Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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

 Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, JULY 12, 1888. 



I VOL. XXX.— No. 25. 



I No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



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No, 318 Broadway. New York City. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



New York Fish Commission. 



Eorest and Stream Gun Tests. 



Adirondack Abominations. 



The National Dog Club. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



In Camp (poetry). 



In the Laurentian Wilderness. 

 Natural History. 



Some Notes on the Otter. 



Black and Silver Gray Foxes. 



The Loon in Captivity. 



That Buffalo Corral. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Massachusetts Game Law. 



The Bush Buck. 



A Chase in Missouri. 



A Moose Hunt. 



How I Spent the Fourth. 



Old Crusher Crushed. 



The National Park. 



Bears in Maine. 



Game Protectors of New York. 

 Sea and River Fishino, 



Fish in Maine Waters. 



The Salmon Fishing. 



Sea Bass off Long Beach. 



Fishculture. 



Shad in the Hudson. 

 The Kennel. 



The National Dog Club. 



The Southern Field Trial Club 



Beaufort. 



Dog Talk. 



Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Riele and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallerv. 



The Dominion Shoot. 



The Trap. 



The Newark Tournament. 

 Canoeing. 

 Tarpon and the Rag Canoe. 

 British Canoeing. 

 Atlantic Division Meet. 

 The Passaic River Meet. 

 Calla Shasta. 



The Delaware River Meet. 

 Yachting. 



Quaker City Y. C. Cruise. 



Larchmont Y. C. Regatta. 



Boston City Regatta. 



Yachting Notes. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THE NATIONAL DOG CLUB. 



AT a meeting held in this city last Thursday the new 

 dog club was finally organized under the title of the 

 National Dog Club of America. The preliminary steps of 

 formation have been watched with great interest by 

 owners, breeders and exhibitors; and now that the club 

 has been fairly launched this interest will be intensified. 



It goes without saying that there is in this country 

 abundant room for a club established on the lines marked 

 out by the National; indeed, more than this, there has 

 been an actual crying need of just such an association. 

 Rank wrongs have been perpetrated by individuals and 

 by show managers, and these have gone unpunished for 

 the simple reason that there was no body which had recog- 

 nized authority, and backed it up by a willingness to dis- 

 pense justice with an even hand. The National Club, if 

 rightly conducted, might readily constitute itself such a 

 court of justice in the kennel world ; to do this is one of 

 its proclaimed purposes; and in this single field of work, 

 if it shall aquit itself honorably, there will be found for its 

 existence ample justification and a public support hearty 

 and sufficient. 



If the scope of action marked out by those who have 

 been chiefly instrumental in its establishment shall be 

 followed, the National Club will not only provide protec- 

 tion for dog owners, but it will also advance kennel in- 

 terests by promoting shows. The club has taken its first 

 step in this direction by preparing for the use of mana- 

 gers a set of show rules, which surpass in merit any code 

 heretofore in use. These new rules are of a character to 

 commend themselves, and they have already been 

 adopted, without any solicitation on the part of the 

 National Club, by the Buffalo show managers. We are 

 advised that it is within the scheme of the National Club 

 to give special prizes at the several shows, and in other 

 ways to encourage these exhibitions. In short, the club, 

 being made up of breeders and owners, will take such 

 action in its several lines of work as will be for the 

 recognized good of breeders and owners. 



We have already pointed out that in principle a club 



formed on the basis of the National Club is stronger than 

 any other can be. This club is composed of individual 

 owners and breeders. The individual owner or breeder 

 is, after all, the one who needs protection and encourage- 

 ment. A club of owners and breeders will work for the 

 good of owners and breeders. Their interests are its inte- 

 rests, theirporicy its policy, their injury its injury. There 

 can be no real clashing of interest between the National 

 Dog Club and any other kennel organization which is 

 honestly striving for the good of the kennel world. 

