Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun, 



NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 17, 1895. 



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

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( VOL. XLV.-No. 7. 



| No. 318 Broadway New York. 



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SLINKS, SUCKERS AND TRILBIES. 



In her nai ve story of taking the big muscalonge Mrs. 

 Farrington notes that the St. Lawrence River boatmen 

 call the pickerel "slinkies." This appears to be a form of 

 "slink," meaning a sneak. It is admirably descriptive of 

 the way a pickerel and others of his kin take the bait. 

 They sneak cautiously and hesitatingly up to it and then 

 make a dash. Slink, slinker and slinky are good words 

 applied to fish or to men. There are lots of them. 



The term sucker, meaning a beat or fraud or swindler, 

 who shirks his part of the expenses, has sometimes given 

 as its origin the sucker fish, perhaps because the species is 

 so looked down upon. But this figure of speech comes 

 to us from the worthless growth of vegetation known as a 

 sucker. In his "Holy and Profane State," published in 

 1640, the English divine, Thomas Fuller, uses this word 

 more than once, and always in such a way as to show the 

 deriviation of the expression. Thus commenting upon 

 the maxim, "He that eats cherries with noblemen shall 

 have his eyes spirted out with the stones," he says, "If 

 thou payest nothing, they will count thee a sucker, no 

 branch, a wen, no member of their company." Thus it 

 appears that the human sucker is an ancient if dishonor- 

 able member of society; and the term sucker is a good 

 word, whether applied to fruit trees or to men. 



They used expressions in every-day speech and in the 

 pulpit in Fuller's time that would shock polite ears in 

 these more fastidious days. Fuller said what he meant 

 and said it bluntly so that everybody might hear it and 

 understand it. Some of the robust forms of speech of 

 that age might well enough be revived in our own. They 

 certainly would be more acceptable than the frivolous and 

 puerile slang affected by some of the public speakers of 

 the day. Bishop Fowler, in a lecture in New Jersey last 

 week on Abraham Lincoln, told his audience how tall 

 Lincoln stood "in his Trilbies." He won a cheap laugh 

 with this, but in the winning showed his own want of 

 appreciation of the diginity of his theme and gave the 

 key-note of it unworthy treatment. 



THE CARP AS VERMIN. 



A correspondent presents this problem and asks for 

 its solution: A pond containing six acres, which is used 

 as a reservoir for drinking water, is infested with oarp. 

 The bottom is so uneven that a drag net cannot be em- 

 ployed. The fish were introduced under the hallucination 

 that they would be a desirable addition to the water. 

 They are now recognized as an abominable nuisance. 

 How shall they be exterminated? 



In smaller bodies of water, which are not connected 

 with others inhabited by useful species, carp may be de- 

 stroyed by liming. In a Long Island case which came 

 under our observation, a private pond had been stocked 

 with carp, which thrived and multiplied and effectually 

 despoiled the pond of its usefulness and beauty. They 

 rooted like hogs among the water lillies and other vege- 

 table growth, destroying it and keeping the water contin- 

 ually stirred up and disgustingly dirty. They waxed fat 

 on the ruin they wrought but were themselves good 

 neither for sport nor for the table. Other expedients 

 failing to clear them out, the pond was partially drained 

 and then barrels of lime were thrown into it. After* 

 ward, the water being drawn off, heaps of autumn leaves 



were spread over the bottom, and subsequently the mold, 

 mud and carp skeletons were dug up and carted away 

 for fertilizing. Then the pond was reflooded; and the 

 owner now rejoices in a piece of water stocked with 

 black bass. He has had his little carp experience and has 

 paid for it. 



The fact is that the carp is in many instances proving 

 itself to be a costly and dangerous fish. If the facts 

 were known it would probably be shown that there are 

 scores of cases similar to this Long Island instance, where 

 the introduction of the carp has been a gigantic mistake; 

 and unfortunately it often happens that the waters so in- 

 fested are of such extent or are so connected with other 

 waters that a remedy may not be applied so simply and 

 effectually as it was here. The best cure for carp is pre- 

 vention. To keep the first fish out is to forestall the neces- 

 sity of waging war upon them when they are in. 



Fish and Game Protector Chas, A. Shriner has recently 

 directed the attention of the New Jersey Fish Commission 

 to the proposed introduction of tench, a fish of the carp 

 family, into the waters of that State by the National Fish 

 Commission. "We have in this country," he Bays, "a 

 good variety of indigenous fish, whose distribution and 

 propagation would supply not only sport for the angler 

 but food for all, and it seems to me very injudicious to in- 

 troduce into our waters to the exclusion of our native fish 

 European fish which nobody here seems to appreciate. I 

 would suggest that something ought to be done toward in- 

 forming the people of New Jersey of the probable evil 

 effects of the introduction of the tench." 



On the other hand Commissioner MacDonald, of the 

 United States Fish Commission we believe recommends 

 the carp and tench as desirable species, and under his 

 direction the Government is distributing these fish 

 throughout the country. 



THE PERE MARQUETTE POACHERS. 

 The Pere Marquette Fishing Club, of Michigan, has 

 been described in our columns. It owns some seventeen 

 hundred acres of land, on which are several lakes and 

 the stream of Kinne Creek from source to mouth. The 

 club is extensively engaged in trout breeding; and the 

 product of its hatcheries is distributed not only to the 

 club's own waters, but to the public waters of the district. 

