puppy 

 is just as dead as if riddled by a large charge of shot. The 

 proper way to give him a hint on the subject is to enlarge 

 his brain capacity by sequestration in a cell, or tapping his 

 pocketbook to the extent of the fine in such cases made and 

 provided. This is apt to accomplish even more than can be 

 secured by writing to Forest and Stream, which we are 

 quite willing to acknowledge is often an effective means. 



The idiot who takes his young dogs into the nesting 

 grounds is an altogether different specimen from the sneak 

 who goes in for getting the immature birds for the alleged 

 reason that if he don't some one else will. The former lacks 

 common sense, the latter wants common decency. His plea 

 is that of a common felon. "If I don't some one else will" 

 has been the cowardly excuse for almost every crime known 

 to the calendar. The man who slides off into the woods in 

 June, and makes this a defense for his misdemeanors, has a 



spirit so contemptible that honest men will fail to under- 

 stand it. How any one who professes to practice field 

 sports for the pleasure there is in them, can find any enjoy- 

 ment in lugging home at night a bag of birds, and with it 

 the load of his consciuasness that he has done a mean and 

 unlawful deed, is something quite beyond our comprehen- 

 sion. Can any one explain it? 



THE POINTER DISCUSSION. 

 \ PORTION of the great mass of correspondence on this 

 -^*- subject will be found in our Kennel columns; another 

 portion we decline to publish. We have before called atten- 

 tion to the fact that, if pointer breeders are to be benefitted 

 by this discussion, it must be conducted temperately and 

 must be confined to the question at issue. If this is not done, 

 what should be an argument between gentlemen degenerates 

 into an unseemly wrangle from which no one can emerge 

 with any credit. Some of the letters which we print this 

 week we regret to say wander lamentably from the subject, 

 and cover a vast deal of ground which is wholly foreign to 

 it. Is it quite impossible for those who write about dogs to 

 stick to the point? The question at issue is about certain 

 dogs. Can correspondents not confine themselves to those 

 dogs and say where they are good and where bad? For 

 ourselves we have no desire to mingle in the fray. Our de- 

 cisions are matters of record to which any one pan refer. 



It is somewhat amusing, however, to observe how those 

 on each side in the debate seem to imagine that, because we 

 do not at once espouse their cause, we are therefore secretly 

 abetting their opponents. Within a day or two of each 

 other, and just after our editorial two weeks ago on "The 

 Pointers at New York," we received among the numerous let- 

 ters on the subject two from gentlemen on opposite sides of 

 the question especially interested in the matter, from which 

 we quote below : 



One said : 



If you have any personal 

 reason for not wanting any- 

 thing to appear in the' paper 

 against or I 



The other said : 



The fact that they know a 

 good dog and are friendly to 

 me should not be sufficient 

 reason for putting their letters 

 in the waste-paper basket. 



shall have nothing more to 

 say, and will respect your 

 private affairs accordingly. 



Now, of course, if these gentlemen had given themselves 

 the trouble to think about the matter at all, they would not 

 have taken the further trouble to write such silly stuff as the 

 above, but they did not stop to think. It is rather late in 

 the day for us to say that we are not pecuniarily interested in 

 dogs, and have no private reasons for excluding communica- 

 tions from our columns. But we certainly shall not publish 

 matter that, in our judgment, will fail to interest our readers. 

 Communications must keep more closely to the subject in 

 hand, and should contain something that will instruct. 

 We hope that this hint will suffice. 



NEW YORK MOVES TO INCREASE THE OYSTER. 

 /^l OVERNOR CLEVELAND has just signed the bill 

 ^J which was introduced into the last Legislature of New 

 York, by Gen. S. W. Johnson, of Mamaroneck, Westchester 

 county, which constitutes Mr. E. G. Blackford, of the New 

 York Fish Commission, also a commissioner for the protec- 

 tion and propagation of oysters. This bill, which was sug- 

 gested to Gen. Johnson by his constituents, reads as follows; 



"For the Commissioner of Fisheries, appointed under Chap- 

 ter 309, Laws of 1879, $5,000, to be expended as said Com- 

 missioner may deem proper upon vouchers to be approved 

 by the comptroller, for the purpose of investigating into the 

 causes of the decrease of oysters in the waters of the State of 

 New York, and into the extent of the injuries made by the 

 starfish and other animals that attack the oyster, and for the 

 purpose of ascertaining how the oyster industry may be pro- 

 tected and the supply increased." 



This is a good beginning, and will, no doubt, be followed 

 with good results. We have on several occasions pointed out 

 that New York should follow the lead of Connecticut, which 

 has a perfect system of leasing oyster grounds, which, after 

 three years' trial, gives satisfaction to the oyster men. Mr. 

 Blackford will avail himself of the experience of Lieut. 

