Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Ots. a Copy, t 

 Six Months, $2. J 



NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 10, 1887. 



I VOL. XXVIII.— No. 3. 



1 Nos. 39 & 10 Park Row, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



The Goose Killers. 



The National Park Bill. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Sam Lovel's Thanksgiving.— I. 



Canadian Game and Fish 

 Resorts. 



A Coursing Meet. 

 Natural History. 



Florida Bird Notes. 



The, Terns of Matinicus Rock. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Wogden. 



The National Park Bill. 

 Wisconsin Deer Hunting. 

 Hunting Hares in California. 

 Maine Game Suggestions. 

 Abolish Siiring Shooting. 

 Penetration Tests. 

 Winter Game Notes from the 

 Park. 



With the Bears in Coon Bayou. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 

 The Sunday Fisherman. 

 My Second Salmon. 

 Early Maine Shooting. 

 Surface Schools of Trout, 

 improved Salmon. 

 Size and Age of Trout. 

 Re-Numbering of Fish Hooks. 



Fishculture. 



The Ten-Inch Lobster Law. 



Wisconsin Commission. 



Vermont Commission. 

 The Kennel. 



Eastern Field Trials Club. 



The American .Mastiff Club. 



The Yorkshire Terrier. 



Dogs of Antiquity. 



Hare Dogs. 



Kennel Management. 



Kennel Notes. 

 RiELE and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



Rest Shooting. 



The Trap. • 

 Yachting. 



The Thistle's Designer and the 

 Newspapers. 



The Classification of Racing 

 Yachts. 



New Sailing Regulations of 

 the S. C. Y. C. 



A Now Adjustable Steerer. 



Yachting Notes. 

 Canoeing. 



A Summer's Cruise. 



Square Sterns vs. Counters. 



The Ruckawas. 



Canoes vs. Sailing Boats. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THE NATIONAL PARK BILL. 



THE bill to provide a government for the National Park 

 has been ref erred to the Committee on Public Lands 

 of the House of Representatives, of which Hon. T. E. 

 Cobb, of Indiana, is chairman. It is hoped that it may- 

 be considered this week by the Committee and favorably 

 reported. There is the more reason for this belief because 

 the House once before passed a bill quite similar to the 

 one now before it, which bill failed to become a law- only 

 because the Conference Committee of the Senate and 

 House could not agree on some details of the bill. Of 

 the widespread interest felt in the fate of this measure 

 there is no doubt. Each mail brings to us letters from 

 individuals, clubs and societies in all parts of the country 

 urging us to aid the bill by every means in our power, and 

 promising to lend their assistance. 



The time remaining in which to take action on this 

 measure, is so short that it demands energetic and con- 

 certed work by each one who feels an interest in the sub- 

 ject. Those who have visited the Yellowstone Park, and 

 many who have not, believe that that reservation is worth 

 preserving, that the persons and the property of the tour- 

 ists who visit it ought to be made safe, that the forests 

 ought to be protected from fires, the geysers and hot 

 spring craters from mutilation and the game from wanton 

 slaughter and speedy extinction. If every man and every 

 association of men who feel in this way will take the 

 proper steps to interest their representatives in Congress 

 in this matter, there is hope that the bill may become a 

 law at this session. It is not enough that these represent- 

 atives should be asked to vote for the bill. They should 

 be urged to take an active interest in it, to see that it be 

 ealled up whenever there is a chance for it. This they 

 will do if they are made to understand that their constit- 

 uents desire such action on their part. 



In another column will be found a letter from Mr.- 

 Phillips to the Chairman of the Public Lands Commit- 

 tee, answering very ably the one or two objections which 

 have been made to the bill. The document is clear, con- 

 cise and forcible, and should carry great weight. This 

 letter should be read with the one from Mr. Hague to 



Senator Vest, of Feb. 4, 1886, which we published nearly a 

 year ago. The two furnish an unanswerable argument 

 in favor of the protection and extension of the Park. 



