Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 15, 1887. 



I VOL. XXIX-No. t. 



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



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



The National Park in 1887. 



Scientist Bruske. 



James River Dams. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



In the Brush. 



Fish and Game in California. 



Rod and Gun in Nevada. 

 Natural History. 



Notes of the Fields and Woods. 



Nighthawk and Sparrow. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



"Woodduck in the South. 



The New York Game Law. 



With the Quail. 



Shooting Notes. 



A Mississippi River Resort. 



Quail and Gun Spots. 



Bears and Bear Killing. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Along the Susquehanna. 



Lost on a Trout Stream. 



Trout as Climbers. 



The Largest Black Bass. 



Maine Waters. 



Hooks. 



Pike, Pickerel, Muscalonge. 

 Floating Fly-Fishing. 



Fishculture. 



Canadian Fisheries Depart- 

 ment. 

 The Kennel. 



Beaufort-Patti M. 



The Fox-Terrier Show. 



Tiie St. Bernard in Switzer- 

 land. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Bullard Prize. 



Minnesota Rifle Tournament. 



A Poor State Arm. 



The Trap. 

 Canoeing. 



New York C. C. Sailing Cup. 



The Canoes of 1887. 

 Yachting. 



Larch mont Y. C. Regatta. 



Knickerbocker Y. C. Regatta. 



Cinderella— Anaconda Match. 



The Trial Races. 



Corinthian Y. C. of New York. 



American Newspapers and 

 Uncle Sam's Guests. 



Inspection of Yachts and 

 Launches. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THE NATIONAL PARK IN 1887. 

 fT^HE close of tourist travel in the National Park is at 

 hand, and before long the hotels will have been shut 

 up and the last sightseers will have left the reservation. 

 It is fitting, therefore, that we should take a look back- 

 ward and see how matters have been managed in Yellow- 

 stone Park during the past tourists' year. 



The season opened early, but the travel, while large, 

 was not up to that of last year. This faci is to be ex- 

 plained by the going into operation of the interstate com- 

 merce law, which has cut off a large number of travelers 

 who have heretofore traveled on passes. 



The troops have been in charge of the Park all this 

 season. The Yellowstone Park Association has had con- 

 trol of the hotels and Wakefield of the transportation. 



Captain Harris, who is in command of the troops and 

 is thus acting superintendent, has made many improve- 

 ments. He is deeply interested in the reservation and is 

 anxious to do all that is possible for it and for the com- 

 fort of those who visit it. Our reports from the region 

 have shown how energetically he has striven to protect 

 the game and how successful he has been in preventing 

 the spread of the fires, which in previous years have so 

 often caused such great damage to the forests which 

 clothe the mountains of the reservation. 



In one respect he has done an especially good work. 

 He has driven all the bummers, loafers, dead beats and 

 tramps out of the place, and there is the greatest improve- 

 ment at the Springs in this regard. One sees no loafers 

 around the hotel, and every suspicious person has to say 

 who he is, where he came from, and what he is doing; 

 and if he cannot satisfactorily answer these questions, a 

 sergeant and two soldiers look after him and hustle him 

 out. Under Captain Harris's wise rule there has been 

 very much in the military government of the Park which 

 has worked well, and those who at first regarded it as an 

 unmixed evil have had cause to modify their views. It 

 is apparent now that a good military government is far 

 better than a poor civil government: but. on the other 



hand, it can hardly be doubted that a thoroughly good 

 civilian adrninistration is preferable to a military one, 

 however good. At the same time it is far easier to obtain 

 good military administration free from politics than civil 

 government. 



The transfer of Captain Kingman, for several years 

 engineer in charge of the roads and bridges, to another 

 station, is a serious loss to the Yellowstone Park. Cap- 

 tain Sears, the engineer now in charge, has been in the 

 Park two or three times this season, remaining on each 

 occasion only a few days. He has the direction also of 

 the improvement of the Upper Missouri, and this work 

 occupies almost all his time. The care and extension of 

 the Park is therefore left wholly to his superintendent or 

 roadmaster, who spends most of his time at the Hot 

 Springs hotel. A hasty and superficial examination of 

 the roads leads to the conclusion that they are by no 

 means so well constructed as were those made under 

 Captain Kingman's direction. This officer, it must be 

 remembered, spent his whole time in the Park, and gave 

 to the improvements which he was directing not only 

 the benefit of his education and experience in planning 

 and directing, but also his own personal supervision in 

 carrying out the work in his charge. His removal is a 

 misfortune to the Park. 



A consideration of the hotel and transportation man- 

 agement, and of some other matters in connection with 

 the Park, must be postponed to another occasion. 



SCIENTIST BRUSKE. 



AS a rule a great naturalist displays at an early age a 

 taste for those pursuits in which he subsequently 

 acquires distinction. Audubon, Agassiz, Baird, were in 

 youth ardent students of nature; the boy gave promise of 

 the man. It is only in instances of extreme rarity that a 

 scientist bursts forth full-fledged and mature, without 

 any previous indication of scientific tastes, but such a 

 case has just come to public notice in Michigan. 



The sportsmen of that State are much worked up over 

 the doings of one Bruske, a clergyman, who without 

 having given any previous warning of a penchant for 

 scientific investigations has suddenly developed an over- 

 mastering passion for natural history, even going so far 

 as to pose as a martyr and suffer a certain degree of con- 

 tumely for the cause. It appears that early in August 

 Mr. Bruske went into camp at Higgins Lake, a sum- 

 mer resort in Roscommon county, in a region where 

 deer are not yet extinct. A buck was reported as having 

 been seen in a neighboring swamp, and although the sea- 

 son for killing deer had not yet opened, Mr. Bruske set 

 forth, killed the buck, sent the venison to his boarding- 

 house and shared the savory viands with such of his 

 friends as were of toughened conscience and would par- 

 take of venison out of season. Under the old regime 

 in Michigan this exploit of Mr. Bruske would have been 

 regarded as a matter of course, to be forgotten so soon as 

 the reverend gentleman tired of relating how he had slain 

 tl buck. But there happens to be a new order of things. 

