Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Yeah. 10 Cts. a Copt. 1 

 Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, DECEMBER 15, 1887. 



I VOL. XXIX.-No. 21. 



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



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CONTENTS. 



[Editorial. 



Bulldozing Exhibitors. 



Congress and the Park. 



Notes and Comments. 

 The Sportsman Toukist. 



Hunting in Florida in 1874.— V. 

 Natural History. 



Wolves and Squ>rrels in Texas 



A Queer Dick cf a Woodcock. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Successful System of Pro- 

 tection. 



A Bear Hunt in the Himalayas 



Game and Gun. 



Big Game in Dakota. 



Four D i ys on Grand River. 



Manahawken Ducking Re- 

 sort. 



Game Transportation Laws. 

 Ind'ans and the Game. 

 Rabbit Hunting with Uncle 

 Ned. 



Camp-Fire Flickerings. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



His First, Trouting. 



Taming "Old Warty." 



The Menhaden Question. 



Maine Trout. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



Fish Planted on Long Island. 



The Kennel. 



Nick of Naso's Fractional 

 Prize. 



American Field Trials. 



Second Champion Prizes. 



A St. Bernard Club. 



A. K. C. Dictation. 



English Dog Chat. — I. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



The Bennett Revolver Test. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



YACHTING. 



A New Singlehand Yacht. 



Hauling Up Deep Yachts. 



On the Delaware. 



Yacht Building in Boston. 



A Racing Classification. 



English Yacht Clubs and the 

 Cup. 

 Canoeing. 



Racers vs. Cruisers. 



Cauoeing in Maine. 



Large Canoes in the A. C. A. 



lone— A Large Canoe. 



The New Division. 



A May Cruise on the St. Law- 

 rence. 



Answers to Correspondents. 



BULLDOZING EXHIBITORS. 

 fT^HE American Kennel Club is an association which 

 assumes to have special charge of the interests of 

 dogs and dog matters in this country. How it has failed 

 to guard those interests in the past the public knows, for 

 the record of blunders and crudities has disheartened all 

 those who are interested in the improvement of the dog. 

 The crowning blunder of its career was committed last 

 week, when its executive committee passed a new rule 

 which provides that every dog entered at any show held 

 under the rules of the A. K. O. must be registered in the 

 American Kennel Club Stud Book. 



This so-called stud book has an unsavory history, a full 

 account of which need not be given here. It is a publi- 

 cation which was started eleven years ago, and since 

 then has been knocked about from pillar to post, now in 

 the hands of one publisher, then passed along to another. 

 Sometimes it has died, and then after two or three years 

 has been resuscitated by some sanguine publisher, who 

 ,has succeeded in collecting a few registry fees and has 

 then allowed it again to sink into oblivion. It has never 

 been a success. Every one who has tried to bring it out 

 periodically has lost money on it. It has always been in 

 the hands of irresponsible parties, has never had and has 

 not now a financial backing, without which such a work 

 can never pay expenses. There is no reason to suppose 

 that it will be more successful now than in the past. 



The present attempt to bullyrag the dog owners of 

 America into registering their dogs is a last desperate 

 device to keep afloat this venture, which was undertaken 

 by the A. K. C. a year ago, and which then had not the 

 slightest prospect of success. The A. K, C. have been 

 losing money steadily ever since they began its publica- 

 tion, and now they are using their own rules as a club 

 to drive the dog owners of America up to the stud book 

 office, there to deposit the half dollars which shall keep 

 their venture afloat a little longer and pay the salary of 

 the club secretary. This secretary moreover is not him- 

 self a dog man. He has no competent knowledge of dog 

 affairs, nor acquaintance with pedigrees, nor any of the 

 other qualifications which might justify putting the con- 



fidence in him which the public withholds from the club 

 itself. 



