OREST AND STREA 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL OF THE ROD AND GUN. 
‘Vers, $44 Year. 10 Crs. a Copy. } 
Srx Monts, $2. 
NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 27, 1884. 
VOL. XXIIT.—No. 18, 
Nos. 39 & 40 Park Row, Naw Yorxk. 
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CONTENTS. 
EDITORIAL, 
The Wolfin Burope andAmerica 
The Army Reports. 
Amateur Photography. 
THE SPORTSMAN TOURIST. 
_A Prairie Picture. 
Down the Musquagumaguni. 
FISHCULTURE. 
Fishculture in Georgia. 
Artificial Propagation. 
THE KENNEL. 
Pacifie Coast Trials. 
The Hull Dog Show. 
Greyhounds in the West. 
Up the Cupsuptuc. The Mastiff Puppies. 
NATURAL History. Robins Island Trials, 
The Amoeha. Kennel Management. 
GAME BAG AND GUN. RIFLE AND TRAP SHOOTING, 
Grouse Shooting on the Upper| Range and Gallery. 
Mississippi... | The Trap. 
A Louisiana Deer Drive. The Best Bore for *‘Clays.”* 
That Question of Numbers. | CANOEING. 
Bears, Moose and Caribou. | A Steam Canoe. 
The Choice of Weapons. | The Log Book. 
Lucus a Non Lucendo. A Cruise Down Sugar Creek. 
Montana Game. YACHTING. 
An Unexpected Bear Hunt. An Apology. 
The Maine Deer Season. Yachting on Burlington Bay. 
SEA AND RIVER FISHING. tron Lighthouses. 
List of Races Sailed 1884, 
ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS, 
Echoes from the Tournament. 
Vitality of Black Bass. 
With its compact type and in its permanently enlarged form 
of twenty-eight pages this journal furnishes each week a iarger 
amount of jirst-class matter relating to angling, shooting, the 
kennel, yachting, canoeing, and kindred subjects, than is con- 
tained in all other American publications put together. 
THE ARMY REPORTS. 
i] lise period for the usual annual reports from the severaj 
chiefs in the regular army service has come around and 
already brief statements of progress made during the past 
twelve months have been coming in from division, department 
and post commanders. Much of these documents is taken 
up with special and technical matters which it is not within 
our province to discuss, but there is one feature of every 
report we have thus far seen to which we would call 
attention. Rifle shooting in the army is now a recognized 
branch of work, and each commander by his comment. and 
suggestion shows that he has paid special attention to it and 
has watched the doings of the men and the drift of the 
present system with a desire to secure a better year of 
practice if it were possible. 
Everywhere crops up this burden of red-tape which is laid 
so heavily upon the instructors and the men as well, that 
little beyond blank filling is done af many points. Compari- 
sons are compelled where there are really none fairly pos- 
sible. The army sets to work by the almanac upon its 
season of out-door practice. Aft one post down on the 
Mexican frontier, the men have had an abundance of 
preliminary fine weather in which to take practice if they 
had so desired, and they start in on the season of record 
making in the finest form, on the same day, according to the 
calendar, the soldier along the northern frontier begins his 
season’s work, but it is the height of nonsense to suppose 
that he is not handicapped by the lingering winter which 
still keeps the snow piled about in great drifts, and the gusty 
winds rushing down from the adjoining mountain ranges. 
Still the records are made according to a very pretty system 
of blanks prepared by an office-soldier in Washington. The 
returns come in and the grand total figures of merit are 
made up, but without one word of comment upon the con- 
ditions which surrounded the men while the scores were 
making. The army is not so very large but that something 
approaching the exactitude of a general record of each man 
_ 
target practice at fixed objects over known distances. 
might be made and then delinquency might be quickly 
noted and as promptly corrected. 
