Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copt. I 

 Six Months, $2. ) 



NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 4, 1886. 



) VOL. XXVII.-No. 15. 



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



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



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



"Nessmuk's" Poems. 



Pet Bears. 



Snipe Decoration. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Coast Fishing in Superior.— i. 



An October Day. 



NATIIHAIi HiSTORT. 



The Sport of Hawking. 



That Thieving Rice Bird. 

 Game Bag akd Gun. 



Halcyon Days.— iii. 



The Brooklyn Gun Club. 



A Double Disaster. 



The California Quail. 



New England Game. 



North Carolina Grouse. 



My First Duck. 



Woodcock and Grouse. 



Shore Bird Nomenclature. 



A Mississippi Cat. 



New Jersey Coast Resorts. 



Adirondack Deer. 

 Sea and RrvBB Fishing. 



In Northern Michigan. 



Sea and Rm;R Fishlng. 



Bass in the Juniata. 



The White Perch. 

 The Kennel. 



Tlie Irish Setter Field Trials. 



The American Coursing Club. 



Mastiffs. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



T]\e Massachusetts Team. 



The Trap. 

 Yachting. 



Season's Record. 



The Steam Yacht Hanniel. 



The Fleet of Small Cruisers. 



The Clyde Challenge. 

 Canoeing. 



A Site for a Salt-Water Meet. 



Resistance Experiments ^vith 

 Canoes. 



Paddle and Current. 



A. C. A. Executive Committee 

 Meeting. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



SNIPE DECORATION. 

 X\7"0MEN are bedecking their headgear with birds' 



' ' plumage this fall, but according to the testimony 

 of one of the dealers in feathers the fashion has been 

 modified. It was once the rage to wear dead songsters 

 and other non-edible birds of plume. The style now 

 affected calls for snipe and other game birds. 



This may be accepted as the direct result of the labors 

 of the Audubon movement. The efforts of the Society 

 have been specifically devoted to suppressing the destruc- 

 tion of "wild birds not used for food." While feathers 

 have not been discarded, it is nevertheless true that the 

 particular plumes against which the Society has waged 

 war are being put aside, and the plumage of edible or 

 game birds is taking their place. In this the Audubon 

 Society may see an intimation of its success and the 

 beginning of the end. 



While on many grounds the employment of game birds' 

 plumage for bomiet decoration may be as censurable as 

 the use of defunct song birds, it will perhaps be more 

 difficult to discourage. The dealers who employ gangs 

 of gunners to shoot snipe and other migratory game for 

 the milliners contend that the law permits killing these 

 species, and that it is as legitimate to destroy them for 

 their feathers as for their flesh. The only opposition, it 

 is said, comes from sportsmen who grumble because the 

 birds are killed by professionals, and because they have 

 to pay increased wages to baymen. So far the millinery 

 men have on then- side law and the logic of dollars and 

 cents. It is quite true that those who object most strenu- 

 ously to the wholesale destruction of game birds for hat 

 adornments are the sportmen. It is also ti'ue that visitors 

 to the beaches this year have found that the baymen, 

 usually glad enough to guide a gninner for the wages paid, 

 have been disinclined to waste their time with sportsmen 

 when they could make better wages shooting for the 

 feather dealers. 



How this new phase of the bird wearing craze is to be 

 met and overcome is a problem demanding for its solution 

 tact and judgment equal to those which have character- 

 ized the efforts of the Audubon Society in its song bird 

 •work. 



"NESSMUK'S'' POEMS. 

 OEVERAL correspondents have asked whether "Ness- 

 ^ muk's" poems have already appeared in print. Some 

 have. "John o' the Smithy" was oi'iginally published in 

 the Atlantic Monthly for Marcli, 1868. It attracted much 

 attention and provoked much comment, Greeley devoting 

 half a column Tribune editorial to it. Tlie poem was 

 widely copied, and has taken its place among those 

 which are resurrected again and again and go the rounds 

 of the newspapers, more often without the authors' names 

 or with wi'ong credit given; "John o' the Smithy" has 

 been thus erroneously credited to the "Corn Law Rhymer." 

