Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terhs, $4 a Year. 10 Ore. a Copt. I 

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NEW YORK, MAY 2 7, 1886. 



I VOL. XXVI.-No. 18. 



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



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



The Vest Park Bill. 



The Curse of Politics. 



Dynamite Fishing. 



Lingering Superstitions. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Days With the Barmecide Club. 



The MuskoKa Country. 



Death of Burr H. Polk. 

 Natural History. 



Earthworms. 



The Audubon Society. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Inveigling a Gobbler. 



Wildfowl of Western States. 



Devices Against Mosquitoes. 



The Yellowstone Park Bill. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



A Spring Poem. 



Camps of the Kingfishers.— xm. 

 How Silkworm Gut is Made. 

 New York Fish Laws. 

 Large American Trout in Eng- 

 land. 



Brandy Point Trout. 

 Kingfishers Getting Lost. 



Fishoulture. 



Work at Cold Spring Harbor. 

 The Kennel. 



Mastiff Judging at New York. 



The St. Louis Dog Show. 



Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Rifle and Trap Shootins. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



Savannah Tournament. 

 The Buffalo Tournament. 

 Canoeing. 

 New York C. C. 



A 500-Mile Cruise on the Rivers 

 of Northern California. 

 Yachting. 



The Loss of the Oona. 



Inspectors and Steam Launches 



How to Avoid Being Drowned. 



New Jersey Y. C. 15th Annual 

 Regatta. 



The Seawanhaka CorinthianY.C 



The Four Large Yachts. 



Races and Meetings. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THE CURSE OF POLITICS. 



THE land is cursed with politicians as the frogs covered 

 Egypt. The malignant plague poisons all branches of 

 the public service, from the polluted fountainhead of legis- 

 lation down through the entire system of the law's execu- 

 tion. It is a shame and a disgrace that in any part of this 

 country a branch of legislation apparently so disconnected 

 with politics as that providing for the due protection of the 

 wild game in the woods and the fishes in the waters should 

 be hampered and botched by political schemers, traders 

 and tricksters. This is the condition of affairs in more than 

 one State, but nowhere is the system more rotten than in 

 New York. The Legislature which has just adjourned, 

 whereupon the people breathe more freely, gave striking 

 evidence of how the public welfare is deliberately ignored, 

 in order that bargains and deals may succeed. 



Take, for example, the course of Assemblymen Erwin and 

 Tuck, of St. Lawrence county, with respect to the deer 

 hounding bill. These two politicians understood perfectly 

 well what their constituents wished and expected of them 

 in the matter. The people of St. Lawrence were over- 

 whelmingly in support of the anti-hounding law, not for 

 their own county alone, but for the entire Adirondack re- 

 gion. Yet because of the exigency of political shifts, Erwin 

 and Tuck, while openly advocating the retention of the 

 general anti-hounding law, were secretly against it, and used 

 their active influence to secure its repeal. They reasoned 

 that it was better that all the deer should perish than that 

 their man should fail of his berth in the United States Sen- 

 ate. A pretty pass it is when the deer in the forests are at 

 the mercy both of the clubs of bloodthirsty physicians and 

 the entangling wires of truckling politicians. 



If the laws are determined by political deals, no less is 

 the execution of them hindered by like influences. The New 

 York system of game protectors is only another series of 

 spokes in the machine wheel. We understand that the only 

 consideration entertained by the Governor of a candidate's 

 fitness for a game protectorship, in the appointments of 1886, 

 will be of a political nature. The heeler who has "the pull" 

 will get the appointment. The entire machinery of game 

 protecti n is to be prostituted to advance a politician's indi- 

 vidual •'ings after place. 

 There lomp. consolation for the failure of the bill to 



provide for the appointment by the Governor of a superin- 

 tendent of game protectors. The value of that office 

 would have depended altogether upon the character of 

 the man appointed to fill it. So far as may be inferred 

 from the nature of other appointments, there is every reason 

 to believe that Gov. Hill would have regarded the new office 

 only as a rivet to securely fasten the game protector wheel 

 of the machine; and instead of having a person fitted by his 

 natural tastes and interest in game to acceptably discharge 

 the duties of the place, we should have been saddled with 

 another political tool, not to enforce the game protective 

 laws, but as a heeler to boss his subordinate heelers. 



