Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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



Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 24, 1887. 



) VOL. XXIX.-N0. 18. 



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



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Those Mysterious Rifles. 



Licenses "in Delaware. 



Prize Cups and Codfish. 



Natives and Outsiders. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Sam Lovel's Camps. 

 Natural History. 



Sailing Through the Air. 



Rattlesnakes m Trees. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Hunting in Florida in 1874.— n. 



One Squirrel. 



His First Gun. 



Shooting Notes. 



Another Bonanza. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Muskoka Experience. 



On the Gasconade.— in. 



Maine Fishing Abuses. 



Trouting on the Passadum- 

 keag.— m. 



Sea and River Fishing. 

 Washington as an Angler. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



Protection for Lake Erie. 

 The Kennel. 



The Robins Island Fire. 



Western Field Trials. 



The Eastern Field Trials. 



Philadelphia Club Trials. 



Kennel Management. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and GaUery. 



The Trap. 

 Canoeing. 



The East and West. 



A New Fitting for Canoe Sails. 



Do We Want Larger Canoes? 

 Yachting. 



Seawanhaka C. Y. O. Lectures. 



Plain Talk from a British 

 Yachtsman. 



The Deed of Gift. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THOSE MYSTERIOUS RIFLES. 



EVERY few days there floats through the newspapers 

 a story giving alleged facts about some new rifle 

 which has been or is about to be adopted by some one of 

 the foreign powers. The writer manages to give some 

 very startling half-facts, and one is tempted to believe 

 that at last the coming small arm has come. The new 

 arm has generally a very small caliber, a very long range, 

 a very low trajectory, a very slight recoil, uses a powder 

 which gives a very small report and a very small amount 

 of smoke, and the bullet is very peculiar in many respects. 

 In fact, the whole arm is very "very" in many respects, 

 and the government makers are very careful about letting 

 a single sample get out or a single fact as to its perform- 

 ance come to the public ear. 



Now and then a bit of evidence does get out. A bottle- 

 neck shell ejected from some of the experimental pieces 

 is picked up and those who know the history of what has 

 been done in this line know at once that an old and dis- 

 carded feature in American small arm progress is in use 

 in the phenomenal paper piece. There are wonderful 

 targets made with shots bunched in a fashion which 

 would rouse the jealousy of the most pronounced muzzle- 

 loader lover, but the targets are nob published. The 

 pencil-shaped steel bullets have a fashion in the story of 

 tearing along through planks and sheathing of metal, 

 but the holes and the punctures are not shown to the 

 doubting ones on the outside. In the story each govern- 

 ment is supposed to have the most perfect arm and each 

 flatters itself that no other power knows what it is doing, 

 while as a matter of fact, every sensible person knows 

 that the army-ridden continent of Europe is also overrun 

 by an army of spies, noting down every item against 

 every power which may in a twist of the political whirli- 

 gig become an enemy in the field. 



The explanation for all this mystery is a very simple 

 one. The foreign armies are like our own, overrun with 

 petty jealousies; one department of the service looks with 

 green eyes at the success of another; a clever infantry 

 officer or an artisan in his employ concocts a new arm, 

 and at once the whole flock of infantry officers call for 



that arm, lobby for it, and shut their eyes to the merits 

 of the arm which an engineer officer has elaborated. 

 There is money in a fat government contract for a sup- 

 ply of small arms. Army officers have often very lean 

 and hungry purses. 



There is no doubt that in the line of the chemistry of 

 explosives European savants have made important pro- 

 gress, and have reached or are close to some important 

 discoveries, but when it comes to the mechanical get-up 

 of a small arm, guaranteed to work well and "get there'' 

 every time, we venture to assert that American ingenuity 

 will always hold the head of the line. It might save 

 European cash, even at the expense of European self- 

 esteem, if a jury of experts from leading American 

 armories were invited over to give a few points on the 

 models now considered with such favor abroad. 



PRIZE CUPS AND CODFISH. 



THAT there is an intimate connection between yacht 

 architecture and the fleet devoted to mercantile 

 pursuits, has received a striking illustration in the success 

 of the new fishing schooner, Carrie E. Philips, recently 

 launched from the yard of A. D. Story, of Essex, Mass. 

 This schooner was designed by Mr. Ed. Burgess, of yacht 

 building fame. An an improvement upon present prac- 

 tice in the fishing fleet of the banks, the Philips will no 

 doubt serve as a guide to further advance. She repre- 

 sents a combination of speed, seaworthiness and adapta- 

 bility to purpose not hitherto attained among the bankers, 

 to say nothing of the superior beauty of the Philips. 

 Her rig is an adaptation of the English schooner yacht, 

 with single stick bowsprit, staysail and jib, short fore- 

 mast and mainmast stepped well forward, a rig to which 

 our schooner yachts are destined to conform, just as our 

 sloops have accepted the cutter rig. In model the Philips 

 appears to be first cousin to the Grampus, designed by 

 Capt. Collins, of the U. S. Fish Commission, the plans of 

 which can be found in Forest and Stream, Jan. 13. 



LICENSES IN DELAWARE. 



