Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Yeah. 10 Cts. a Copy. ) 



Six Mokths, $3. ) 



NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 23, 1886. 



■) Nos. ; 



VOL. XXVII.-No. g. 

 9 & 40 Pabk Row, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editoriajl. 



The Creedmoor Meeting. 



A Time Limit in Yacht Races. 



Bonnet and Game Bag. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



John James Andubon. 

 Natural History. 



Indian Arrow Making. 

 Game Bag akd Gun. 



Hunting in the Himalayas. 



Camping Notes. 



Boston and Maine. 



Robert O'Lincoln. 



New York Game and Bird 

 Laws. 



Sea and Rxver Fishing. 

 The Porpoises of Riviere 



Quelle. 

 Fish by the Cartload. 

 Jlan, The Mail Carrier. 

 The Sunapee Trout. 

 The Carp as Game and Food. 

 .Japanese Flies. 

 Angling Notes. 



FiSHCULTURE. 



A Visit to Wood's Moll. 

 The Kennel. 



Waverly Dog Show. 



The San Francisco Dog Show. 



The American Kennel Club. 



Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallen'- 



The Creedmoor Meeting. 



The Minnesota State Shoot. 



The Trap. 



Trap-Shooting Reform. 



Oswichee Tournament. 

 Yachting. 



Displacement and Resistance. 



Newport Citizens' Cup Races. 



Knickerbocker Y. C. Regatta. 



Newark Y. C. Regatta. 

 Canoeing. 



The Meet of 1886. 



Camp What. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THE CREEDMOOR MEETING. 



OUR full report of the results of the annual fall meet- 

 ing of the National Eifle Association will show that 

 it was a gathering of experts. The scores are capital in 

 many of the matches, and go to prove that the art of rifle 

 shootuig is by no means in its decadence. Only one 

 match lapsed for want of entries, but in the others the 

 lists were well enough filled to make each winner feel 

 that he has earned his honors. Massachusetts sent down 

 a delegation of marksmen able to sweep all before them 

 in the team contests. Pennsylvania was on hand with a 

 strong team, but not strong enough to repeat her former 

 successes. New York was represented, but not as worth- 

 ily as could be desired; not, perhaps, as well as the mater- 

 ial at the disposal of the selecting officer might have 

 made it. Connecticut sent down a flying squadron of 

 shooters. They came, they saw, but they did not con- 

 quer. 



The weather during the six days of shooting was fair 

 enough for the work in hand, and varied enough to bring 

 out the capabilities of the men. There were days of rain, 

 and the wind showed itself as fickle as ever on the old 

 range. The visitors may have been a bit bothered by the 

 fish-tail breeze, but they did not seem to show anything 

 of the sort in theii' scoring. 



How to ran a rifle meeting is one of the things which 

 the Association is gradually learning. Where there are 

 so many men, each in keen rivalry for honors, and in 

 some cases for something even more highly prized in the 

 way of cash returns, it is very easy to provoke a storm of 

 protests. The recent meeting passed off without a single 

 one of any consequence. Even such an expert stickler 

 for exact compliance with conditions as FaiTOw failed to 

 jfind a single flaw into which to stick an objection, Lieut. 

 Zalinski, U. S. A., made an excellent executive officer. 

 He put in a week of hard work, and bai'ely alighted from 

 the saddle from Monday morn till Saturday night. While 

 such good service was seen in the open, it seems a pity 

 that the statistical department was so poorly handled. 

 It is a great satisfaction to men who have been contesting 

 in a match to see prompt, accxu-ate returns made of the 

 work accomplished. After such capital handling of the 

 pcore tickets as Capt. Witthaus treated the Association to 

 a year ago, the change to the slow and sure plan of this 

 year was not an agreeable one. Some one, too, should 



have driven just a modicum of sense into the scorers. 

 Where there are handicap allowances for certain makes 

 of rifle, it would seem to be important to have an entry 

 made of the sort of rifle used in making 'each score . 

 Yet some of the stuj)id pencilers put down such memo- 

 randa as "Breechloader," "Military"' or "Sporting," or 

 even left a complete blank where the name of the weapon 

 should have been. 