 The poem "Oiu- Camping Ground" was published long 

 ago in Putnam's Magazine; and another, "Watching the 

 River," had been accepted by Putnam's, but a friend 

 to whom "Nessmuk" had sent a manuscript copy took it 

 upon himself to put it into print in a Cincinnati paper 

 before it had time to appear in the magazine. "May" 

 was printed in LippineotV s Magazine, "October," "My 

 Neighbor Over the Way" and some others were printed 

 in the Aldine. 



Many of the poems were wi'itten in camp, often on 

 birch bark, and "Nessmuk" tells us that a number of 

 others so written proved undecipherable because obliter- 

 ated by water, or were found mutilated past recognition 

 when sorted out from the rest of the duffle. They de- 

 served a kinder fate. 



PET BEARS. 



FOR two or three years a Cleveland, O., saloon keeper 

 has maintained a pet bear in the back yard as an 

 attraction to his customers. The yard was also used by 

 the dwellers in the adjoining tenement. Last week bruin 

 varied the monotony of his captivity by killing and 

 partially eating a little girl. At Newark, O., the day 

 before this, another pet bear succeeded in capturing and 

 mangling a young woman who had been watcMng his 

 antics. 



The average chained pet bear is just so much latent 

 brutish ferocity, liable at any moment, when occasion 

 offers, to develop its bear nature. The only possible use 

 of such a creature is that, when the inevitable chmax 

 comes, the newspapers have a spicy item of news. There 

 should be stringent statutes forbidding the harboring or 

 maintaining of these so-called pets — with a suitable ex- 

 emption, as a matter of com-se, for such sweet-tempered 

 brutes as the Missouri Bicycle Club's Bike, whose capture 

 and winning ways have been described in our columns. 



The Forest and Stream's grizzlies in the Central Park 

 bear pits might also claim exemption from the rale. 

 They are well behaved and amiable creatures. But they 

 are securely hedged about by strong iron bars. This is 

 not so much to protect the public from the bears as to 

 protect the bears from the public. Shortly after the 

 bears were received at the park, a New York physician 

 intimated an inclination to try his hand in a wrestle with 

 them. His ardor was cooled when he found out that five 

 months before he ever saw the beai's tliree men had found 

 it no easy task to handle a single one of the cubs. 



FISH AND GAME RESORTS. 



ONE important service performed by the Forest and 

 Stream is directing its readers to desirable fish and 

 game resorts. This is a practical service, which, we have 

 reason to know, is highly valued. Si^ortsmen who dis- 

 cover a new El Dorado owe it to the craft to make known 

 their good fortune, always provided there be in the dis- 

 covered fortunate realm room for all who may come. 

 The Forest and Stream is read in every near and distant 

 region of the United States and British Dominion, and 

 readers in the North are looking for game grounds in the 

 South, readers in the East are watching for reports from 

 the West, and in turn the Southern and Western readers 

 are seeking like information. We invite correspondence 

 concerning game countries, routes and accommodations, 

 such particulars, in short, as are most likely to be of prac- 

 tical help to the army of outers. 



The Weather and the BiRDS.~The heavy rain of last 

 week made a great change in the shootuig. Covers which 

 were before too dry to be worked with pleasure or profit 

 have yielded fair returns, and a considerable number out 

 of the hundreds of gunners who went out on election day 

 came home with something to show for the tramp. The 

 storm brought on the woodcock in Massachusetts, and 

 many flight birds have been taken there. 