The A. K. C. has chosen a very unfortunate expedient 

 to rally the dog publio to the support of their publica- 

 tion. Most self-respecting people are much more easily 

 led than driven, and when the A. K, C. says "you must 

 register in our stud book or you cannot show under our 

 rule,"' they make it certain either that shows will be held 

 under other ruled than theirs, or else that the Bhows 

 which are held under their rules will be failures from a 

 financial standpoint, as well as in point of numbers of 

 the dogs shown. 



The sense of justice inherent in every man will rebel 

 at such an arbitrary rule as this, and we venture to pre- 

 dict that if it is enforced, dog shows this year will show 

 such a falling off as will astonish those delegates to the 

 A. K. C. who were concerned in the passage of this rule. 

 In all the history of dog shows in America no such serious 

 blow has been given to these interests as is threatened by 

 the passage of this rule. 



It is scarcely to be supposed that the public will tamely 

 submit to dictation of this sort. If it does, we may look 

 out next year for a new rule providing that every dog en- 

 tered at a show must have its number engraved on a col- 

 lar supplied on favorable terms by the club secretary, and 

 must be fastened in its stall by a chain bought of the sec- 

 retary, and fed on dog biscuits supplied by the seci-etary, 

 and deodorized with disinfectants kept in stock by the 

 same tlmfty pursuer of the nimble sixpence. This would 

 be all right and proper enough were the chosen secretary 

 some blind or maimed object of charity, toward whose 

 support the dog exhibitors of the country could properly 

 be asked to contribute by any such fifty-cents-all-around 

 pretext as this obnoxious rule. 



CONGRESS AND THE PARK. 



/"\N Monday last Senator Vest introduced in the Senate 

 a bill providing for the care, government and pro- 

 tection of the Yellowstone National Park. 



This bill in many of its features is the same t>at was 

 printed in our issue of last week, but one important 

 change lias been made in it, a change which cannot fail 

 to give satisfaction to all friends of the reservation, as 

 well as those who appreciate the great importance of 

 preserving the forests which protect the sources of the 

 Yellowstone and Snake River. 



In the draft of the proposed bill as printed, no change 

 was made in the boundaries of the Park, and it was pro- 

 posed to definitely fix them as laid down in Section 2474 

 of the Revised Statutes, by which the Park was established. 

 This definition, or rather absence of definition, of these 

 boundaries was adopted in the hope of silencing opposi- 

 tion to the bill, and obtaining from Congress at least an 

 authorized form of goverment for the Park. On further 

 consideration, however, Senator Vest deemed it wise to 

 make the first section of his bill read as did the first sec- 

 tion of the bill which he introduced at the last session of 

 Congress. This called for an enlargement of the Park by 

 about thirty miles on the east and ten miles on the south. 



The wisdom of this change in the reading of the bill 

 must be apparent to every one. The present boundaries 

 of the Park, as we have often shown, are vague and 

 uncertain, and the southern line moves with the seasons, 

 so that no man can tell on any given day of the year just 

 where it runs. It is clear that these boundaries ought to 

 be fixed and definite, and the phraseology of the present 

 bill provides for this. 



The chief importance of this National Park lies in its 

 value as a water preserve. It is a national reservoir, 

 which holds the moisture which fertilizes many thousand 

 square miles of arid territory, territory which without 

 this water could produce nothing more useful than 

 sage brush and cactus. If the Park shall be enlarged, 

 and so the water supply be increased, the area which 

 is susceptible of irrigation and cultivation from these 

 streams will be greatly enlarged, and so a substantial 

 addition at no cost whatever will be made to the actual 

 wealth of the country. The proposition is a very plain 

 one, and can be comprehended by every man of common 

 sense. 



While the preservation of the game and the natural 

 wonders of the Park are felt by many people to be 

 matters of great importance, there are some who regard 

 this feeling as sentimental, and not one on which any 

 money should be spent. No man who has the matter put 

 plainly before him is likely to decline to vote for so prac- 



tical and inexpensive a benefit to our northwestern 

 country as would result from increasing the water supply 

 of Montana, Dakota, Idaho and Oregon. 



