Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. } 

 Six Months, $3. j 



NEW YORK, AUGUST 26, 1886. 



) VOL. XXVII.-No. .5. 



I Nos. 39 & 40 Park Row, Nhw York. 



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



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Bluefish and Menhaden. 



The Sea Serpent. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Travels in Boom Gab Arrah- 

 biggee. 



Sam Level's Camps— m. 

 Natural History. 



The Future for American 

 Ornithology. 



Two Bird Lists. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



A Climb for Sheep. 



Maine Deer. 



A Bundle of Bear Yarns. 

 Target Tests. 



Game Preserving in Britain. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 

 Trout Fishing in Alaska. 

 Sheepshead in a Nor'easter. 

 Our Salmon Rivers. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



The Menhaden Question. 



Angling Notes. 

 Fishculture. 



An Alleged New Carp. 

 The Kennel. 



San Francisco Bench Show. 



Mastiff Character. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



Trap Shooting Reform. 

 Yachting. 



The Trial of the Sloops. 



A Chance for the Atlantic. 



Larclimont Regatta for Oyster 

 Boats. 

 Canoeing. 



Tlie Meet of 1886. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



. BLUEFISH AND MENHADEN. 



IN another column we publish a letter from Islx. Daniel 

 T. Church, who is connected with the firm of Joseph 

 Church & Co., manufacturers of menhaden oil, guano 

 and fertilizers. Mr. Church sends us a bottle of young 

 herring upon which the bluefish are now feeding, and 

 cites this as a proof that the bluefish do not feed upon 

 menhaden to any great extent. All salt-water anglers 

 know that the appearance of a flock of gulls liovering 

 over a place and feeding there denotes that a school of 

 menhaden is near the surface, and that the bluefish are 

 below engaged in cutting them in pieces. All anglers 

 haye seen the bluefish disgorge parts of menhaden on the 

 decks of their boats, and all have used the menliaden as 

 bait. If there is any one fact w^ell established it is that 

 the bluefish eat menhaden, herrings and other small fish, 

 and in the report of the United States Fish Commission 

 for 1877, Mr. Gr. Brown Goode estimates that "three thou- 

 sand millions of millions (3,000,000,000,000,000) of men- 

 haden are annually destroyed by bluefish in the waters of 

 the United States alone." 



While it is possible that man does not destroy as many 

 menhaden and herring as the other enemies of these fish 

 do, it is certain that his efforts, added to those of the 

 beasts, birds and fishes, must interfere with the balance 

 which existed before the purse-net and the steamer were 

 put out after them. A few years ago it was thought that 

 the supply of buffalo on the great prairies was sure to last 

 for centuries, but the skin-hunter has practically exter- 

 minated them. The wild duck of Labrador has become 

 extinct through the love which the sailor has for ducks' 

 eggs, and yet this bird was found in enormous flocks a 

 generation ago. The wild turkey and the pinnated 

 grouse have gone from New England, the bobolink is 

 disappearing from our meadows, and but for artificial 

 propagation the shad would have followed the salmon 

 and been seen no more in our rivers. All these changes 

 have occurred within the memory of men now living, 

 and we believe that unless our bays and harbors are pro- 

 tected from the rapacity of nets, several valuable food 

 fishes will also disappear. 



If the purse nets and menhaden steamers can be kept 

 at a distance from shore, say two miles, and the pound- 

 nets kept out of Long Island Sound and the bays, there 

 may be an increase of fish which would benefit the oil 

 men as well as others, biit the oil factories seem to want 

 the last menhaden, heedless of what follows. Even the 



oil men liave bemoaned the scarcity of the little fish they 

 have worked so hard to exterminate, and are using their 

 purse nets on other fishes, as stated by Mr. Church. 



It may pertinently be added that the menhaden fisher- 

 men are themselves not fully agi'eed that the efforts of 

 man have no effect upon the supplj'' of sea fishes. Mr. 