This whole question of allowance for an inferior 

 weapon when shooting against a supposed superior arm 

 in the same match can be settled in no better way than 

 by a compilation of statistics gathered at such meetings 

 as these; but it is important, if they are to be of any use, 

 to have exact data in the first place, and blundering score- 

 keepers cast the whole matter in doubt very readily. All 

 manner of opinion now prevails on this handicap ques- 

 tion. There are days, of cotu-se, when it is far more easy 

 to make a score of a dozen consecutive bulls with a selected 

 "gas pipe" than it would be on another day to get even an 

 average of inners with the finest smallbore made. But 

 the practical question is how to fix a penalty which shall 

 fit the average weather of a continuous match ranniug 

 through a week to which to subject the marksmen using 

 the finer grades of rifle. Looking back through previous 

 meeting programmes, it would appear that each meeting 

 committee had its own notion of what a fair handicap 

 was; but the question will never be settled even tempor- 

 arily until the full value of the results of large meetings 

 is recognized. 



The Association and its members owe their thanks to 

 the donoi-s who have come forwai'd with prizes for the 

 meeting. Such enlightened kindness as will prompt the 

 giving of prizes for the encouragement of proficiency in 

 rifle shooting, ought to be much more general than it is. 

 Every State needs good marksmen, and any city may 

 need a body of them very badly and at very short notice. 

 Fi'om just such meetings as these just such marksmen 

 come, and the meetings flourisli in proportion to the 

 attractiveness of the prize list. Lieut. Zalinski wisely 

 put on a revolver match to the list of rifle contests. It 

 turned out to be an attractive featm-e of the meeting, and 

 ought to be a fixture to every amiual gathering on the 

 range. 



The one clear and distinct lesson of the meeting is that 

 those who practice with persistency and intelligence come 

 out ahead in tlie long run. Massachusetts keeps up a 

 number of ranges in lively use, and her team had a com- 

 parative walk over. The Zettler Club is a strong organiz- 

 ation of men who love the pleasure of off-hand work, and 

 it put the two leading squads in the short-range team 

 match. 



The officers of the Association report the meeting a sat- 

 isfactory one, which would mean that the figures on the 

 wi'ong side of the balance sheet are not very large. There 

 has been a vast amount of very hard volunteer work done 

 in the past by tlie officers of the Association, and those 

 who carried out the meeting just closed deserve to take 

 their place on the line of those who find their best reward 

 in a good showing of good scores. 



The American Forestry Congress.— At the annual 

 meeting of the American Forestiy Congress at Denver, 

 Col., last week, these officers were elected: Pi-esident, 

 G. W. Miner, of Illinois; Vice-Presidents, H. C Joly, 

 Quebec; Mai-tin Allen, Kansas; H. G. Parsons, Colorado; 

 R. H. Warder, Cincimiat, and Abbott Kinney, California; 

 Recording Secretary, E. F. Ensign, Colorado; Corre- 

 sponding Secretary, B. E. Fernow, Washing-ton; Treas- 

 urer, Leo Weltz, Ohio. Congress will be asked to estab- 

 lish an agi'icultural and forestal experimental station on 

 the unoccupied portion of land in the District of Columbia 

 known as the Arlington estate, the station to be under 

 the control of the Department of Agriculture. The reso- 

 lutions also ask for the passage of a biU for the protection 

 and preservation of the timber land now in possession of 

 the Government, and for the establishment in office of a 

 commission of forestry to provide means to prevent the 

 destraction of forests by fire and the prosecution of per- 

 sons setting fire to timber. 



Mr. Lanman's Reminiscences of Audubon are very 

 acceptable because personal memories of one who knew 

 the gi-eat naturalist, and they wall be read with special 

 interest at this time by the thousands of Audubon Soci- 

 ety members. It should be stated that the present paper 

 will form a chapter of a forthcoming second volume of 

 Mr. Lanman's charming "Hap-Hazard Personalities." 



BONNET AND GAME BAG. 