The army has, however, outgrown the period of mere 
This 
is, after all mere schoolroom work for the real task of an 
army which is found in skirmish firing. Hach man must 
be able to go across lots often at a pretty lively gaif, fire as 
he goes, estimating the distance of the object fired at, and 
making the necessary allowances at each end of his rifle; if 
he cannot do this, then he has stopped short in his shooting 
course, and is not fairly entitled to the title marksman. or 
sharpshooter. This sort of practice is the next most urgent 
demand of the service in a shooting point of view. Not- 
withstanding all the hindrances of the system of perpetual 
blank filling, to which the real working arm officery has 
been subjected, he has carried forward the art of rifle shoot 
ing very far. The army, as a whole, has made wonderful 
advances, but a dry rot will soon settle over this part of the 
system if the work is not pushed on. Once have skirmish 
drill recognized as a part of the regular work, and there 
will be such a perpetual variety that the men will never 
tire of taking their rifles and tramping out for a day’s official 
sport. It should be understood that practice at the known 
distances is only a preparation for the more difficult and 
more important skirmish drill, and that in this latter the full 
requirements of a soldier’s duty are to be found, 
Of course it will be more difficult to put down in pretty 
rows ot figures what may be done in this lineof work. This, 
no doubt, will be a fatai objection in the eyes of the desk 
soldier at Washington, but the army officer in the field knows 
when his men aré in good working order, and an eflicient 
system of inspection ought to determine whether there is any 
shirking of duty and where. Large garrisons and posts, 
toward which the policy of the army is now properly tend- 
ing, will make it easier to have complete and thorough drill 
on those points, and in place of the petty rivalries which 
now exist between a number of picayune posts, there will be 
large gatherings of troops and the better marksman will 
soon shame the “‘duffers” into something like fair work. 
There is talk about changes in the rifle, and one form of 
encouragement proposed is that the better sbots shall have 
issued to them a finer shooting weapon than the ordinary 
army rifle. It is not long before a man who visits the ranges 
much becomes out of patience with the ordinary contract 
weapon. He detects its short comings and feels that much 
of his work is thrown away with such an unreliable bit of 
mechanism. One of the first results of an intelligent system 
of rifle firing will be an improvement of the service arm, and 
such sharp criticism of the ammunition that its improvement 
will quickly follow. So long as there was no real use of the 
rifle it mattered little whether the barrels were straight, the 
breech mechanism in order or the sights at all trustworthy. 
So long as ammunition was made only to be stored away in 
muster magazines, dirty, caking powder was as serviceable 
as clean bright charges, ; 
All this is changing, and with twenty thousand or more 
critics in sharp observation, it will not be long before the 
factories will be told that the work turned out is not. satis- 
factory. Already there is a demand for a manual of rifle 
practice better than those now in existence, and several very 
competent officers are busy on sucha book. Yet after all, 
we are of opinion that a sharp system of inspection, which 
shall carry with it encouragement for those inclined to try, 
while it promptly compels work by those who would shirk, 
and then shall have the right to make suggestions which are 
to be carried out, would do more than any other agency in 
bringing our regular force up to the highest efficiency as a 
body of marksmen. 
THE WOLF IN EUROPE AND AMERICA. 
A CABLE from Vienna reports a tragic incident from 
Eastern Hungary, by which a whole family perished 
within an hour. A. clergyman, with his wife and child, 
were driving in a sledge from Krasnisora to the neighboring 
village of Kis-Lonka. A pack of ravenous wolves pursued 
them. The mother was terror-stricken and let the child fall 
from her arms. At that the father leaped from the sledge to 
save the child. Father and child were at once fiercely at- 
tacked by the wolves. The father fought desperately and 
killed two of the wolves, but he was at last overcome and 
both he and his child weredevoured. Meanwhile the horses 
had rushed onward with the sledge, still bearing the agon- 
ized mother who died of fright before the sledge reached 
Kis-Lonks. The story is a shocking one and reminds the 
reader of the nursery tales about these animals in the forests 
of Russia. } 
Assuming, as we must do, that such stories as these are 
true, the wolf of the old world is widely different from those 
of the new. The latter is notorious for his timidity, and 
under ordinary circumstances a child could put to ffight the 
largest pack of them. There is no apparent radical differ- 
ence between the wolf of Europe and the American large 
wolf, though naturalists do not regard them as the same 
species. Why are they so destructive in one hemisphere, 
and so mild and harmless in the other? There are narrated 
in the old histories of America and in some works on natural 
history, two or three cases handed down by tradition, in 
which wolves are said to have attacked men, but these re- 
ported cases are so rare that they are to be received with a 
very great deal of allowance. 
