Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 14, 1896. 



Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Ore. a Cofx. 

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( VOL, XLV.— No. 24. 



| No. 818 Broadway New York. 



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CONCERNING SOMETHING HARD TO ENDURE. 



There are degrees and varieties of boredom in the 

 world, as there are degrees in everything. The different 

 varieties, however, never could be accurately classified. 

 Very few men are bores at all times, though some men 

 maintain quite a uniform standard in their capabilities of 

 killing interest and evoking weariness. 



The cause of borish propensities in the greater number 

 of every- day instances may safely be ascribed to the com- 

 bined selfishness and thoughtlessness of the borish indi- 

 vidual whose desire is to have his own preferences of 

 time, place, conversation and company paramount to all 

 others. He considers himself, not others. 



While there is a vast field of common interest in life, 

 every age, station and occupation has its own special 

 interests. Even the days, often the hours, are bo sub- 

 divided to meet the cares of duty or business that any 

 obstruction to the routine is an annoyance or hindrance, 

 or possibly a loss. There are times when one's company 

 or speech is out of place, and this generally when there 

 is an annoying lack of common interest. 



Any man who fails to recognize these facts, and to 

 regulate tactfully his actions accordingly, will unfailingly 

 achieve more or less of a reputation as a bore. There- 

 after he will be looked -upon more as an affliction which 

 caDnot be cured than as a desirable companion, or one at 

 least who could be pleasantly tolerated. Nearly all bores 

 have a common failing of talking too long and too much. 



In a general way the bores of every-day life may be 

 divided into two classes — he of the first class may be 

 agreeable and worthy of esteem ; his conversation may be 

 both instructive and edifying, but he may be heedless 

 of the length of time he exacts while visiting his friends 

 in the midst of their business or other cares, and also 

 heedless, of whether or not time can be spared to him. 

 The man who is occupying the time of another, which 

 should be devoted to the serious duties or interests of life, 

 cannot justly feel hurt if his friend betrays preoccupa- 

 tion or lack of interest in him. 



Thus a man may be a most interesting companion in 

 himself and still be a bore by encroaching on the time of 

 a friend who is engrossed in other matters. 



The bores of the second class are much greater in num- 

 bers and are found everywhere. He may be an intermin- 

 able prattler, whose vapid nothings neither please nor in- 

 struct; he may, on the contrary, talk well, but only on a 

 subject which interests no one but himself; his supreme 

 vanity and self-confidence blind him to the annoyance 

 and discomfort he causes to others, 



And where do the bores congregate? Everywhere. On 

 the suburban trains he drops into a seat occupied by a 

 passenger busily engaged in reading. He immediately 

 makes a trial at a conversation regardless of his rude in- 

 terruption. The slightest encouragement starts him 

 under full way, and the victim may thereafter hold 

 his paper ever so suggestively in an attitude ready to 

 resume his reading and it will avaifnaught. The bore is 

 fond of talking and talk he will. 



At the banquet he flourishes always. Though he talk 

 on a dead flat of inanity, he imagines he is in astonishing 

 flights of witty or entertaining oratory, and generally the 

 poorer talker he is, the greater avidity he displays in 



seizing every opportunity to talk in season and out of 

 season, regardless of the visible fatigue of his listeners 

 He is one of the kind which consumes both the time and 

 patience of his audience— a double bore. 



At the theater he can be heard while the play is in ac- 

 tion explaining the plot to his companion and all that is 

 to occur in the following scenes, with such frank criti- 

 cisms added as he can invent. His eagerness to display 

 his knowledge overshadows the fact that he is spoiling 

 the effect of the play to his companion and making him- 

 self an irritating infliction to everyone within hearing. 



There is no one who has not met the bore, and will meet 

 him again. He may have a mission in inculcating a 

 greater patience in his victims, .though that is doubtful 

 and hard to believe; it is much easier to comprehend 

 how he could utterly destroy it. And yet the victim is 

 not without his defense, for by having a long and tire- 

 some story to tell in return, with much circumlocution, 

 repetition and particularity every time the bore appears, 

 he will soon be checked from the similar feelings in him- 

 self which he inflicts on others. The borer is always a 

 poor boree. 



But while there are habitual bores— made such by 

 nature, education and favorable opportunity — there are 

 others who are unjustly accused of being bores, and of 

 those are the men who "talk dog," or "talk gun," or 

 "talk fish," etc. Sportsmen who are holding a mutually 

 pleasant conversation over the merits of dogs, guns or 

 rods, or of sport on land or water, are not boring each 

 other. If a sportsman talks on his favorite theme in a 

 company which has no interest in it — and such lack 

 of interest is indeed rare at the present time — it is 

 simply enthusiasm out of place. The instance is a very 

 exceptional one when a sportsman will descant on the 

 pleasures to be enjoyed in his favorite sport, or when 

 he will recount the incidents of former pleasures with 

 dog and gun or rod and reel, if his audience shows a 

 lack of interest. There may be an extremely excep- 

 tional instance in which there are bores in respect to 

 their favorite sport, but even then they are such in a 

 good cause. 



The bore sometimes creeps into literature, but there he 

 fares less happily, for while it is frequently a difficulty cr 

 impossibility to refuse to listen to his oral efforts, it is not 

 difficult to refuse to read his writings. 



Forest and Stream's pages are free from him, for in 

 it are ever writings of common interest, crisp, instructive, 

 well written, the best of their kind in knowledge and 

 scope of subjects covered, and their sources are bounded 

 only by the geographical ranges of the game, large and 

 small, of the world. Nowhere is there more freedom 

 from the annoying, the uninteresting, the wearisome. 