 The National Dog Club, composed of owners and breed- 

 ers, will work for the good of owners and breeders; if 

 that work clashes with the work of any other club it can 

 only be because the work with which it clashes is not for 

 the good of owners and breeders. In principle then, the 

 club is sound. 



The new club by reason of its form of organization 

 and its proclaimed purposes should have the hearty, cor- 

 dial and active co-operation of all who are concerned; its 

 membership should be all-embracing. 



We believe in the plan of the National Dog Club, and 

 the Forest and Stream will give to it its fullest support 

 in all measures which tend to advancement in the ken- 

 nel world, and so long as its counsels shall be governed 

 by wisdom and justice. And it gives us pleasure to ex- 

 press our belief, which must be generally shared by the 

 public, that the present control of the club is such as to 

 warrant the fullest confidence in its integrity, fair-mind- 

 edness and discretion. 



ADIRONDACK ABOMINATIONS. 



IN the North Woods the work goes bravely on. Land- 

 lords, guides, tourists, "sportsmen" and railroad 

 managers are doing wdiat their hands find to do in the 

 work of destruction. The State has its elaborate and 

 expensive systems for the conservation of its forests and 

 game and fish, but the destroyers make away in a year 

 with more than these cumbrous and inefficient bureaus 

 can replace in a decade. 



The trout hog, the deer butcher , the dynamite cartridge 

 fiend, the night-hunter, the steel-trap deer stalker and 

 the like are increasing instead of decreasing. For ex- 

 ample, at the State Dam on Salmon River, sixteen miles 

 from Malone, a trout hog from Malone caught in three 

 days' fishing 1230 trout, the total weight of which was 

 17£lbs. Elbow Ponds, one of the sources of the Salmon 

 River, near Loon Lake station of the Chateaugay Rail- 

 road, a magnificent fishing ground for the fly-fisherman, 

 was recently dynamited and the lower pond almost to- 

 tally cleaned out. The same thing has recently happened 

 at Plumedore Pond. Fish are shot and speared every 

 year on their spawning beds. 



Night-hunting for deer is being regularly practiced at 

 Paul Smith's, at State Dam near Malone and at Jones 

 Pond near Wardner's Rainbow House, also at the various 

 ponds near Loon Lake. Worse than all, much of this 

 night-hunting is done by "guides," and participated in by 

 so-called "sportsmen." Even if it were not illegal to 

 night-hunt at this season, if the deer were fit to eat and 

 not black and ragged and the hides good for anything; 

 if the night-hunters were poor natives who needed the 

 meat for food, there might be some excuse possibly. But 

 there is not even this excuse. 



For the game protector or constable to stop a few days 

 here and a few there, at the best hotels, riding around 

 the country in the daytime and tacking his cards up on 

 stumps is all nonsense. The law-breakers don't care a rap 

 for him and laugh at mention of his name and his meth- 

 ods. 



It needs no expert to obtain names and facts. Any one 

 can obtain all the necessary proofs if they go about it 

 right. This night-hunting, taking trout of less than six 

 inches, spearing and shooting on spawning beds and the 

 like is being done near large hotels as well as by campers 

 in the wilds. It is a shame and a disgrace that these ma- 

 rauders should go unpunished, working as they do in so 

 open and barefaced a manner. 



But this is by no means all. There is yet another abom- 

 ination. The course of the new railroad that has recently 

 been extended t© Saranac Lake is a desolate waste. 

 "Burn and destroy" seems to be then- motto, and the fires 

 are extended for miles back into the forest, making even 

 whole mountains brown and desolate and lowlands mere 

 marshy, blackened stumps and charred ground. Between 

 the fish-hog, the railroad, the Italian railroad hand, the 

 night-hunter, the pseudo-sportsman and the like this grand 

 region is becoming yearly less and less like its old self 



and a few more years will witness its entire destruction 

 from a sportsman's and nature-lover's point of view. 