When political dickerings rule the hour, it is folly to ex- 

 pect other than clumsy and pernicious legislation with 

 respect to game and fish, or to hope for satisfactory execu- 

 tion of the laws. 



THE VEST PARK BILL. 

 'T^HE Senate Committee on Territories has reported, sub- 

 stantially without change, the Park bill recommended 

 by Senator Manderson and commented on in these columns 

 a few weeks ago. To-day we print the full text of this bill, 

 so that our readers may see just what it proposes. Its main 

 points were summarized in our issue of May 6, and we 

 need say little more upon the subject here except to urge 

 upon Congress prompt and favorable action upon the meas- 

 ure. The bill is in many respects a good one, and, needless 

 to say, is a great improvement on the present absence of any 

 law whatever. The most important feature of the new law 

 is the increase in the size of the reservation, and after that 

 come perhaps the provisions which relate to the Superin- 

 tendent and the Park police and their powers in the matter 

 of making arrests. The absurdity of appointing police 

 without giving them the power to arrest, without warrant, 

 persons taken in the act of violating the law or the regula- 

 tions, has always been obvious, and has rendered vain the 

 best intentions of the assistant superintendents. 



The bill also settles the question of the jurisdiction over 

 the Park, a matter about which there never should have 

 been any dispute, but which has been in doubt ever since the 

 reservation was set aside in 1872. The subject was recently 

 brought prominently before the public by the action of the 

 Territory of Wyoming in claiming this jurisdiction. There 

 should be no more question about this matter than there is 

 with regard to any United States fort. 



It may be said of this bill that while it leaves much to be 

 desired, it is, so far as it goes, a measure deserving hearty 

 approval. The benefits which it will confer on the reserva- 

 tion and so on the whole people are positive and unques- 

 tioned. Its faults are minor ones and such as can be over- 

 come by careful and honest officials, working in accordance 

 with the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Thus, 

 while it is by no means perfect, it is an earnest of far better 

 government for the Park, and as such it is to be hoped that 

 it may receive the approval of Congress and become a law. 



Correction. — Through an error in the transmission of 

 our despatches from the West last week a statement was 

 made in these columns which was inexact. We spoke of 

 the sale of the property of the National Park Improvement 

 Company at Evanston, Wyoming. As a matter of fact the 

 sale covered the great hotel at the Mammoth Hot Springs. 

 The Improvement Company, therefore, still own a consid- 

 erable amount of property within the Park, consisting of 

 hotels at different points with leases for ten years from 1882 

 for the grounds on which they stand, or should stand, 

 large quantities of supplies and tent properties, and as it is 

 believed, franchises. 



LINGERING SUPERSTITIONS. 



THE sun of the nineteenth century is thought to shine with 

 more effulgence than older suns, and more brightly upon 

 certain favored portions of the North American continent 

 than elsewhere on all the revolving globe; but its most direct 

 rays have not chased out the superstition which lingers in 

 spite of the materialistic spirit of the times. Odd phases of 

 belief, survivals of old-time notions, crop out here and there, 

 and one need not go far from home to find them. 



The yachting men are preparing for the coming renewal 

 of international contention for the championship of the At- 

 lantic. Four boats are in course of fitting out for the trial 

 races, the Puritan, the Priscilla, the Mayflower and the At- 

 lantic. The customary method of determining the relative 

 fitness of each would be by practical test in trial races; but 

 along comes a genius who writes to the World that the At 

 lantic is already out of the race, for her name bodes no good. 



Craft named after any one of the oceans, says this wise- 

 acre, are bound to be ill-starred; witness the fate of the 

 Collins line of steamships, all having borne ocean names. 