 The last Legislature provided a game warden system for 

 the enforcement of the laws, and the prosecution of men 

 who kill deer out of season. Mr. Bruske having hunted 

 the deer, the warden proceeded to hunt Mr. Bruske. It 

 was at this juncture that, accelerated by the threatened 

 coming of the warden, science took hold upon Mr. Bruske, 

 or Mr. Bruske took hold upon science. There is a clause 

 in the Michigan game law (Chap. 124, laws of 1S69) which 

 says: 



" Sec. 11. The provisions of this act shall not apply to 

 any person who shall kill any of the birds or animals 

 protected by this act, for the sole purpose of preserving 

 them as specimens for scientific purposes, nor to any 

 person who shall collect the eggs or nests of any birds for 

 such scientific purposes." 



This clause probably had something to do with it, for 

 it is difficult to explain on any other ground the extra- 

 ordinary solicitude and haste of Mr. Bruske to have the 

 head of the unlawfully slain deer cleaned and mounted 

 by a taxidermist and hung up to dry in his cabin on 

 Higgins Lake. 



The game warden duly arrested the Rev. Mr. Bruske, 

 and being haled before the justice the culprit plead 

 science. He was a devoted student of natural history. 

 He swore that he had killed the buck out of season for 

 purely scientific purposes. He had devoured the venison 

 and divided it among his friends strictly in the interest of 

 science. And science stood forth as a sure defense of her 



new devotee. On the plea of science the justice let 

 Bruske go. 



That was not the end of it, however. As we have said, 

 the sportsmen of Michigan have given the Higgins Lake 

 deer killer much attention, and Mr. Bruske's exploit has 

 been done up in prose and machine poetry in numerous 

 papers throughout the State. Accepting Mr. Bruske's 

 science plea as honest, he has had to bear a tremendous deal 

 of jeering and sarcasm; and he finds himself in a position 

 not unlike that of a chicken-killing dog doing penance 

 with a dead hen tied to his collar. 



Michigan sportsmen are ready to wager that the next 

 deer killed out of season at Higgins Lake will not fall 

 to the buckshot of scientist Bruske. 



THE JAMES RIVER DAMS. 

 A T the last session of the Virginia Legislature an act 

 was passed to secure the removal of certain dams 

 in James River and its tributaries, under which the Board 

 of Public Works appointed as a commission Senator Paul 

 C. Edmunds, of Halifax; Delegate W. D. Dabney, of 

 Albemarle, and Mr. R. D, Kirkpatrick, of Rockbridge. 



This committee recently presented its report, and 

 recommended the removal of a dozen or more of the 

 dams. Although required by law to maintain fishways 

 at these obstructions, the owners have failed to provide 

 any adequate means for fish to ascend the stream; and 

 the destruction of the dams will in consequence be a 

 decided impetus to the increase of black bass, with which 

 the James is well stocked. When the recommendations 

 of the commission have been carried out the citizens of 

 the State will have reason to congratulate each other 

 upon the improved opportunities thus afforded for a 

 better fish supply. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 O EVERAL correspondents have written to inquire our 

 ^ opinion of Newport morals as exemplified by the 

 item of 500 "partridges" in the menu of a re;ent Vander- 

 bilt musicale there. It all depends. If the partridges 

 were imported, as they very well might have been at the 

 published cost of $2 a pair, it was only an instance of 

 give and take. Great Britain consumes a vast supply of 

 American game; it is only fair turn about that America 

 should consume British game products. If the "part- 

 ridges" were American ruffed grouse, as our correspond- 

 ents appear to think they were, this part of the Vander- 

 bilt entertainment was an exhibition of gilt-edged hog- 

 gishness as scandalous as brazen. 



One of the most grotesque feats of the '• journalism" 

 of the times was the New York World's submarine diving 

 excursion one night of last week. What the World takes 

 three columns and a half to relate may be told in five 

 lines. That paper hired a diver, conveyed him to the 

 vicinity of the Scotch yacht Thistle and sent him down 

 into the water after midnight to determine the shape of 

 the yacht's hull. The diver dived, came up again, drew 

 an outline of what he had seen in the pitch-dark water, 

 and the World gravely prints this outline as the " lines 

 of the Thistle. " A more arrant piece of humbugging has 

 never been perpetrated in the history of international 

 yachting and New York " journalism." The only thing 

 about the whole business not utterly ridiculous is the 

 World's faith in the idiocy of the public to swallow the 

 yarn ; and this faith is positively sublime. 



A correspondent calls attention to a new blunder by 

 the secretary of the American Kennel Club. There is one 

 consolation about it; if the club has come to fill a want it 

 is likely to go through in spite of the stupidity of the 

 present president and secretary. There is no telling how 

 long such incompetent and unfit officials will be retained 

 in their places, but a time must come when more capable 

 men will be put in office, and provided the club can 

 hang together until such a change is made there will 

 then be hope of its taking a respected position in the 

 world and amounting to something. 



The election of Mr. Charles E. Whitehead, one of the 

 best known sportsmen of this city, to the presidency of 

 the New York, Pensylvania and Ohio Railroad leads an 

 exchange to suggest that that gentleman's sporting pro- 

 clivities may prompt him to establish the general offices 

 of the road on the great Sandusky marsh through which 

 the road runs, and which is justly celebrated for its blue- 

 winged teal and canvasbaeks. 



