Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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

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NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 18, 1886. 



I VOL. XXVI— No. 4. 



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



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Cheap and Effective. 

 The Audubon Society. 

 No Railroad inYellowstonePark 

 To the Walled-In Lakes, -xi. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 

 Camp Flotsam — xxrv. 

 The Coon's Haunted Home. 

 Bob White. 



A Camp Hunt in Missouri.— in. 

 Camp Fire Flickerlngs. 

 Natural History. 



Skates and their Eggs. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



That Misleading Document. 



The Adirondack Deer. 



"Mid-Winter Perils." 



Currituck Canvasback Shooting 



"An Official Slaughter." 



Hunting at Army Posts. 



Lessons of the Trajectory Test. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Catfish as Sport and Food. 



Cedar Stream. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



Work in Maine. 

 The Kennel. 



Eastern Field Trials Club. 



Standard Committee Reports. 



The Members' Stake Rules. 



Kennel Management. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



National Gun Association. 

 Canoeing. 



A Canoe Exposition. 



A Winter Evening's Reverie. 



A Barnegat Cruiser in Florida. 

 Yachting. 



Some Hints oil Towpath Sea- 

 manship. 



Boston to Fall River. 



Ttie Steam Yacht Carmen. 



Cruise of the Coot — xm. 



The Cruise of the Pilgrim.— vin. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



CHEAP AND EFFECTIVE, 

 f I ^HE sub-committee of the House Committee on Indian 

 Affairs is reported to nave agreed upon the sum to be 

 appropriated for the support of these people during the 

 coming year, The estimates called for $6,052,259. The 

 committee cut this down $525,806, and the bill as now framed 

 calls for $5,526,453, being $67,642 less than the bill of last 

 year. 



Such devotion to economy is most laudable, but it is not 

 unexampled. We have seen it before when there was ques- 

 tion of appropriating money for some worthy object, but it 

 is apt to be lost sight of when a measure like the Arrears of 

 Pensions hill comes up. Then a little cheap political capital 

 is to be gained, then the soldier's vote is to be captured, and 

 the people's money is squandered. 



Congress has blundered over the Indian question quite 

 long enough, but its experience has not been wholly wasted. 

 At last it has hit upon the true solution of the problem. This 

 is to cut off the Indians' supplies. The solution is startling 

 in its simplicity, and it costs next to nothing. Besides, the 

 development of the country has made all the conditions 

 favorable to the success of the plan. In many cases it can 

 be carried out without the slightest expense. In others it 

 may perhaps cost a few white lives and a few hundred 

 thousand dollars. This first outlay, however, will be all the 

 expense connected with it. After that there will be no need 

 to vote further appropriations for the Indians. 



The large game of the West is exterminated in many 

 localities. It is especially rare in the neighborhood of Indian 

 reservations. The wild creatures whose flesh used to sup- 

 port these people are gone. A few prairie dogs and birds 

 alone remain. The Indians' food is now what the Govern- 

 ment gives them. 



This food has never been enough to keep the Indians alive. 

 For years they refused the Government rations. Then came 

 a time when the rations and what game they could kill sup- 

 ported life. Lately they have often starved on Government 

 rations alone. 



The course adopted by Congress is simply to decline to 

 longer furnish these supplies. Having nothing to eat, the 

 Indians will in due course give up the ghost, and when they 

 have done so, the Indian question is settled. These people 

 will give no more trouble. There will be no more discus- 

 sions about keeping the whites off their reservations, no more 



Indian appropriation bills, no more plans for civilizing them. 

 A lot of trouble will thus be saved. And then it is so cheap! 



There are some localities where this course may cause a 

 little annoyance. Where cattle ranges border on a reserva- 

 tion, the Indians may perhaps kill a few cows, but when 

 the starving people do that, they can either be killed them- 

 selves, or if apprehended can be sent to jail for ten years, as 

 was done the other day with an Arapahoe boy. Or it may 

 happen that in some places the desperate, hunger-strickpn 

 men may sally out and kill a few whites. If they should do 

 this we hope that they will be sternly and successfully dealt 

 with. 