One of the great problems of the day for the arid West 

 has to do with its water supply. The rivers which flow 

 down from the mountains are tapped at short intervals 

 from source to mouth by irrigating ditches which carry 

 off a part of their volume to be spread over the lands of 

 the farmer. As a consequence of this constant drain, 

 many, even of the largest of these streams, are, in times 

 of drouth, dry at their mouths, or have dwindled to mere 

 rivulet?, and the dwellers on their banks consequently 

 suffer from lack of water. This is especially the case in 

 the Southwest along streams like the Arkansas and the 

 South Platte, where farms are numerous. The northern 

 country along the Yellowstone and the Snake is not yet 

 so fully settled as to have suffered in this way, but as the 

 country fills up the same trouble will be found there, 

 unless the forests which protect the sources of their 

 streams shall be preserved. 



The practical men in Congress should be made to see 

 the importance of passing Senator Vest's bill. 



NOTES AND COMMENTS. 

 'TVHE proposition of M. Pasteur in relation to the rabbit 

 plagues of Australia and N:w Zealand may be very 

 practical, but it is exceedingly repulsive. He suggests, 

 since the poisons hitherto employed have been ineffectual 

 to destroy animals which multiply at such a frightful 

 rate, "do we not need rather, if I may so express myself, 

 a poison endowed with life, like themselves, and able, 

 like themselves, to multiply at a surprising rate?" His 

 "poison endowed with life" msan3 tha microbe, which is 

 the cause of chicken cholera; and his proposal i3 nothing 

 more nor less than to communicate this disease to the 

 rabbits, and let the fell pestilence work out its bitter ends. 

 This is to fight fire with fire, plague with plague. 



The Passaic County (N. J.) Fish and Gstne Protective 

 Association has a record well worthy of attention. From 

 a brief report fiorn the secretary, printed in another 

 column, it will be seen that the methods adopted by the 

 association are marked by common sense and attend d 

 with success. The purposes and plans of the Passaic 

 county game pi-otectors are admirable, and in every way 

 deserving of the support of citizens of the country and of 

 sportsmen from abroad. 



In our recent reference to the New Jersey game protec- 

 tive societies there was no intention of carping at the 

 good they had done. The only point made was in rela- 

 tion to the license fee which some of these societies insist 

 upon collecting from an outsider before he is permitted 

 to shoot off a gun in the State. The claimed right to dp 

 this is explicitely made by Mr. Shriner, when he writes: 

 "Of course we have under the laws of the State a right 

 to collect fees from men who shoot here in our county, 

 for the law provides that hunters or anglers shall abide 

 by the rules of local associations formed under the State 

 law, as ours is." Now the point on which enlightenment 

 is craved is this: Under what provision of the law or by 

 what construing of the English language as in common 

 use to-day, can any New Jersey society find a warrant 

 "to collect fees from men who shoot here in our county," 

 as Mr. Shriner puts it? And again, if the law does re- 

 quire a non-resident to pay money into the treasury of 

 such societies, does not the Passaic County Association 

 shirk its duty when it forbears to collect these dues? 



Mr. James Watson hit the nail squarely on the head, 

 at the American Kennel Club meeting, when in reply to 

 Mr. Peshall's objection to him (Watson) as a delegate 

 because he was an editor, he said, "It might not be 

 personal, but it is utterly ridiculous." The American 

 Kennel Club has a rare faculty of doing idiotic things, 

 and the executive committee's adoption of a resolution 

 asking the Hornell Kennel Club to withdraw its delegate 

 because he will not knuckle down to the A. K. C. foolish 

 schemers is one of its choicest blunders, Mr. Watson's 

 further suggestion that Mr. Peshall's profession should 

 not be any objection to him as a delegate, will not have 

 universal acceptance, inasmuch as it is the melancholy 

 truth that many of the A, K. C. blunders have been per- 

 petrated by members who in professional life add lustre 

 to the bar. 



