Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Tebms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. ) 



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NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 23, 1888. 



4 YOL. XXX.— No. 5, 



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



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which he desired to protect from Beaufort's competition. 

 The choice of motives is not great. Whether the thing 

 was done to serve personal ends, to feed individual 

 malice, or to gratify club spite, is all one. The barring 

 of Beaufort was petty, mean and childish in the extreme. 

 It makes of fair play a by-word. The action and its 

 attendant features are contemptible and disgraceful. 



Whether the rule in itself be good or bad, the event has 

 demonstrated that its application iu individual cases may 

 be unjust and scandalous to a degree. The Westminster 

 Kennel Club sought and obtained from the American 

 Kennel Club special authorization to do this thing; but 

 if dog shows are to be governed by the principles of 

 ordinary respectability it is self-evident that neither 

 should the Westminster Kennel Club nor any other club 

 be authorized to repeat the scandal. The Rule 7 ought 

 to be amended before it is twenty-four hours older. 



Nos. 39 and 40 Park Row. 



New York City. 



CONTENTS. 



E DrroniAx. 

 The Menhaden Question. 

 Rule 7 and its Application. 

 Starving Indians. 

 Snap Shots. 



The Rock Climbers.— vrx. 

 The Sportsman Ton lust. 



After Mississippi Ducks.— IX. 

 Natural History. 



American CervidEe. 

 Game Bag and Gtin. 



Pilgrimage of the Saginaw 

 Crowd. 



A Michigan 'Brutus. 



Maine Large Game. 



Wildfowl Shooting over the 

 Line. 



The Albany Game Law Mill. 

 Where Foxes Swarm. 

 Carolina Resort Wanted. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 

 Fishing in the Potomac. 

 Sunapee Trout. 

 The Color of Trout Flesh. 

 Sunapee Lake. 



Fly - Tying and Angling 



Devices. 

 The Poetrv of Angling. 

 Pickerel Through the Tee. 

 Floating Flies. 



Fishodxture. 



Massachusetts Lobsters. 



The Menhaden Question. 

 The Kennel. 



The Utica Show. 



New York Dog Show. 



Clumber Spaniel Standard. 



Index of Show Winners. 



American Kennel Register. 



Rule 2. 



The Rejection of Entries. 

 Kennel Management. 

 Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 

 Range and Gallery. 

 The Trap. 



The Long Branch Shoot. 



Bandle— Verges. 

 Yachting. 



An Inland Yacht Cruise. 



Navigation of Lake George. 



English Misinformation. 



Centerboards in Great Britain 

 Canoeing. 



A Christmas Cruise. 



An Amateur's Experience. 



The - Present Tendencies of 

 Canoeing. 



Prizes for Paddling Races. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



RULE SEVEN AND ITS APPLICATION. 



A RULE of the American Kennel Club, Rule 7, pro- 

 vides that the authorities of any show may reserve 

 to themselves the right of declining any entries they may 

 see tit. When the adoption of this rule was discussed at 

 the meeting of the club, the Boston delegate sought to 

 amend it iu such a way that the authorities should be 

 required to give a reason for declining any entries they 

 might reject. Thereupon Elliott Smith, representing the 

 Westminster Kennel Club, said that there were certain 

 persons, not necessary to be named, whom it would be 

 awkward for the members of his club to come into con- 

 tact with as exhibitors, and on this ground he asked the 

 meeting, as a favor to his club, to adopt the rule as 

 worded. This was done. It was generally understood 

 at the time that the individuals against whom the rule 

 was designed were Messrs. James Watson and Charles H. 

 Mason. Neither of these gentlemen could be barred on 

 the pretext that he had ever been "guilty of misconduct 

 of any kind in connection with dogs, dog shows or field 

 trials;" the Westminster Kennel Club's grievance against 

 the two was not that they had ever committed any 

 wrong in these respects; no one could lay finger on any 

 such offense. It was, on the contrary, because they had 

 been independent enough to expose and criticise the 

 crookedness, trickery and fraud of others, that Messrs, 

 Watson and Mason were to be shut out from Westmin- 

 ster Club shows. With the first opportunity, the West- 

 minster Kennel Club demonstrated the correctness of 

 the theory as to whom the rule was intended for. Mr. 