FEDERAL FOREST PROTECTION, 

 Very slowly, but none the less surely, the public 

 interest in forest protection is increasing. Secretary 

 Noble showed his appreciation of its importance when 

 he caused to be set apart the forest reservations made 

 possible by the act of March 3, 1891, and now Secretary 

 Smith recognizes the needs of these reservations by ask- 

 ing from Congress legislation which shall give reality to 

 these reservations, which as yet exist only on paper. 



This subject is one to which frequent attention has 

 been called, and we have often pointed out the absurdity 

 of proclaiming that a certain tract of land is a forest 

 reservation and yet doing nothing to make it one in 

 fact. We had twenty-two years' experience of this 

 mode of caring for the public rights in the Yellow- 

 stone National Park, and how it worked there is well 

 known. A proclamation or the establishment of regula- 

 tions by authorized officers of the Government are good 

 just in so far as they are backed up by the power of the 

 Government to enforce them and no further. No legisla- 

 tion looking to the preservation of our forest reserves has 

 ever been enacted by Congress. No law exists by which of- 

 fenses against the public can be punished. While most' 

 of the national parks are protected by troops, even these 

 guardians have — or until very recently had— no power to 

 do more than expel from the reservation an individual 

 guilty of violating the regulations established by the* 

 Secretary of the Interior. It is surely time that an end 

 were made of this farce. The forest reservations should 

 have the protection which they so greatly need and with- 

 out further delay. 



The ridiculous inadequacy of the means now at the dis- 

 position of the Interior Department is shown when it is- 



stated that there are only thirty special agents who can 

 be employed for this purpose, and when it is remembered 

 that the forest reservations aggregate many millions of 

 acres, lying in widely separated portions of the continent, 

 in Alaska, on the Pacific coast and all through the Rocky 

 Mountains. 



Secretary Smith recommends the passage of Mr. McRae's 

 Bill to protect public forest reservations. He believes that 

 the enactment of the measure would enable the Govern- 

 ment actually to accomplish something toward pro- 

 tecting the public possessions. Under present conditions 

 it can do nothing. The bill ought to pass, for the rea- 

 son that it authorizes the Secretary of War to detail 

 troops to guard the reservations, just as they are 

 now detailed to look after the Yosemite, Yellowstone, 

 Grant and Sequoia parks. If Congress shall authorize 

 the employment of troops for this purpose some tem- 

 porary relief may be had from the ravages of the timber 

 cutters, sheep herders and forest burners, who are now 

 destroying the forests of these reservations. Aside from 

 this one point the bill, it must be said, has little to recom- 

 mend it. It is loosely drawn, contains no provision for 

 the punishment of offenders against the regulations es- 

 tablished by the Secretary of the Interior, nor any process 

 for their arrest, trial and punishment, It contains pro- 

 visions permitting the cutting of timber under restric- 

 tions which may easily be evaded. 



It would seem that when Mr. McRae introduces his bill 

 its form might be so changed that it will at least provide 

 t some form of government for these forest reservations^ 

 some method by which law can be enforced within their 

 borders. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



The "fake" mills are still grinding. First it was a yam 

 about Alaska duck-egg destruction; then about Long 

 Island cabbage beds ravaged by deer; and now it is about 

 carp— 500 tons of them taken out of a New Jersey pond. 

 A New York paper reported the other day that wrien 

 Vreeland Pond, in Passaic, was drained Poles and Hun- 

 garians flocked to the muddy fish preserve and carried 

 away 500 tons of German carp. There was a roundness 

 about this 500-ton carp "fake" which struck the fancy of 

 the Forest and Stream's statistician, and two minutes 

 with a piece of paper and a lead pencil evolved an inter- 

 esting computation. Now 500 tons equal 1,000,000 pounds; 

 the market price of carp is 6 cents a pound; 1,000,000 

 pounds at 6 cents would make $60,000, quite a snug 

 little value for the Poles and Hungarians to bear 

 off. Again, allowing to each one of these fortu- 

 nate recipients of the harvest of the New Jersey 

 mud-pond fertility a horse and wagon to cart his plun- 

 der home in, and reckoning a half ton to a load, 1,000 

 wagons would be required; and reckoning that each 

 wagon would require 20 feet of space in the procession, 

 there would be a train of carp-laden vehicles 20,000 feet 

 or four miles long. Altogether it was a big haul of 

 fish, the biggest ever known in these parts, and almost 

 as wonderful as the great Kekoskee bullhead harvest. 

 But, unfortunately, unlike the Kekoskee bullhead story, 

 this one was not true, not by 490 odd tons of carp. 

 What did take place at Vreeland Pond Warden Shiner 

 tells in another column, and it is an interesting story 

 too. 



The New York Fish Commission financial muddle ap- 

 pears to be growing more serious as new developments 

 are made. At a meeting last week the Commissioners 

 announced that they had been compelled by shortage of 

 funds to dismiss fifteen of the thirty-three game and fish 

 protectors, and with them Clerk John Liberty, who has 

 so long done valuable and efficient service in the office of 

 the Chief Protector. This is the pretty state of affairs 

 that has resulted from the happy-go-lucky regime of the 

 iformer Commission; it is precisely what might have been 

 expected when the Fish Commission of New York was 

 prostituted by Governor Hill to political purposes, and 

 men were put into the board whose sense of responsibility 

 was so slight that they treated the office as a choicely 

 humorous affair and their own connection with it as a 

 huge joke. Ex-Secretary Doyle, whose accounts have 

 given the new Commission so much trouble, has been 

 getting the blame for the financial complications the old 

 board left behind it; but the pertinent question is: What 

 were the Commissioners doing that their accounts got 

 into such a condition? 