 Other superstitious wights are earnest in the declaration that 

 the May flower is also foredoomed to disaster, for at the launch 

 she stuck in the mud, and that no boat that does this can 

 ever be successful is one of the tenets of the knowing men 

 of the sea. The brain of the average sea goer is as full of 

 curious superstitions as ever a topsail of wind ; and though 

 the landman affects to ridicule sailors' superstitions, he is 

 prone to indulge in his own dreams of the uncanny and 

 gruesome. His stock of common sense is just about large 

 enough to suffice for the ordinary familiar happenings of 

 every-day life; but let him suddenly encounter some extra- 

 ordinary manifestation of nature or some extraordinary 

 action of a harmless bird, and he immediately puts away 

 his philosophy and falls back on superstition. 



In the neighborhood of Athens, N. Y., a short time ago, 

 several persons driving on a lonely road encountered a ruffed 

 grouse, which in the simplicity of its heart attempted to 

 make friends with them. They naturally whipped up their 

 horses and fled in superstitious fear from what they were 

 pleased to term a "spook" grouse. A dozen men put to 

 flight by a bird 1 And yet the author of "The One-Eyed 

 Grouse of Maple Run," after pursuing that feathered spectre, 

 confesses "A strange, unearthly feeling of awe crept over 

 me, my hair commenced to rise, my knees knocked together, 

 and I felt that I was indeed in the presence of something 

 supernatural." 



The daily papers are constantly chronicling the obedience 

 of men and women to the superstitious maxims of old saws; as 

 the other day a Newark man, bitten by a dog thought to be 

 mad, took pains to secure some of the brute's hair and apply 

 it to the wound, for "the hair of the dog is good for the 

 bite." The boycotted Widow Gray in New York city enter- 

 tained a stray black cat, being firmly convinced that the 

 feline brought luck; and for luck, too, did not a Georgia 

 political enthusiast send to Cleveland a potent rabbit's foot? 



DYNAMITE FISHING. 



THE practice of fishing with dynamite cartridges appears 

 to be on the increase. It is confined to no special 

 locality, but is naturally most prevalent in mining sections, 

 where the use of dynamite is familiar. Western Pennsyl- 

 vania is especially cursed with dynamite fishermen, and there 

 are sections in Nevada and California where no one pretends 

 to catch fish in any other manner. The use of dynamite for 

 this purpose is generally forbidden by the statutes, but such 

 laws are in effect dead letters unless the sentiment of the 

 community supports them. 



It is very difficult to detect and punish the dynamiters, 

 since their neighbors are content to eat the fish without ask- 

 ing any foolish questions about the legal or illegal mode of 

 capture. A dynamiting excursion is not an affair altogether 

 void of excitement. Tne usual method is to sink the car- 

 tridge in the water and then, from a safe distance, explode 

 it by means of an electric wire. There is an ever attendant 

 possibility that the cartridge may go off while in the boat or 

 in the hands of the fisherman, in which event he is with 

 more or less celerity blown to kingdom come. 



The press dispatches yesterday reported the deaths of two 

 men in Western Pennsylvania who were last Sunday dis- 

 membered by the premature explosion of a cartridge. 



The effect of dynamite fishing is particularly baneful be^ 

 cause it destroys not only the large fish fit for food, but all 

 fish, large and small. It cleans out all the fish, annihilates 

 the stock, and utterly destroys the fruitf ulness of the water. 



Natural History on the Pish Hook.— In default of 

 luck, the contemplative angler may find solace, profit and 

 pleasure in study of the animated lure on his hook. How 

 wonderfully wrought is the wriggling worm is told in enter- 

 taining fashion by a contributor in another column. 



The Maine Salmon Angling is attracting great attention 

 in New England. The people of the neighborhood who are 

 reaping some of the profits are naturally much elated over 

 the great run of fish. Such an occurrence is worth a whole 

 volume of argument in favor of fishculture. 



The Holyoke Shad Fishing.— Mr. Thos. Chalmers, of 

 Holyoke, Mass., advises us that the fly-fishing for shad is 

 over. The net has been put in place, and the angler must 

 look elsewhere for his shad. 