The Congressmen probably think that the cows can be 

 paid for, and the white lives do not count for much. Con- 

 gressmen do not live near Indian reservations, as a rule. 



Is it not best that the Indian question should be settled in 

 some such way as this? It is scarcely to be expected that 

 the Indians themselves will regard it exactly from the white 

 man's point of view; but from the truly philosophic stand- 

 point, is it not better that these people, their wives and their 

 little ones, should perish now from off the face of the earth, 

 even though it be by the lingering torture of starvation? 

 Then, at all events, their troubles will be over, and gnawing 

 hunger will no longer, for half the year, make their lives 

 miserable. And it certainly will be a great saving to the 

 country. 



Congress will then have deserved the gratitude of the 

 American people for cutting down their expenses, and for 

 ridding the public conscience of the burden of the Indian 

 question. 



THE AUDUBON SOCIETY. 

 T N our last issue we briefly outlined the plan of the Audu- 

 bon Society, which we hope may result in the protec- 

 tion of our birds. It is only within a few years that such 

 protection has been really needed, for it is only recently that 

 any wholesale slaughter of these innocents has taken place. 

 Nevertheless, the sentiment which calls for the preservation 

 of these species from wanton destruction is no new thing, 

 for laws having this in view have for many years been on 

 the statute books of most of the older States. Such laws, 

 however, in most cases are wholly inoperative, since there is 

 no public sentiment on the subject which insures their en- 

 forcement. Unless such a public sentiment shall be awak- 

 ened, unless the laws which we have shall be enforced, and 

 new T and more perfect ones enacted, we may make up our 

 minds to bid a long farewell to our beautiful songsters. 



The birds have indeed a hard time. Men and boys scour 

 a district during spring, summer and autumn, killing off 

 all the permanent residents and a large proportion of the 

 migrants. In and near the cities and towns, where the human 

 killers have less liberty to destroy, the pestilent English spar- 

 row quarrels and fights with the native species, and what is 

 worse, destroys their eggs and tears to pieces their nests. 

 Add to these agents of destruction the cats, weasels, skunks 

 and snakes, and the hawks and owls, and it will be readily 

 seen that the checks upon bird increase are very great. 



The common remedy proposed for the protection of our 

 birds from these human enemies is the enactment of new 

 and more stringent laws, but at present it is hopeless to ac- 

 complish anything by this means. This is beginning at the 

 wrong end. Let us rather try to induce people to live up to 

 the laws now on the statute books. After they have been 

 educated up to that point it will be time enough to make the 

 protective laws broader and more stringent. Who ever heard 

 of any violator of the small bird laws being punished? Who 

 ever heard of such an one even being arrested? One such in- 

 stance is related in another column, but they are very un- 

 usual. 



The remedy for the deplorable state of affairs now exist- 

 ing with regard to our birds must be looked for only in such 

 a general and popular awakening as we have indicated, and 

 this awakening must take place soon, if it is to serve any 

 useful purpose. 



The history of the extermination of North American 

 game shows this. For many years the slaughter of the buf- 

 falo went on unchecked, and to the demand for protection, 

 and the statement that unless the slaughter was checked. the 

 species would be exterminated, came the reply that there 

 were millions of them, that they blackened the plains, and 

 could never be killed off. A few years went by, and one day 

 the dwellers in the buffalo range awoke to find that there 

 were no more buffalo. A year or two later the information 

 spread through the country at large. As with the buffalo, so 

 with the elk and the antelope and other large game. It is 

 being destroyed, if not so swiftly as were the buffalo, at least 

 as surely. 



No serious results to the country at large are likely to fol- 

 low the destruction of these large species of animals. It is 

 melancholy to see them become extinct, but the feeling is at 

 best but a sentiment. The case will be very different when 

 the consequences of a continuance of the present destruction 

 of our small birds make themselves manifest. The pun- 

 ishment for our neglect of these species will surely make 

 itself felt, and in a way that will affect every class of our 

 community. 