 Oscar O. Friedlaender, the Secretary of the United States 

 Menhaden Oil and Guano Association, has a notion that 

 while the work of the steamers cannot affect the supply 

 of menhaden or bluefish, they can seriously impair the 

 ranks of preying sharks, and he thinks that for this im- 

 portant service the Legislature of New Jersey or Congress 

 should subsidize the fleet. His argument is this: "The 

 greatest enemy of all fish is evidently the shark, and their 

 destmction by the menhaden fleet should not be under- 

 rated, as it destroys at a low estimate 50,000 during the 

 fishing season. To give your readers an illustration of a 

 shark's appetite, I mention that which I witnessed with 

 my ow^n eyes last year when we opened one of these 

 monsters of the ocean at our dock at Barren Island. We 

 discovered two young sharks of about fourteen inches in 

 length, all alive and jumjiing wlien exposed to freedom; 

 then we discovered two imdigested skulls of sheeps- 

 head, next fom- bluefish, and finally 325 menhaden, 

 which were swallowed by the monster without a scratch. 

 Take it for granted that half of the 50,000 sharks caught 

 w^ould give birth to two young ones every year, and these 

 young ones would again thus multiply, there w^ould be to- 

 day an addition of 102,350,000 sharks to the present stock 

 if the menhaden steamers had not destroyed that num- 

 ber every year for the last ten years. I need hardly say 

 that the above-mentioned contents of a shark's stomach 

 indicate that in such case there would probably be a 

 scarcity of food fish now; so the menhaden steamers 

 should, if anything, be considered protectors of food fish, 

 and not their antagonists." 



A Proposed New National Park.— IMr. W. O. Mc- 

 Dowell, whom some of our readers may remember in 

 connection with an abortive effort to secure funds for a 

 Frank Forester monument at Greenwood Lake a few 

 years ago, as the promoter of a cheap sportsmen's tent 

 scheme at Greenwood Lake, subsequently, we believe, 

 merged into a Summer School of Christian Philosophy, 

 and later as playing the part of the mysterious Lone Fish- 

 erman in the Powderly-Gould negotiations in this city at 

 the time of the railroad strike, has conceived the project 

 of converting the Greenwood Lake district into a grand 

 national park. He suggests that there are hundreds of 

 square miles of territory unfit for farming and valuable 

 only for iron mining. This territory, belonging to the 

 States of New York and New Jersey, he proposes to have 

 ceded to the National Government, and by the latter con- 

 verted into a people's pleasure ground and maintained as 

 such. The project savors slightl}'- of the Utopian, but we 

 hope no unkind individual will for that reason seek to 

 discourage Mr. McDowell. Meanwhile, if that philan- 

 thropist really yearns to benefit his fellow men, let him 

 induce the States of New York and New Jersey, or the 

 National Government, or all three combined, to employ a 

 corps of engineers to make such changes in the topography 

 of Greenwood Lake as shall mitigate the malarial influ- 

 ences which are more noxious there to-day than when 

 Frank Forester complained of them years ago. 



Troops in the Park. — ^In consequence of the failure of 

 Congress to make any approjiriatiou for the care of the 

 Yellowstone Park, Superintendent Wear and his assist- 

 ants have resigned, and the protection of the Park now 

 devolves on the authorities of the War Department. The 

 transfer will take place at once, and Company M, First Cav- 

 alry, has been detailed for this service, and as soon as pos- 

 sible will establish its headquarters in the Park. This 

 company has been stationed at Fort Custer, and is under 

 the command of Captain M. Harris and Lieutenants Hein 

 and Tate. The service of this considerable body of men 

 will admit of a very thorough patrolling of the Park, but 

 it will be some time before the soldiers can become very 

 efficient as police, for they have all their duties yet to 

 leam. It is satisfactory to know that the War Depart- 

 ment has acted promptly in ordering troops to the Park. 

 A sharp lookout must now be kept upon the lawless indi- 

 viduals who are constantly awaiting the opportvmity to 

 despoil this pleasure ground, and w411 imagine that it 

 will be an easier matter to elude the vigilance of the 

 troops than it has been to escape the civil officers, 



THE SEA SERPENT. 