The influence of the forests on rainfall is so little under- 

 stood, that it is probable that few Congressmen appreci- 

 ate the dire results which must follow continued neglect 

 of this great forest preserve. It has been estimated that 

 the waters drawn from the Yellowstone Park supply be- 

 tween 9,000 and 10,000 miles of river length. The banks 

 of these rivers are now, or will be as the country settles 

 up, made fertile by irrigation from these Avaters. It is 

 believed that on an average a territory five miles in width, 

 or two and one-half miles on either side of these streams, 

 can thus be made arable. But this can only be done if 

 the streams remain at their present level. If they 

 are diminished in volume the lands furthest from 

 the rivers cannot be reached by the waters, and 

 any serious diminution of the volume of the streams, such 

 as would be caused by extensive forest denudation, would 

 reduce the water in the creeks and rivers to so low a 

 point that any irrigation would be impossible. 



According to these figures, therefore, the arable char- 

 acter of a territory containing from 45,000 to 50,000 

 square miles depends upon the proper protection of the 

 Yellowstone Park. This is so important a matter that it 

 surely ought to receive the attention of the House of 

 Representatives. 



THE GOOSE KILLERS. 

 r F*HE fable of the youth who killed the. goose that laid 

 i every day a golden egg for him, has been told by 

 tongue and print so often and for so many years that 

 every one must have heard or read it, but it would seem 

 that few had profited by it when year after year so many 

 go on killing the geese that lay eggs of gold for them. It 

 is no great matter of wonder that the thoughtless and 

 purely selfish should do so foolish a thing, but it is almost 

 past accounting for that those who are forecasting and 

 prudent in the general affair^ of life should be so blind to 

 their interest. When the wild geese come honking along 

 the April sky, and wild ducks tarry a little on their jour- 

 ney in waters just unsealed, and snipe drop down on the 

 thawing marshes to rest and feed, and flocks of shore 

 birds skirt the long coast, all on their way to summer 

 homes to lay eggs that would be golden in golden autumn, 

 the goose killer is in wait for them all along their 

 thoroughfare at every halting place, greedy for the most, 

 craving the last of them. Then when he has wrought 

 what havoc he can, though not the half he would, with 

 these, and the frightened smvivors of the harried flocks 

 of migrants have gone their way to the savage but kinder 

 far North, he amuses his bloodthirst a while with spawn- 

 ing bass and trout fry too small to wear a visible spot, 

 and boasts shamelessly of the numbers he has caught. 



Presently the woodcock are hatched and able to fly and 

 so are the young grouse, and the half-growm plover are 

 making short flights across the fields they were born in 

 and were never outside of, and the goose killer is in his 

 glory now, for he can smell powder and taste warm blood 

 again. It matters little to him what the husbanded 

 chances of the future might bring, he counts a tough 

 morsel to-day better than a tender feast to-morrow. A 

 lean waterfowl in spring, an untimely taken fish, a half- 

 grown woodcock, or grouse or plover in summer time are 

 more to him than the dozen or score of each that might 

 be hatched from the golden egg, and might be taken by 

 and by in their proper season — by some one else, perhaps. 

 Aye, there's the rub that brings upon the world the 

 calamity of the goose killer's existence and evil deeds. 

 He must have what he will to-day, lest some one get 

 more to-morrow, though there be nothing left for any one 

 to-morrow. If there were no hounding of deer, the world 

 might come to an end before he could boast of killing 

 one, he, meanwhile, eating his own heart with bitter 

 sauce of envy, beholding the skillful hunter kill his stag 

 often by fair and sportsmanlike methods. What is it to 

 him that there should be no deer in all the woods twenty 

 years hence, so that he to-day clubs to death one suckling 

 doe? 



Nor is this so-called sportsman the only goose killer 

 whose wrongdoing makes us all suffer. For his and the 

 milliners' profit and the barbarous ornamentation of 

 women's head dress, another ruthlessly slays the harm- 

 less and useful beautiful birds, to the world's loss of song 

 and beauty and goodness. The farmer and the lumber- 

 man strip mountain and swamp of forest growth for a 

 little present gain and the world's irreparable loss, the 



loss of copious springs and streams, and loss by disastrous 

 floods. A few greedy speculators combine to spoil the 

 nation's park for their own selfish gain, shameless, un- 

 scrupulous; and the nation looks on almost unconcerned, 

 with but here and there out of the millions concerned, a 

 voice lifted in condemnation of the outrageous scheme of 

 destruction. 