Read by the light of these Adirondack forest fires and 

 with the report of the night butcher's gun echoing from 

 lake to lake over the North Woods, the newspaper state- 

 ment that Forest Commissioner Townsend Cox has been on 

 an excursion to the Catskills to see about a park for deer, 

 hares, wild turkeys and guinea hens, is received with a 

 cynicism which is not dispelled by the further announce- 

 ment that it is proposed to establish a moose park in the 

 Adirondacks next year. If those whose business it is 

 would establish some way to punish the trout and deer 

 and timber thieves, some good might come of it; but 

 until the bunghole is stopped up there is nothing short of 

 lunacy in pouring in at the spigot. 



THE NEW YORK FISH COMMISSION. 

 TN the selection of Mr. Henry Burden, to succeed Mr. 



R. B. Roosevelt as Commissioner of Fisheries for 

 New York, the Governor could not have made a better 

 choice. Mr. Burden is well fitted to fill the position by 

 reason of having the time to attend to the duties and 

 also great interest in the work, as has been manifested 

 during the past two years by his securing the passage of 

 laws establishing fishways in the Hudson River and for 

 the protection of the salmon in it. We believe that his 

 appointment will strengthen the Commission and 

 materially aid in developing the broader policy advocated 

 by some of the members who have been in the minority 

 heretofore, and that soon this Commission wall take the 

 rank in fishculture which its liberal appropriations 

 entitle it to do. The lack of discipline among the em- 

 ployees of the Commission, as well as a lack of system 

 and accountability, at most of the stations, has 

 long been apparent, but such has been the hold of old 

 methods that the Board was practically powerless to re- 

 medy the evils. The old Board, which consisted of 

 Messrs. Roosevelt, Seymour, and Smith, seldom met, but 

 allowed the whole work to be run by the Superintendent 

 in his own way, and not until Messrs. Sherman and Black- 

 ford succeeeded two of the original members was there any 

 attempt made to use the authority vested in the Com- 

 missioners, who are the ones responsible for the conduct 

 of the work. Now that Mr. Burden is one of the Com- 

 mission we expect to see more attention paid to the food 

 fishes, and greater results from the work. Fishculture 

 to-day produces ten times the results, at a much less ex- 

 penditure, that it did ten years ago, and this is accom- 

 plished by the methods in use by the United States Fish 

 Commission, improved apparatus, system and discipline, 

 all of which have been lacking to a great extent in New 

 York. The Board, as now constituted, is a good and pro- 

 gressive one, and will bring the State into the front rank 

 of fishculture. t 



THE FOREST AND STREAM GUN TESTS. 



ARRANGEMENTS are now under way for the estab- 

 lishment of a gun-testing ground by the Forest 

 and Stream near this city. Its primary object will be 

 the ready determination of the question of pattern 

 and penetration of any particular gun loaded with any 

 particular ammunition. There is a great deal of rule of 

 thumb work in the loading and manipulation of gun 

 charges, and it is with the object of gathering a mass of 

 data that it has been thought advisable to establish this 

 central gun-testing stand. It will be a permanent fixture 

 and the tests made will become standard, as they will be 

 carried out with the same care for detail as was followed 

 in the trajectory tests of the flight of rifle bullets which 

 were undertaken by the Forest and Stream some years 

 ago. The results then reached have become recognized 

 as standard in small-arm work, and the gun tests as re- 

 ported from time to time in our columns will be of the 

 same reliable character. 



The Fourth op July Crank, by which is meant the 

 individual who is possessed of a man's estate and an in- 

 fant's brain development, was as active as ever this year 

 An aggravated instance of his murderous fun is reported 

 from Cleveland, O. A saloon-keeper in that city plugged 

 one end of a piece of gas pipe, filled the pipe with pow- 

 der, laid it down in the street and touched it off. This 

 pipe recoiled with such force as to strike Mr. W. E. Bond, 

 the well-known ship-builder, in the leg, which it was 

 found necessary to amputate. And this was only one of 

 hosts of casualties where criminal foolishness on the 

 Fourth worked irreparable mischief. 



