Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Cops. J 

 Six Months, $2. j 



NEW YORK, JULY 3, 18 8 4. 



VOL. XXlI.-No. 23. 

 3 & 40 Park Row, New Yorr. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 

 The OUI Swamp. 



Rifle Shooting. 



Summer Shooting. 



Small Boat Sailing. 



Use for Sawdust.. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Uncle Lisha's Shop.— v. 

 Natural History. 



Electric Amphibian. 



Birds in their Haunts. 



Use of Field Glasses. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Moose in Manitoba. 



Welcome Home. 



Two-Eyed Shooting. 



The Tamarack Swamp. 



In the Back Country. 



Michigan Preserve. 



The Performance of Shotguns. 



More Smoke Memories. 

 Camp Fire Flickerings. 

 Ska and River Fishing. 



Camps of the Kingfishers. — viii. 



Philadelphia Notes. 



Bass in Lake Madison. 



Bod and Reel Association. 



Day at Minnetonka. 



Bow River Trout. 



Coast Fisheries. 



Gone to the Bass Elysium. 



Sea and River Fishing. 

 Trouting with a Worm. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



Lobster Protection. 



Black Bass in Maine. 



Salmon for Maine. 

 The Kennel. 



Pointers at New York. 



Beagles. 



Fox Hunt on the Roanoke. 



English Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



Proposed Tournaments. 



The Meridian Guu Club. 

 Canoeing. 



Oshkosh C. C. 



The Meet at Grindstone Island. 



A Long Cruise in a Small Boat. 



Another Mohican Champion. 



A River and Coast Cruise. 



Races at Lowell. 

 Yachting. 



Eastern Y. C. Annual Matches. 



Lynn City Matches. 



Beverly Y. C. 



New Jersey Y. C. 



Knickerbocker Y. C. — Ladies' 

 Day. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



With its compact type and in its permanently enlarged form 

 of twenty-eight pages this journal furnishes each week a larger 

 amount of first-class matter relating to angling, shooting, the 

 kennel, yachting, canoeing, and kindred subjects, than is con- 

 tained in all otiier American publications put together. 



A USE FOR SAWDUST. 

 TT is generally easier for a mill owner to dump his sawdust 

 J- into the stream for the water to wash away than it is to 

 burn it or cart it off. The sawdust kills the fish in the 

 stream, but he would be an idiotic mill owner who would 

 permit such a public loss to interfere with his private gain ; 

 and so he dumps the sawdust, kills the fish, puts his hands 

 into his pockets, and asks the public ' 'What are you going 

 to do about it ?" The States have enacted laws forbidding 

 this disposition of sawdust and prescribing penalties for the 

 offense, but the offenders usually manage to ignore the law 

 or evade it entirely. Thousands and thousands of streams 

 which once harbored excellent food fish have been ruined 

 by the sawdust. In the last report of the .New York Com- 

 missioners of Fisheries it is stated that "of all causes there 

 is probably none that has exerted such an influence in expel- 

 ling both salmon and trout from our spring streams as the 

 presence of sawdust;" and the Commissioners go on to state 

 that although there is a statute governing this, it is practi- 

 cally useless because carelessly worded. 



The destruction of fish is not all that the sawdust must 

 answer for. It kills human beings. Waters polluted by 

 decaying sawdust spread malaria, and make miserable the 

 lives of those who dwell on the banks of the plague-bearing 

 stream. This is notably the case with the Raquette River, 

 whose whole lower course is cursed with chills and fever; 

 and Potsdam, where one of the State Normal schools is 

 located, has become a very undesirable place of residence 

 from this cause. 



When urged to burn, or in some other way dispose of their 

 sawdust, lumbermen have objected that they could not af- 

 ford the cost. There is hope that the perplexing problem of 

 dealing with this nuisance may now be solved, for a process 

 has been discovered by which the refuse sawdust may be 

 made to yield a handsome profit, When dry it is carbonized 



in iron retorts, and in the process there is given off 80 per 

 cent, of volatile products, the remaining 20 per cent, being 

 granulated charcoal, which can be used in making gunpow- 

 der, filters, lining refrigerators, and as a disinfectant, and 

 mixed with a little tar it could be pressed into bricks and 

 used for fuel; 23 of the 80 per cent, of the volatile products 

 are in the form of fixed gases, which can be used for heat- 

 ing, lighting, etc. ; 47 per cent, is pyroligneous acid, which 

 is crude acetic acid, and after being purified and concen- 

 trated is used in white lead, color, print and vinegar manu- 

 factories. 