There appears to be a good reason why wolves in America 
should not equal their European cousias in ferocity, In all 
cases where human beings are said to have been attacked by 
these brutes, hunger is the motive of the assault, but in the 
New World this motive seldom exisis. Here the wolves 
themselves are exterminated before the ground-dwelling 
birds and the small mammals upon which they principally 
depend for sustenance are all destroyed, and so we find that 
the wolf retains his natural timidity to the end. In Kurope 
on the other hand, the great uninhabited tracts frequented 
by the wolves are without wild animals in numbers suf- 
ficient to provide food for these carnivora, and hence they 
prey upon domestic animals, and even upon human beings, 
That these animals are a real scourge in certain portions 
of Europe is undeniable. Statistics published some years 
since showed that during the year 1873, in forty-five prov- 
inces of Russia the wolyes devoured 179,000 head of large 
domestic animals, and 662,900 sheep and pigs, a loss which 
represented in money 7,573,000 roubles, or $5,700,000. Be- 
sides this an enormous amount of poultry and a great num- 
ber of dogs were destroyed. To us who know the wolf only 
as a most timid beast, desiring only to be allowed to run 
away, these figures seem very curious, but still more strange 
is the fact that the wolves do not appear to diminish in 
numbers, and that no effective measures are taken to destroy 
them by the wholesale. 
Tue CHASE OF THE ManHADEN.—Usually by this time of 
the year the steamers employed in catching menhaden are 
hauled up for the winter. The fish are given a little rest 
from pursuit, and the oil works are stopped and cleaned 
out. This year itis not so. It is reported from Tiverton 
that two of the largest steamers have just left for menhaden 
fishing in Southern waters, and they intend to follow the 
fish wherever they may go. It is believed by the fishermen 
that at the approach of cold weather the fish move toward 
the Gulf Stream, and they evidently think that by keeping 
close to schools they can capture them all before spring. 
Fishermen are thus, it is seen, very like hunters. One class 
wants all the fish, the other all tho game, and between the 
two, the indigenous fish, flesh and fowl] have a rather hard 
time. It would be a waste of areument to endeavor to show 
the fishermen that they are killing their business by this 
wholesale destruction of fish. They would reply to any such 
attempts, ‘‘Well, if we don’t get them, some one else will.” 
And so the work of extermination goes on, and the public 
grumbles because birds and fish are scarce. Oh, stupid 
public, how long will it take you to learn that this matter is 
in your own hands? You are responsible for the slaughter, 
and you will be the sufferers after it shall have been com- 
pleted. If you want to make fish and game plenty again, 
you must try to makeyour fellows realize that it is for the 
the interest of all that certain times and seasons shall be ob- 
served, aud that the laws of uature shall not be continually 
yiolated. In one State of our Uuion the public sentiment 
has been aroused on this point, but elsewhere there is a 
lamentable want of appreciation of the needs of the case. 
Tue TRIALS AT H1am Pornt,—Our report of the Eastern 
Field Trials Club meeting at High Point is concluded this 
week, Last week ForEsT AND STREAM was the only paper 
to publish a full report of the running up to the day of pub- 
lication, and the only news the public has had ontside of our 
columns, is comprised in a few lines, giving the results in a 
few disconnected heats. One point, which will be noticed 
by every one who is familiar with the working of a dog, is 
that frequently the hunting sense of the dog, and the ideas 
of handlers and judges were in conflict, and further, that 
when such a difference arose, the dogs were usually in the 
right. There is a vast amount of instruction in our report 
of the trials, especially when it is read in the light of one’s 
own experience, 