What Utter Rubbish the petty local game constable- 

 ship business often is. Next to the stupidest specimen 

 of a white man we ever saw was a game constable who 

 once came into this office for instiaiction about the law 

 and his own duties. In nine cases out of ten the game 

 constable has no notion of the provisions of the statute he 

 is charged with enforcing. Here, for example, is a re- 

 quest for light; it comes addressed to the Forest and 



Stream: " , Oct. 27th. — friend sportsman will you 



Please send me the game law of 1886 as I. am game Con- 

 stable and I. have a Chance to enforce it send it as soon 



as Posiable and Oblige ." One would naturally 



suppose that the first thing for a newly apj)ointed game 

 constable to do would be to find out the terms of the law; 

 but in practice such a supposition would often prove 

 erroneous. Some game constableships are very small 

 bits of the long tails of the political kites; men appointed 

 to such offices go in because they have been good gin-mill 

 heelers, or can work "the boys." They are the infinites- 

 imal political fleas that feed on the fleas next above them 

 in the order of poUtical parasites. 



Nitrogen. — Mr. Chas. F. Amery's discussion of the 

 rice bii-d question wiU have for most readers at least the 

 merit of novelty. Ordinary argument about the useful- 

 ness or harm of any species of birds has been based upon 

 how many insects, or cheiTies or berries, or how much 

 rice it destroyed. That the feathered tribes have had 

 anything to do with preparmg the earth for plant Uf e and 

 with maintaining the fertility of cultivated fields has been 

 overlooked. As Mr. Amery puts it, the argument in favor of 

 the rice bird is this: Without nitrogen, which is a necessary 

 constituent of plant life, there could be no rice. Nitrogen 

 is supplied by the bii-ds. Without the rice bird the nitro- 

 gen could be maintained only by lase of fertilizers. The 

 direct value of the bnds as agents to fertilize the soil 

 offsets whatever loss is sustained by their consumption of 

 grain. The figui-es used .are those pubhshed as given by 

 the Bureau of Economic Ornithology at AVasliington. 

 Whether or not they are absolutely correct is not essential 

 to the argument; with the figures changed the same rela- 

 tive proportions would hold good. 



The Coursing Meeting.— Our detailed report of the 

 meeting of the American Coursing Club, at Great Bend, 

 Kansas, offers evidence of the popularity this practice has 

 ah-eady attained in the West, and gives assurance of its 

 growth. The scene of the meet was admirably adapted 

 to the purpose, the gentlemen on whose lands the coui-ses 

 were run were more than obliging, and the nimble game 

 was found in good supply. A notable feature of the oc- 

 casion was the number of spectators, which was largely 

 in excess of any number that ever attended a field trial. 

 This would be expected, for coursing is more spectacular 

 than field dog handling. At one time and another the 

 introduction of jack rabbits to Eastern grounds has 

 been broached, but so far nothing has been done, and it is 

 probable that gi'eat com-sing meetings will be confined to 

 the West, where all the conditions are favorable. 



The Law on Lobsters, regulating the length of those 

 caught, ought to be uniform in all the States where this 

 valuable food is found, that is to say in Maine, Massachu- 

 setts, Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York. With- 

 out such uniformity the laws of one State cannot be 

 altogether effective. Rhode Island lobster fishermen take 

 short lobsters in Massachusetts waters and find markets 

 for them in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Now that 

 Mr. Shattuck has done such good work for the Massachti- 

 setts lobster supply, literally saving it from extermination, 

 the Legislatures of Rhode Island and Connecticut should 

 supplement the movement by needed statutes. The 

 lobster is of too great value to be sacrificed to make- 

 shift greed. 



Prairie Chickens are a very scarce article in the St. 

 Louis game market this year. St. Louis is the great game 

 mart of the West and Southwest, and abundance or 

 scarcity of any given game there may be taken as indi- 

 cative of the season's supply on the shooting grounds. 

 The grouse are reported to be abundant in the Indian 

 Territory, but owing to new regulations the game cannot 

 there be killed for market. 



The American Ornithologists' Union Committee on 

 Protection of Birds have ready for publication their seccnd 

 bulletin. It wiU be published in the Forest and Stream 

 next week. 