THE Delaware Game Protective Association held a 

 meeting at Dover, Nov. 14; and among the topics 

 discussed by the members was the $25 license fee for non- 

 resident gunners which was passed by the late Legisla- 

 ture. This license was issued by the Game Protective 

 Association of Delaware. One-half of this fee was to be 

 given for the school fund and the other half for the use 

 of the Association. At the meeting the Association re- 

 solved to disregard the law; they hold it unconstitutional 

 because they being an incorporated body it takes a two- 

 third vote of the General Assembly to alter or amend 

 their charter; and this $25 section was passed by a bare 

 majority. The law is loosely drawn as it does not say 

 how long the license is good. The president of the As- 

 sociation holds that the license is good forever unless the 

 law is changed or until a new law is made to the con- 

 trary. The Association will therefore continue the $5 

 license fee as heretofore and will protect all holders of it. 

 This will be good news to Philadelphians, for in that city 

 300 sportsmen hold licenses. 



NATIVES AND OUTSIDERS. 



IT has been hinted from time to time, and more than 

 once spoken out loud, that the Maine game officials 

 shut their eyes to offenses committed by residents or 

 "natives," and give their attention only to visiting sports- 

 men, who are counted profitable game because able to 

 pay heavy fines. Elsewhere a communication is printed, 

 whose author assumes that the recent official proceedings 

 against two visiting sportsmen at the Upper Dam were 

 prompted by this sordid motive of plucking outsiders. 



A moment's consideration of the case as set forth in 

 our columns will show to any reasonable mind that such 

 insinuations are unjust and unfounded, for the action of 

 the warden was prompted in the first place by a visiting 

 angler, and it was only at the determined instance of 

 gentlemen from New York and Pennsylvania that the 

 initial steps were taken. By no possible twisting of the 

 facts, so far as they have come to light, can it be main- 

 tained that this discharge of duty by the warden was 

 prompted by any other than highly laudable motives. 



Unquestionably Maine residents do violate the laws; 

 there is abundant evidence to that effect. But if there is 

 anything to show that the Commissioners or their subor- 



dinates are wilfully deaf, dumb and blind to transgres- 

 sions by natives and are only on the alert for offenders 

 from abroad, it has not been demonstrated. More than 

 this, the plea so often advanced, that a guilty man 

 should go scot free because ten other guilty ones have 

 eluded detection and punishment, is not a basic 

 principle of the modern social system. No per- 

 son who valued his life would care to dwell 

 in a community where such sentiments prevailed. 

 Nor is the proposition that one offender must not be 

 punished until all the rest have had their deserts a rule 

 of official conduct that any sane person caring for the es- 

 teem of his fellows would have the audacity to advance 

 at home among his business associates and townspeople. 

 It is only when he goes off into a remote locality, defies 

 the laws he finds there and is caught at it, that he pro- 

 fesses virtuous indignation at being singled out from 

 among the rest of the culprits. 



When the Maine fish and game protectors concede that 

 they ought not to do a portion of their work because they 

 cannot do it all, it will then be in order for them to 

 resign, and for the State to abolish the commission. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



TTON. EMERY D. POTTER, a veteran among fitm 

 commissioners, has been reappointed to the Ohio 

 board; and he has gone to work in an energetic spirit to 

 advance the fishery interests of his State. In another 

 column is noted the beginning of the task of breaking up 

 the illicit destruction of fish in Lake Erie; and here is an 

 extract from a letter written by Judge Potter, which 

 gives ample evidence that the Ohio Commissioners pro- 

 pose to keep up with the times. He writes: "The first 

 official act after my appointment was to offer a resolution 

 instructing our secretary to subscribe for five copies of 

 the Forest and Stream, one for each member. As we 

 serve the State for no other compensation than our neces- 

 sary expenses, we deemed it but just that she should fur- 

 nish us with all the light needed to qualify us for an 

 intelligent performance of our duties, and my resolution 

 passed nem. con." 



The season's record of accidents in the field is growing 

 with alarming rapidity. If the geniuses of the Salvation 

 Army who devote their artistic talents to bedaubing 

 the rocks with exhortations and mottoes of a more or less 

 sacrilegious character would inscribe "Don't shoot a man 

 for a bear," "Don't peep into your gun muzzle to see if it 

 is loaded," and other useful advice for gunners, they 

 might serve an useful end. Such advice heeded would 

 have saved the life of one poor fellow in Sullivan county, 

 Pa., the other day, who, having climbed a tree near camp, 

 was shot by a returning companion, who mistook his 

 friend in the tree for a bear. 



There are all grades of shooting galleries in this city, 

 some on Broadway and others on the Bowery; and the 

 distinctions between them is that between the characters 

 of the thoroughfares themselves. The typical Bowery 

 gallery is a gaudy establishment, where the range is 

 short, ammunition cheap, target a swinging human effigy , 

 and the shooter often "loaded." Just now the Bowery 

 gallery keeper is reaping a harvest from sinister- visaged, 

 shaky-armed Anarchists, who waste their substance in 

 getting a steady aim, to be in readiness for the revolution 

 when it gets here. 



There is something in luck after all. When the Robins 

 Island Club went down to run their field trials last week 

 they found their club house in ashes. When the West- 

 ern Field Trials Association repaired to the grounds 

 selected, they found the condition of the cover, the 

 weather and the game supply all unfavorable for work. 

 On the other hand, the Eastern Field Trials Club meeting 

 at High Point has been marked by capital weather, 

 grounds in good condition and birds in abundant supply. 

 So much for bad and good luck. 



Capt. Frank H. Stott and Mr. W. W. Durant have 

 bought a tract of land comprising 51,000 acres in the 

 Adirondacks. The preserve borders upon Raquette 

 Lake, and the wonderful stories that Capt. Stott tells of 

 tons of trout being seen in some portions of it every May 

 are well worth believing, on the principle that it is 

 always easier to believe than to look for proof. 