There remain 10 percent, of tar and one of wood alcohol. 

 The tar has. the same properties as coal tar, the almost end- 

 less uses of which, such as pitching roafs, lining water tanks, 

 covering the bottoms of vessels, protecting iron from rust- 

 ing, covering the wounds made in pruning trees, and in the 

 form of benzole, naphtha, carbolic and sulphuric acids, and 

 the whole splendid series of aniline dyes, constitute one of 

 the chief glories of modern chemistry. The wood or 

 methylic alcohol is used as a solvent for gums, in varnish 

 making, in the manufacture of aniline colors. 



The sawdust from yellow pine and other woods rich in 

 resin, yields also a considerable amount of turpentine, in 

 gathering which so many trees are every year sacrificed. 



It is estimated that in sawing inch boards of pine, hem- 

 lock, etc., the one-fourth inch saw-kerf uses up one-fifth of 

 the log. When lumber is sawed by the billion feet, one can 

 easily see that the question of disposing of the sawdust in a 

 way to yield a profit, instead of a first-class nuisance, is a 

 very important one. 



THE OLD SWAMP. 



TTOW many years it had been there no one knows. Per- 

 ■*-■*- haps it was only one of the minor depressions left in 

 the surface of the earth after the passage of the great glacier, 

 that swept over the land that is now ours when the race was 

 young. Then our ancestors dwelt in caverns — true troglo- 

 dytes — and slew the reindeer and the hairy mammoth and 

 the horse, and perhaps now and then had fierce conflicts 

 with the huge cave bear, which they conquered by their 

 courage and their numbers, rather than by the excellence of 

 their rude stone weapons. 



Or it may have been once a broad valley, down which 

 hurried a sparkling brooklet, which twisted and turned, 

 winding from one side to the other of the level meadow ; 

 here rippling in a yellow current over the smooth pebbles of 

 the bottom, there burrowing its way beneath overhanging 

 grassy banks, where its soft murmur alone told of its pres- 

 ence; or again making some sudden crook and digging out 

 for itself a deep, quiet pool, where the trout used to lie in 

 summer, and in which the silent otter was always sure to 

 find a meal. Then, perhaps, a little family of beavers 

 passed that way, and seeing the brook and its possibilites de- 

 termined that they would make it their home. So they began, 

 by cutting down some of the trees that grew by the brookside, 

 to build their dam. They brought mud and stones from the 

 bottom of the stream and with their chisel-like teeth clipped 

 off the willows and alders, and cut them into lengths, and 

 their patient and unremitting industry finished the dam by 

 the end of summer. Now a good part of the meadow was a 

 wide but shallow pond. Next the houses were built and the 

 winter supply of food laid up, and, not long after this, the 

 pond froze over. 



For years, perhaps for centuries, the colony of beavers re- 

 mained here, always becoming more numerous. Sometimes 

 they moved up or down the stream, and every few years 

 they built new dams, and overflowed more of the low land. 

 Those that they had first deserted had long' ago rotted and 

 broken down, and the ground which had first been grassy 

 meadow, and then the bottom of the pond, was now a wet 

 marsh, in which grew young alders and willows and bilber- 

 ries, soft maples, cypress and tamarack, and a hundred other 

 moisture-loving trees, while the foot of the passing deer sank 

 deep into the spongy sphagnum or crushed the showy yellow 

 lady-slipper and the delicate pink arethusa. As the years 

 went by the forest growth increased in size, while the 

 smaller shrubs beneath formed a tangled mass, impenetrable 

 save to the wild creatures which made their home among 

 the luxuriant vegetation. 



However it was formed, such was the old swamp. 



Here during the summer, before the berries were ripe, the 

 black bear dug roots, and tore up the rotten logs or turned 

 over great stones, for the ants, worms and bugs on which he 

 lives. The deer browsed on the water grasses and in winter 

 nipped the tender shoots of the willows. The raccoon 

 hunted frogs in the wet places, and at the approach of 



autumn grew fat on the thick-growing clusters of fox 

 grapes, made sweet by the early frosts. All the other deni- 

 zens of the forest found here a safe retreat, from which they 

 made excursions out into the surrounding hills. 