 Notwithstanding this, the members have been annnoyed 

 all summer by poachers, who at length became so bold 

 as to defy the club and to declare that they would fish in 

 the club waters as much as they pleased, and when and 

 where they pleased. Proceeding against them, the 

 club caused three arrests and sought a conviction 

 under the criminal law, on the ground that the 

 club was engaged in hatching and propagating 

 fish, and that it was a misdemeanor for any one to 

 take trout from waters used for such purposes, this being 

 provision of the Michigan statutes. The defendants 

 had sconce enough to employ a smart local lawyer, who 

 by his eloquent tribute to the virtues and hardships of the 

 poor down-trodden Mossbacks and by a violent and high- 

 f aluting assault on the kid-gloved city sportsmen (for the 

 learned gentlemen always picture the man from town 

 as wearing kids) succeeded in carrying things all his own 

 way; and the jury acquitted without leaving their seats. 

 Three trials resulted in defeat for the club; then a fourth 

 arrest was made and proceedings were instituted for tres- 

 pass. A conviction was secured, with six cents and costs 

 of $40 imposed as the penalty. All this has stirred up an 

 intense feeling against the Pere Marquette Club, and the 

 members are naturally apprehensive of lawlessness and 

 damage to their property. 



Reprisals have been made. The trout breeding pen of 

 the club hatchery was broken into the other day and 

 some 200 of the large breeders taken out. This was at a 

 time when the fish were beginning to get heavy with 

 spawn, and every one of them would have furnished 

 from 500 to 1,000 eggs to stock the stream in Lake 

 county, for, as we have said, the Marquette's trout grow- 

 ing is conducted not for its own benefit alone, but for the 

 advantage of the public waters in the neighborhood. 

 Hundreds of thousands of eggs have been put into 

 streams over which the club has no control and from 

 which the members can reach no direct personal benefit. 



As a result of the club's stocking of waters outside of 

 the preserve there is actually open to the public more 

 good fishing than there would have been if the club had 

 never been formed. The people of the neighborhood 

 cannot plead that they are deprived of fishing privileges. 

 Local fishermen and those who profit by the coming of 



anglers from outside to Baldwin and other fishing centers, 

 all alike owe something to the club, and an enlightened 

 policy would be to co-operate with the Pere Marquette 

 managers for the common good of all. We should think 

 that there must be in the better element of Lake county 

 a recognition of these conditions, and we shall watch with 

 interest the outcome of the present difficulties. 



IN PRINT AND IN THE FIELD. 



Our correspondent, "Dick of Connecticut," who criti- 

 cises the act of a writer who tells of having shot game 

 out of normal range, takes us to task for having printed 

 the original story, or for having given it without what he 

 is pleased to term an editorial reprimand. To which it 

 may be replied that it is not the place of one who happens 

 to be in a position of advantage, such as an editor enjoys, 

 forever to be harping and scolding and criticising and 

 moralizing and laying down the law to his contributors. 

 Nor can he be so finicky as to put into print only such 

 conduct and opinion as might belong to the ideal and sub- 

 limated individual who exists in fancy or in fact as "the 

 true sportsman." 



If the truth were known it would probably be recog- 

 nized that the man of the gun and his brother of the rod, 

 whose doings are told in the columns of a sportsmen's 

 journal, live and move in a higher plane of sportsman- 

 ship than the great army of gunners and fishermen of 

 real life. We see in print only the better side. Much of 

 that which is contended for most strenuously and with 

 never-failing earnestness in type is thrown to the wind in 

 actual practice. Some folks who talk the loudest about 

 game protection when they are in town, where there are 

 only brick walls and English sparrows about them, forget 

 their high principles and blaze away like fiends bent on 

 promiscuous slaughter when they are out among game 

 birds and chippies. This, after all, is only a natural mani- 

 festation of human nature. It is more easy to preach 

 than to practice; to tell Jiow brave one would be than to 

 face the enemy without shaking knees; to talk than to do. 



There is, however, no question that principles of sports- 

 manship are making progress. For instance, this very 

 question of shooting at game so long as it may by any 

 possibility be struck by a chance bullet, although far out 

 of accurate range, is one on which there has been a 

 growing sentiment. Turn back to the hunting stories of 

 only fifteen years ago and read of the men who on the 

 Western prairie would blaze away at bunches of antelope, 

 "pumping lead," as they were pleased to describe it, after 

 the fleeing bands so long as the victims were in sight, and 

 necessarily wounding and maiming creatures which they 

 could not hope to gain possession of, nor about whose 

 purposeless suffering did they appear to have the slightest 

 twinge of conscience. 



It is one of the most difficult things in the world for 

 any two men who use the gun to agree upon a definition 

 of the word "sport" or to unite on the exact point of what 

 is legitimate or illegitimate, sportsmanlike or unsports- 

 manlike, manly or brutal; but the standard is higher to- 

 day than ever before; and will be higher to-morrow than 

 to-day. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 Tee comments of "O. O. S." on those Florida tourists 

 who slaughtered quail that they might outdo the scores 

 made by previous butchers were anticipated some time 

 ago by our own comments on the very occurrences of 

 which he so reasonably complains. The last Legislature 

 provided that no person may lawfully kill more than 

 fifty quail in one day. Such a restriction is not very 

 much of a hardship on the average man nor on the aver- 

 age woman, unless one happens to be as bloodthirsty as 

 were those Philadelphia folks. 



We print to-day another complaint from a Boston man 

 who thinks that he has been imposed upon by having 

 been compelled to pay expressage on his dog. Most rail- 

 roads going to a game country concede to the passengers 

 the privilege of free carriage of his dogs in the baggage 

 car if the animals are properly crated. For more than 

 two dogs a sum is charged, and this is regulated by a 

 fixed tariff. On some roads every dog is charged for at 

 the rate of 25 cents or 50 cents for each division over 

 which it goes, so that a fee is required to be paid every 

 time baggage-men are changed. Even where a tariff on 

 dogs prevails, correspondence with the general passenger 

 agent will sometimes insure special arrangements by 

 which a sportsman going to the shooting grounds may 

 obtain a pass for his dogs to and from destination. 