 Chas. H. Mason sent to the club an entry of his dog 

 Beaufort. The entry was held by the committee until 

 after a dog dealer, whose desk is in the club's office, had 

 made an effort to buy the dog and failed. Then the en- 

 try was declined. The owner of the dog has sug- 

 gested that the reason for barring Beaufort was 

 that F. R. Hitchcock, the club secretary and active 

 memler of" the bench show committee, was the 

 owner of a dog, Tammany, entered in the same class 



STARVING INDIANS. 



DISHEARTENING reports of suffering and death 

 among the Canadian Indians come to us from the 

 far Northwest. These cover a wide extent of territory 

 and include the Athabasca, Peace River and Mackenzie 

 River districts of the Northwest Territories. If the re- 

 ports are authentic, the Canadian Government is on the 

 way to gain a reputation in regard to its treatment of 

 the Indians as unenviable as that which the United States 

 deservedly enjoys. Mr. S. Cunningham, member of the 

 Northwest Council from Edmonton, who has recently 

 returned from the neighborhood of the Slave Lakes, and 

 the Rev. Mr. W. Spendlove, a missionary for many years 

 resident in the Mackenzie River country, are quoted as 

 having stated that the condition of the Indians in the 

 region referred to is most deplorable. The country is very 

 sparsely inhabited, there being, it is said, only about 6,000 

 people in an area of 700,000 square miles, and these are 

 all Indians or half-breeds. After the Riel rebellion their 

 arms, horses and cattle were taken away from many of 

 these people, who were thus deprived of all chance to earn 

 a livelihood by ordinary means. Besides this, the barren- 

 ground caribou, which in ordinary season form the main 

 dependence of the inhabitants of these desolate wastes, 

 have for two years been very scarce, and it has been im- 

 possible for them to kill game enough to keep body and 

 soul together. 



Instances are reported from Peace River where Indians 

 who have died of starvation have been eaten by their 

 companions. Mr. Cunningham,who is a Cree half-breed, we 

 know to be a man of unusual intelligence, and competent 

 to speak of the condition of affairs in the region he has 

 visited, while Mr. Spendlove's experience of nine years in 

 the Mackenzie River country gives weight to his testi- 

 mony, If these gentlemen are correctly reported the con- 

 dition of these British Indians is almost hopeless. Great 

 indignation is said to be felt in the Northwest at the 

 neglect of the Dominion Government to take some steps 

 to relieve their destitution, of which it has been repeat- 

 edly advised. . 



THE MENHADEN QUESTION. 



THE dispute as to the amount of injury done to the 

 fisheries by the capture of menhaden for oil and 

 guano, bids fair to become perennial. Up to this time 

 the question has been confined to the men engaged in the 

 menhaden business, and the men who fish in other ways, 

 by hook or net, but now it seems that the menhaden 

 fishers have a reinforcement from the commercial fisher- 

 men of Massachusetts, because the latter fear that the 

 bill now before Congress will interfere with the capture 

 of menhaden for bait. If this construction has a sound 

 basis the bill should be amended at once, for the capture 

 of bait should be preserved to all fishermen who use an 

 inferior fish to catch a better one. So far we approve of 

 the letter of Capt. Babson to the Cape Ann Advertiser, 

 published in another column. 



We also agree with Capt. Babson that the bluefish is a 

 destructive animal, which consumes more than it is 

 worth, just as the fresh- water pike does, but we do not 

 believe that the "taking of menhaden by the use of the 

 purse seine has not the slightest effect on the great body 

 of fish." This is asking too much of the credulity of 

 mankind, no matter who says so. Man upsets the bal- 

 ance whenever he steps in with his superior intelligence 

 and destructive agencies, whether it is among the birds, 

 the beasts or the fishes. If the menhaden just held then- 

 own before the introduction of the purse-net and the oil 



and guano factory, they must drop behind with this re- 

 enforcement to their enemies. The menhaden fishers 

 have been fond of quoting a saying of Huxley's, that 

 man was not a factor in the destruction of seafishes, but 

 the fact is that Huxley was examining the herring fish- 

 eries of Great Britain at the time he said this, and the 

 deadly purse-net and menhaden steamer were not known 

 there. They also quote B;ird and Goode as indorsing 

 Huxley in this statement, but they omit McDonald, an 

 assistant to the two latter, who expresses doubts as to this 

 theory. (Report U. S. Fish Commission for 1874, pp, 

 236-231.) 