So the ceaseless warfare against nature goes on, till one 

 is almost ready to despair that the race of goose killers 

 shall be removed from the face of the earth till the last 

 goose that lays an egg of gold shall be killed: that the 

 destroyer shall pass away only when there is nothing left 

 for him to destroy. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 INN'S bill lias been put in. Finn is from New York 

 city. His bill is designed to repeal the short lobster 

 law. Finn says the change is asked for by the fish 

 dealers of his district. Finn is probably mistaken; and 

 his little bill will probably be squelched. Finn stands for 

 a band of avaricious dealers who want to open this port 

 for the reception of immature lobsters, traffic in which is 

 forbidden by the laws of other States. Finn's backers 

 are scheming to provide a market for this illicit mer- 

 chandise. So that they make a dollar to-day, tomorrow 

 may look out for its own lobsters. Finn and his clique 

 do not fairly represent the fish dealers of New York. The 

 Legislature ought not to be inveigled into believing that 

 he does; but the Legislature, we regret to say, can be in- 

 veigled into believing anything. On matters of fish and 

 game protection the average Assemblyman takes a posi- 

 tive delight in being bamboozled. 



The sundty civil bill pro \ ides an appropriation for the 

 Parle as follows: "For every purpose and object necessary 

 for the protection, preservation and improvement of the 

 Yellowstone National Park, including compensation of 

 superintendent and employees, forty thousand dollars; 

 two thousand dollars of said amount to be paid to a super- 

 intendent of said Park, and not exceeding nine hundred 

 dollars to each of ten assistants, all of whom shall be ap- 

 pointed by the Secretary of the Interior and reside con- 

 tinuously in the Park, and whose duty it shall be to pro- 

 tect the game, timber and objects of interest therein; the 

 balance of the sum appropriated to be expended in the 

 construction and improvement of suitable roads and 

 bridges in said Park, under the supervision and direction 

 of an engineer officer detailed by the Secretary of War for 

 that duty." 



Mr. Erwdn, of St. Lawrence county, has introduced into 

 the New York Legislature a bill to exempt his district 

 from the operation of the song bird law. It cannot be 

 that Mr. Erwin fails to recognize the wisdom of the law; 

 he is probably acting at the instance of some of his foolish 

 constituents. The law is a good one, and it is just as 

 good for St. Lawrence as for the rest of the State, To 

 pass Mr. Erwin's bill would be to add to that jumbled col- 

 lection of special laws and exceptions to laws, which is a 

 disgrace of long standing. 



The widow of Hugh Conway has protested that some 

 of the trashy fiction wdiich purports to have been written 

 by her husband did not come from his pen. This is very 

 likely true enough, and we extend our sympathy to Mrs. 

 Conway as well as to the writers whose reminiscences of 

 the late Ned Buntiine have been hashed over and put 

 forth as his own bv one "Will Wildwood." 



The Agassiz Association, established by St. Nicholas, 

 has outgrown the space which that magazine can devote 

 to it and it is, to have a journal of its own, the Swiss Cross, 

 to be edited by the president of the association, Mr. Har- 

 lan H. Ballard, of Pittsfield, Mass. The Sioiss Cross may 

 prove a valuable adjunct of the Audubon Magazine in 

 the latter's special work. 



A bill recently introduced into the Indiana Legislature 

 prohibits the shooting of quail and prairie chickens in- 

 definitely, but makes no provision against unlimited trap- 

 ping and snaring. There is a very large African in that 

 woodpile. 



A New York astrologer, convicted of sending girl dupes 

 to their deaths in Panama, has been given the righteous 

 sentence of fifteen years in the State prison. Florida 

 land-sharks, who inveigle entire families down to the 

 miasmatic wastes of southern Florida, go scot free. 