 T N a recently published novel, as we are informed, the 

 hero refrains from killing "a lordly sickle-bill," one 

 of the prized game birds, to bring down instead a sea- 

 gull for his lady's bonnet. The date of this occurrence 

 was presumably remote, for at the present time the fem- 

 inine fancy would be better pleased with the sickle-bill than 

 with the gull. Feathers are still in vogue as adornments 

 of woman's headgear, and the present fashion prefers 

 game birds to others. All along the coast baymen and 

 professional gunners are slaughtering the bay birds for 

 their plumage. A New York physician who went down 

 to South Oyster Bay, Long Island, last week, for some 

 shore-bird shooting, found that the boatmen had advanced 

 their charges for service fifty per cent. , and even at these 

 exorbitant figures were not eager to waste their time with 

 sportsmen, since they could do much better shooting for 

 the skin buyers. There is at South Oyster Bay an estab- 

 lishment where all bird skins are gathered in, dried with 

 plaster of Paris and shipped to the New York millinery 

 shops. Men, women and children too young to lug 

 a gun, are hard at it, skinning birds and turning 

 them in to tliis factory. For many varieties of 

 shore birds the gunners receive at the skin factory a 

 price equal to the retail price of the same birds in the 

 New York market. There is, of course, no law to prevent 

 the destruction of game birds in season, and the Long 

 Island bird skinners have it all their own way. We are 

 informed that a number of teal, which are not yet in 

 season, have been taken in to the factory, and their skins 

 are now held there to be shipped to New York when the 

 season opens, Oct. 1. The law-breaking skinners are per- 

 fectly safe in this, however, unless Game Protector Whit- 

 taker, or some "malicious or greedy person," should have 

 the temerity to interfere. 



This Long Island bird skin factory is only one of a 

 number of similar establishments aloug the Atlantic coast. 

 For the sportsman, whose autumn shore bird shooting 

 has been ruined, the only recourse is to put his hand into 

 his pocket and pay over to the baymen something hand- 

 some. 



A feather-bedecked bonnet makes a lean and himgry 

 game bag. 



Game Laavs and State Officers.— The President of 

 the New York Fishery Commission has taken the ground 

 that it is not his duty to urge subordinates to enforce laws 

 which happen not to accord with his own notions. We 

 have characterized this as an extraordinaiy position to be 

 held by a State official; and it appears none the less so in 

 light of the letter which the Commissioner has sent to us 

 and which is printed elsewhere. IVIr. Roosevelt's somewhat 

 flippant discussion of the merits of the law in question is 

 not pertinent. We would be quite willing to consider 

 that with him or any one else at another time. The 

 point now at issue is not of the law's wisdom or lack of it, 

 but of the duty of a State officer to enforce the statutes 

 as he finds them. Mr. Roosevelt ought to know that his 

 official delinquency is not to be excused by alleged legis- 

 lative ignorance, though his letter betrays a lamentable 

 failtu-e to appreciate the spirit and intent of the laws, and 

 his own duty as an officer charged with supervising their 

 enforcement. It is a serious question whether a person 

 holding such peculiar views should not have the courage 

 of his convictions and refuse to occupy an office with 

 whose duties he apparently has so little sympathy. 



Game Birds Not to be Trapped.— The counsel of the 

 Eastern New York Fish and Game Protective Association, 

 in a compilation of the New York game laws, has ven- 

 tured the opinion that the wording of the section, chapter 

 427, laws of 1886, forbidding the trapping of "any wild 

 bird other than a game bird" may be twisted into a per- 

 mission to trap game birds, the express statute to the 

 contrary notwithstanding. We advise no foolish person 

 to risk trapping game birds with expectation of escaping 

 the penalty by any such lawyer's quibble as this. 



Short Lobsters. —Deputy Fish Commissioner F. R. 

 Shattuck, of Boston, Mass., is doing a good work for the 

 New England coast States by bringing up with a turn the 

 dealei's in lobster "shorts." The economic value of this 

 crustacean is far too great to permit of the sacrifice of the 

 species to the pots of the fishermen. Mr. Shattuck dis- 

 plays energy, good judgment, vigilance and public spirit. 



The Intdex to Volume Twenty-Six will be issued with 

 the next number. 