So it was with the old swamp when our fathers first took 

 possession of the soil. Game was plenty then, and a man, 

 when he needed meat, had to go but a short distance from 

 his own door to kill a deer or a turkey. But as time went 

 by, fire and the axe cleared away the timber from the sur- 

 rounding hills. The hunter gave place to the husbandman. 

 The sickle supplanted the rifle. Now the game had become 

 less plenty. Birds there were, it is true, but the larger game 

 had disappeared from the land, except in the old swamp. 

 That was as it had always been. The settlers had been 

 bus}', and it was the clearing of the land, rather than the 

 actual destruction of animal life, that had driven off the 

 game. Now and then a hunter had penetrated the tangle of 

 the swamp in pursuit of a wounded animal, but its interior 

 was still a mysterious unknown to all. 



Within its gloomy recesses there was not much change. 

 Here the bear was still to be found and the deer fed there 

 almost unmolested. The turkey gobbled in spring as of old 

 and the ruffed grouse stalked among the trees with majestic 

 tread. The pigeons still gathered here to roost, and the 

 thunder of their wing beats at morning and at evening was 

 like the rushing of a mighty wind through a ship's rigging. 



It was to the old swamp that the hunters resorted now for 

 game, and often the sharp crack of the rifle rang among the 

 trees or the roar of the shotgun awoke its once silent echoes. 

 The angler pushed his way down the course of the stream 

 and caught the trout. One began to find paths in the swamp 

 that were not game trails. 



A few more years passed by with rapid changes. The axe 

 had been at work. Now all the timber had been cut away, 

 but there was still left the undergrowth. Deer and bear 

 and turkey and wild pigeons had disappeared, but there 

 were some grouse left, and the quail, when startled fiom 

 the stubble fields about its borders, still sought safety in the 

 old swamp . The closing change in the old swamp was yet 

 to come. Trenches were dug through the swamp. The 

 brush was cut down and burned. The brook dried up, The 

 plow passed over the land, and the next year a crop of sod 

 corn was grown where once the beaver had their homes. 

 Such is the history of many an old swamp. 



All this is progress— the march of improvement. It is also 

 the reason why our streams are drying up, and why the farmer 

 complains that each year there is less rain, and it is a harder 

 matter to grow crops. It explains why our rivers are gradu- 

 ally becoming more and more shallow, whytke water-power 

 that turned a hundred mills, now turns none and is replaced 

 by steam. It is something that is taking place all over our 

 country. The clearing up of each swamp like this one is a 

 misfortune to our people, and the aggregate of such misfor- 

 tunes means a loss of material wealth that can scarcely be 

 computed. This loss is widely distributed, and is not felt as it 

 comes, but it increases year by year. The farmer knows that 

 his land becomes each season a little less productive, but he 

 does not know why. Perhaps he thinks that it is worn out, 

 and strives by the use of fertilizers to renew its old-time 

 luxuriance. Vain remedy. Without water no amount of 

 manure will make crops grow, but water will make fertile 

 the sands of Sahara or the arid sage-brush wastes of our 

 Western deserts. Has not the valley of the Great Salt Lake 

 been made to blossom as the rose? 



The story of the old swamp is told of no one locality. 

 Each one of us has seen the work going on in his own neigh- 

 borhood, has witnessed the disappearance of the native 

 fauna and flora, the drying up of the streams. What will 

 be the end? 



SMALL BOAT SAILING. 



nPO those friends of small boats who have watched the 

 -*- limited entries and generally discouraging condition of 

 the sport in and about New York, it will be gratifying to 

 turn to the programme of races for the coming two weeks, 

 issued by the Beverley Y. O, which we give in another 

 column. The small yacht, as yet, has hardly a place in New 

 York; on the one hand is the sandbagger, with which there 

 is nothing in common; on the other, the large yacht, looking 

 down contemptuously on the little ship, which, between 

 these two, is left to sail alone. 



Racing small boats, as formerly carried on here, with shoal, 

 boats, unlimited crews, and shifting ballast, is declining year 

 by year, as is shown by the limited number of entries in such 

 races of late, and it is bound to disappear entirely as the 

 value of safety and comfort becomes more appreciated ; but 

 as yet there is nothing to take its place, A few clubs have 