 WJ ITH the coming of summer we expect the usua 

 ' ^ tales of the sea serpent and are seldom disap- 

 I^ointed. Cape May, Newport and Nahant are the places 

 where the monsters have disported in former years, and 

 the landlords at these fashionable resorts have been sus- 

 pected by some of getting up either the stories or the ser- 

 pents in order to call attention to their seaside locations. 

 Be this as it may, this year the monster, or monsters, 

 have appeared at the old fishing town of Gloucester, on 

 Gape Ann, where there is no inducement for fashion to 

 follow and smell the drying codfish. Several times this 

 year we have had accounts of the appearance of some un- 

 known animal near Gloucester, and these reports come 

 f j-om well-known and reliable men who are familiar with 

 the animals which frequent that coast. It is usual for the 

 newspaper humorist to append to the account of a mon- 

 ster having been seen some remark which reflects on the 

 character of the whisky sold at the seaside; but this is 

 not a fair view to take of the case, for too many sober, re- 

 liable men have seen an animal unlinown to science to 

 allow of a doubt that there is some sort of foundation for 

 their reports. 



It is true that there is no evidence that the animal which 

 periodically appears on our coast is a sea serpent, but it 

 may be believed that there is some basis for the stories. 

 Last Sunday several intelligent and reputable men saw a 

 monster off Gloucester, which was not 300ft. away; and 

 they estimated its length at nearly 100ft. They could 

 even see its eyes, and it will not be surprising at any time 

 to learn of the capture of some hitherto unknown monster 

 audits classification by the Fish Commission. It is worthy 

 of notice that the Gloucester monster agrees wdth the de- 

 scription given by the Eev. Paul Egede, a missionary to 

 Greenland, in 1734, of a creature wdiich went down tail 

 foremost, as did the one seen at Gloucester. For nearly a 

 century the "Kraaken" of Bishop Pontoppidan, of Nor- 

 way, was considered a myth, but a dozen years ago the 

 whalemen brought in pieces of the arms of a giant squid. 

 A number of individuals were afterward secm-ed by the 

 Yalle College Museum, and in 1876 the New- York Aquar- 

 ium procured a complete specimen 40ft. in length. 



State Sportsmen's Associations. — There are indica- 

 tions which point to a revival of State sportsmens' asso- 

 ciations. These organizations were numerous and active, 

 ten years ago. Since that time they have decreased in 

 size and number, until now the survivors of the original 

 societies may be counted on the fingers of one hand. 

 Various causes have contributed to this decline; the mem- 

 bers who had at heart the protection of game and fish 

 gradually lost faith in the State societies as efficient agen- 

 cies to secure such ends; and the members who were 

 cliiefly concerned wdth the annual trap-shooting tourna- 

 ments were compelled to forego their sport because of the 

 decrease of the wild pigeon. It is quite possible that a suf- 

 ficient force of new men may now come to the front 

 to take the places of the game and fish protectors; 

 and as for the tournaments the perfection and variety of 

 artificial targets have filled the place of the pigeon. We 

 reported the other day the movement of Georgia sports- 

 men looking to a State organization, and in another 

 column to-day is announced the formation of a Tennessee 

 Association. 



Substitution. — In the two bird lists noticed elsewhere, 

 it is recorded that in certain localities quail and other 

 game birds have become extinct and theii' place is now 

 taken by the English sparrow. This is a substitution 

 almost as infelicitous as that of the same English spar- 

 rows w^hich do duty in reed bird guise and at reed bird 

 prices in many restaurants. If people are willing to swal- 

 low sparrow for reed bird, why may they not be ediicated 

 to appreciate sparrow as sparrow. 



The Canoe Meet at Grindstone Island is in its attend- 

 ance and the interest manifested significant of the rapid 

 growth of the sport. The form of the Association has 

 been somewhat modified, being divided into Eastern and 

 Central divisions, the former embracing New England 

 and the latter the rest of the coimtry. 



Mr. Henry P. Wells has returned from his salmon 

 „ngling trip to Canada, and reports a poor season. The 

 salmon fly was so seldom taken that the anglers perforce 

 had to give their attention to trout to relieve the monot- 

 ony of casting day after day without a rise. 