 Francis S. Winslow, of the United States Navy, who has 

 given much thought to the oyster question, and is familiar 

 with the oyster grounds of the State, if he can be detailed 

 for this purpose. Prof. H. J. Rice, whose labors in the study 

 of the embryology of the oyster are familiar to our readers, 

 will also be engaged on the work, and the hatching station 

 of the New York Fish Commission at Cold Spring Harbor 

 will, in all probability, be selected as the site for operations 

 in oyster culture, as it is most favorably situated for the 

 work. 



THE ADIRONDACK FORESTS. 

 IT is understood that Governor Cleveland has withheld 

 •*- his signature from the Adirondack forestry bill, and 

 consequently there will be no commission this year. There 

 was, however, in the appropriation bill a clause devoting 

 $5,000 to the employment of three experts to prepare a r 

 port on the Adirondack forests, to be presented at the mou. 

 iag of the next Legislature. This clause, according to the 

 published reports, has received the Governor's sanction, and 

 so we may hope for progress in the movement to protect the 

 Adirondack woodlands. 



We understand that before his recent departure for 

 Europe Mr Morris K. Jesup made arrangements to have a 

 party go into the Adirondacks at his expense, in case the 

 State made no appropriation. This party was to be under 

 the direction of Professor Sargent of Harvard. It is to be 

 hoped that Comptroller Chapin will as soon as possible select 

 the investigating committee, as he is empowered to do by 

 the clause referred to, and that the board so appointed will 

 at once enter upon their important work. 



President Arthur's Record.— Last Monday President 

 Arthur and Secretary of War Lincoln went down to Long 

 Island on an angling excursion. They fished for trout in 

 the Massapequa Lake, which is a preserve owned by Mr. 

 William Floyd-Jones. Now, the ordinary angler can go 

 fishing and come home at night without saying boo to any- 

 body. But when the President of the United States wets a 

 line the great metropolitan journals send their representatives 

 to intercept the tired fisherman and learn his luck. So 

 when the two returned to the Fifth Avenue Hotel the other 

 evening, they found their passage blocked by a horde of 

 reporters, who wanted to know all about it. President 

 Arthur made a plea of having other fish to fry, and escaped. 

 Secretary Lincoln consented to say something, but not much. 

 He refused to tell how many fish were caught. To a Times 

 reporter who asked how the fishing was he replied, "Well, 

 as good as could be expected. It's pretty late in the season;" 

 while to a Sun reporter he explained: "We had a very en- 

 joyable time, although it is a little early for good fishing." 

 What is to be inferred when a President and a Secretary of 

 War go fishing, and in place of showing a handsome "mess 

 of trout," allege to one that it was too late for fishing, and 

 to another that it was too early ? We confess that it appears 

 as if the catch that day must have been an exceedingly 

 meagre one: but we shall not hastily, nor strenuously, insist 

 upon such an interpretation of Secretary Lincoln's prevarica- 

 tion. 



Marked Trout.— It is the custom of some of our fish 

 commissioners to attach metal tags to liberated salmon, that 

 when captured again, the growth of the fish may be noted. 

 We once knew an angler who was in the habit of putting 

 his mark on trout; but he did not use a metal tag. It was 

 a rule with him to retain no trout that weighed less than 

 one-half pound. When he landed one of less weight, he 

 would carefully take it from the hook, mark it by biting off 

 the upper portion of its tail fin, and throw it back into the 

 water to grow. Sometimes he would catch these fish again 

 after they had attained the proper size to find a place in his 

 basket; and it was often a source of pleasure to him to 

 receive a letter of thanks from some fellow angler who had 

 chanced to take one of the marked big fellows. One day 

 this biter of trouts' tails was driving along some eighteen 

 miles from home, when he came to a bridge over a stream, 

 and in passing saw a big trout rise. The next day, with his 

 tackle, he drove back over these eighteen miles and tried for 

 a rise. He found not a sign of trout. The next day he 

 made the journey again, with a like result. The third day. 

 nothing daunted, he drove out again. This time he pulled 

 out a three-pound trout. The upper half of its tail fin was 

 gone; and our friend has always believed that it was one of 

 his marked trout. 



The Refractory Pigeons. — The New York State As- 

 sociation for the Protection of Fish and Game, are trying to 

 find out where the wild pigeons are nesting, so that they 

 may hire the professional nest robbers to collect a few thou- 

 sands of birds to be protected by the Association at the Buf- 

 falo tournament. This scarcity of wild pigeons is seriously 

 interfering with the progress of game and fish protection in 

 this State, and the protectors may well ask each other what 

 is to be done about it. An unsubstantiated rumor is abroad 

 that clay-pigeons may be substituted for the live birds, but 

 as every practical man knows, there is nothing so potent for 

 true game and fish protection as four or five thousand wild 

 pigeons, captured on nesting grounds and shot at the trap. 