It is true that McDonald does not express himself 

 as in favor of too much restriction of the purae-net fishing 

 for menhaden, yet it is clear that he believes that the 

 menhaden spawn in the Chesapeake and that by the 

 middle of May the fish were "lean and impoverished." 



The restriction of the capture of menhaden to the season 

 beginning with July would, we believe, result in an in- 

 crease of this fish, and therefore be a benefit not only to 

 the food fishes but to the menhaden men also, who would 

 then find the fish not only plentiful but fat. In our last 

 issue Mr. Arthur Martin covered the ground, but the fact 

 is that the menhaden men, like most fishermen, want no 

 restrictions on their business, they want the last fish and 

 want it now, no matter what may be the future conse- 

 quences. 



The idea that man is not a factor in the destruction of 

 sea fish is a false one, in the present day. The coast fishes 

 are not found far out at sea, but within a few miles of 

 shore where the destructive engines of man can reach 

 them. The same idea once prevailed in regard to the im- 

 possibility of exhausting the supply of whales, but they 

 are nearly extinct and no doubt would have been entirely 

 so but for the introduction of petroleum as a substitute 

 for their oil. The claim that our food fishes do not feed 

 upon the menhaden is as false as it is absurd, for if they 

 did not feed upon them, then they would not be desirable 

 bait. 



of 



SNAP SHOTS. 



SENATOR VEST'S bill, providing for the care 

 the Yellowstone National Park, has just been re- 

 ported favorably by Senator Manderson with a number 

 of amendments which are said by friends of the Park to 

 be satisfactory. It is to be hoped that Senators Vest and 

 Manderson, who have done so much earnest work for the 

 Park, will urge immediate action on the measure. 

 A similar bill having passed the Senate at the last 

 session of Congress with only eight votes against it, there 

 seems no reason to doubt that this one would go through 

 if it were only brought to a vote. If, however, the bill 

 is to be held much longer in the Senate, there is little 

 prospeot that it will get to the House in time to be acted 

 on by that body. If, however, as is hoped, it shall find 

 in the House an able and energetic champion, we may 

 look to see the long-needed measure for the protection 

 of the people's pleasure ground become a law. 



A 6hort time ago the National Rod and Reel Association 

 took up the question of the influence of the menhaden 

 fisheries' upon the supply of food fish. The President of 

 the Association declared it to be the most important 

 question which had ever been brought before it, and 

 appointed a committee to investigate the subject. The 

 committee met, the menhaden men sent several rep- 

 resentatives to the meeting, and Mr. E. G. Blackford's 

 secretary took stenographic notes of what was said, and 

 there the matter seems to have dropped. No report of 

 that meeting has been published, that we are aware of, 

 and no further action has been taken. 



The United States Senate has passed, by a two-thirds 

 majority, the Bill for the Promotion of Mendicancy, 

 which will give away $77,000, 0CO of the public money. 

 It has also given favorable consideration to other bills 

 looking toward the distribution among various cities of 

 the Union of $26,000,000 more for public buildings. It 

 will, therefore, no doubt be in order, when the question 

 of an appropriation for the care of the National Park 

 comes up, for Congress to plead that no money can be 

 bad for this purpose. A hundred millions or so are not 

 worth thinking about when votes are in question, but 

 when the interests of the people are to be cared for then 

 money must be saved. The ways of the politician are 

 well enough known, but the logic by which he justifies 

 th£se ways to his own conscience — if he has any — is truly 

 inscrutablei 