Armies of noxious insects will attack the growing crops of 

 the farmer, and his year of work will be lost. A failure of 

 the farmer's crops means that he can buy less of each of the 

 commodities sold by the merchant, whose trade must thus 

 fall off. It means that the railroads will have less freight to 

 move, less grain to carry to the monetary and manufacturing 

 centers, less manufactured goods to transport to points of 

 distribution. The railroads, having less freight to transport, 

 must cut down expenses and so must reduce the wages of 

 employes, must purchase less rolling stock, do less repairing, 

 discharge men, give out less work. On every hand receipts 

 of cash will be diminished. Every one will feel poor. 

 Times will become hard. 



Does any one fancy that these are great results to follow 

 the killing of a few small birds? The picture is not over 

 drawn. Of all the perils to the farmer's crop, there is none 

 which is so much to be dreaded as insects. The Eastern 

 farmer as a rule knows little about this danger, though there 

 be some who have fought the army worm, but let the farmer 

 of the East consult one of the West. He who has dwelt in 

 Kansas or Nebraska or Dakota or Minnesota during a grass- 

 hopper year can tell a moving tale, if he will, of the utter 

 devastation and ruin which a single species of insect has 

 wrought in a day. 



It is not improbable that the next season may witness the 

 beginnings of such calamities as we have foreshadowed, for 

 the number of our birds slaughtered during the past five or 

 six years has numbered hundreds of thousands each year. 

 Such destruction, together with the diminution of the pro- 

 duction of young, which must result from it, cannot fail to 

 exercise before long a very marked effect on the insect life 

 of the sections where the birds, once numerous, now exist 

 only in small numbers. The reproduction of insect life goes 

 on at such a tremendous rate, and the multiplication of indi- 

 viduals is so enormously rapid, that this great decrease in 

 the number of their enemies is sure to be followed by a much 

 more than corresponding increase in their numbers. The 

 number of insects seen during August, which have sprung 

 from the comparatively small number of individuals which 

 survive the winter may give us a hint of what this increase 

 is. The danger is a real and a pressing one, and measures 

 should be taken to face it at once. The only successful way 

 to do this is to foster and encourage the natural checks upon 

 this insect life. 



This is the purpose of the Audubon Society, and to assist 

 in this good work we desire the aid of all. Even if one can do 

 no more, he can at least lend the influence of his name against 

 the wholesale slaughter which is now going on. We have 

 already received a number of letters warmly commending 

 our plan and expressing a strong desire to aid in carrying it 

 out. Let every one who is willing to help send in his name 

 and those of any whom he thinks would take hold. 



The Proposed New Standards.— We have published 

 some of the standards recommended by the standard com- 

 mittees of the American Kennel Club and others may be 

 found in the kennel department this week. The remainder 

 we presume will be forthcoming shortly. It is not our pur- 

 pose at this time to criticise the work of the committees, but 

 to draw the attention of our readers to the fact that the dif- 

 ferent standards are placed before the public for the purpose 

 of obtaining the views of all parties interested in the improve- 

 ment of the different breeds of dogs, as to the advisability of 

 the adoption of new standards, and also for the purpose of 

 eliciting from them their opinions as to what changes they 

 may deem desirable. We sincerely hope that no one inter- 

 ested in the matter will neglect the opportunity thus offered 

 and that we shall have a full expression of opinion upon all 

 points from all who have the future welfare of the dog at 

 heart. There is not the slightest danger that the American 

 Kennel Club will adopt any standard that is objectionable if 

 breeders throughout the country will come forward and 

 freely give their opinions upon the matter. It is perhaps 

 needless to say that the columns of Forest and Stream are 

 open, and we hope to see a full discussion of every point that 

 may affect for good or ill the future of the different breeds of 



