Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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



Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, MARCH 3, 1887. 



I VOL. XXVIII.-No. 6. 



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



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Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 

 Nos. 39 and 40 Park Row. New York City. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



It Has Failed. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Toubist. 



Turkey Shoot at Hamner's. 



My Ride in a Birch Canoe. 



Ou the West Coast.— n. 

 Natural History. 



"Official Extermination." 



Navajo Ague Cures. 



Old-Time Natural History. 



National Museum Buffalo. 



Prairie Owls and Scorpions. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



A Bear in a Hole. 



Game of British Columbia. 



Shooting in Cuba. 



A Canadian Deer Hunt. 



Cape Cod Rabbit Snares. 



My Last Partridge. 



The Rabbit Pest in Victoria. 



Worcester Fur Company. 



Hunting Rifles and Bullets. 



A Model Game Law. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Surface Schools of Fish. 



Bass at Break of Day. 



Salmon in the Hudson. 



The Menhaden Question. 



FlSHCTJLTTJRE. 



The Georgia Commission. 



Rhode Island Commission. 

 The Kennel. 



Tennessee Field Trials. 



National Field Trials Club. 



American Spaniel Club. 



Denver Dog Show. 



Dog Show Notes. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Military Rifle Drill. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



The Middlesex Tournament. 



New Haven Gun Club. 

 Yachting. 



A Cruise of the Tempus, 1885. 



The Ocean Yacht Race. 



Seawanhaka C. Y. C. 



Capt. Smith and Pocahontas. 



Mayflower and Arrow. 



The Heathen Chinee. 



Classification of Racing Ya'ts. 

 Canoeing. 



Executive Committee Meeting 



Another Canoe Sail. 



Batten and Reef Gear. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THIRTY-TWO PAGES. 

 To meet the demands on its columns this number of the 

 Forest and Stream has four additional pages, thirty- 



two in all. 



IT HAS FAILED. 

 rpHE closing days of the forty-ninth session of Congress 

 J- are here, and the Yellowstone Park bill has not 

 passed the House. It should have become a law. In the 

 Senate, the bill was very fully and carefully discussed. 

 Those Senators who were opposed to it brought up all the 

 arguments that could be urged against it, and these argu- 

 ments were so satisfactorily answered by the friends of 

 the bill that the measure passed by the overwhelming- 

 vote of 49 to 8. Then it went to the House, where instead 

 of being referred to the Committee on Territories, which 

 would have seemed to be the natural body to consider it, 

 it went to the Committee on Public Lands. This was un- 

 fortunate. A prominent member of that committee is 

 Judge Payson, of Illinois, who is known as the champion 

 of the gang of railroad schemers, who for years have been 

 striving in one way and another to secure for their own 

 selfish ends the Park which was set aside by Congress in 

 1872 for the benefit and enjoyment of the whole people. 

 Judge Payson's attempt to engineer this railroad scheme 

 was not crowned with any very flattering degree of suc- 

 cess. The House, under the able leadership of Mr. Cox, 

 of this city, had promptly declined to grant the desired 

 right of way, and now, when the Yellowstone Park bill 

 came before the Committtee on Public Lands, Judge Pay- 

 son had a chance for aiding the railroad project or for 

 killing the bill. He had determined to report it with an 

 amendment cutting off a large tract of land from the 

 north side of the Park, and by this cunning device giving 

 to the railroad speculators the right of way which Con- 

 gress had already refused. This design we exposed, and 

 his scheme having been ventilated and brought to the 

 attention of the House, he felt that it could not be carried 

 out. He failed to report the bill in time for it to be con- 

 sidered, and at the present writing it seems improbable 

 that it should come up. 



This is the second time that we have been in sight of 

 the promised land, the second time that a good bill for 

 the care and improvement of the Park has passed the 

 Senate by a great majority, and has then, at the last 

 moment, failed in the House. 



The present Congress has made a record which is dis- 

 graceful to itself and scarcely less so to the people of 

 these United States. Lacking the wit to appreciate the 

 signs of the times, incompetent, dull, slow, it has passed 

 few good measures, many bad ones, has neglected to 

 act on many others of very high importance, and now 

 finds itself with almost all the appropriation bills un- 

 passed. Our Representatives are too many of them look- 

 ing only to what may inure to their own advantage, and 

 care little or nothing what becomes of the interests of 

 the people. If there are shining examples who are ex- 

 ceptions to this rule, men whose moral fibre has gone 

 through the furnace of political struggle and come forth 

 unwarped and unscorched, they are but few in number — 

 the exceptions which make the sordid partisans governed 

 by low motives seem more base. 



That the bill should have failed again is discouraging. 

 To those who have, for four years and more, labored 

 faithfully and without reward for the protection of that 

 Park which belongs to the nation, this failure means 

 more work, which in the face of every discouragement 

 will be as faithfully and earnestly performed as it has 

 been in the past. For ourselves we have every confidence 

 that some measures will be taken by the next Congress 

 to protect this reservation. We feel sure that when 

 Congress next meets the people will make known their 

 will in such unmistakable terms that that body will no 

 longer delay the performance of its duty. Signs of the 

 deep feeling existing on this subject have already been 

 shown in various sections of the land. 



In the meantime the Park is in charge of Captain 

 Harris, a gentleman deeply interested in its protection. 

 He will do everything in his power with the troops under 

 his command to protect it from harm and from spolia- 

 tion, and for the present we must leave its care to him. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



r pHE patent coffee mill is grinding away at a great rate 

 J- at Albany. A dozen or more bills have been intro- 

 duced into the Assembly. Among the queer notions em- 

 bodied in the bills is the project of Assemblyman Davies, 

 of the game law committee, to name Wm, N. Harris of 

 New York county, Franklin Brandreth of Westchester, 

 W. W. Byington of Albany, Rufus J. Richardson of 

 Lewis, Eli J. Seeber of Jefferson, Solon S. Hunt of 

 Oneida, Seth Green of Monroe, W. F. Weston of Essex, 

 and Joseph McNaughton of St, Lawrence, as "a Commis- 

 sion to act with the Commissioners of Fisheries of the 

 State in preparing a bill for the protection of fish and 

 game within the State." The enactment of this measure 

 and its enforcement would be nothing less than cruelty 

 to the Commissioners. The president of the board already 

 has his hands full in trying to engineer a bill to suit 

 everybody, including deer hunters who want to hunt in 

 May, and woodcock shooters who want to shoot in July. 

 If in addition to all this, Mr. Roosevelt and his colleagues 

 should be compelled by Mr. Davies's proposed law to listen 

 to Byington's plea for deer hounding twelve months in 

 the year, and Rufus Richardson's contention for thirteen; 

 while McNaughton would want to do away with hound- 

 ing in toto; and Green would require a man to paste on 

 his bait box a certificate of good moral character from 

 his Congressman before fishing in any of the private 

 waters stocked with State fry from Caledonia — the re- 

 sultant "codification'" would be interesting chiefly as a 

 harmless enigma. 



Did you ever, while sitting on a log waiting for that 

 deer, reflect on how much happier was your lot than that 

 of the poor devils in Chatham street, New York, who 

 run their sewing machines on pantaloons eighteen hours 

 a day for seven days in the week for fifty-two weeks in 

 the year, with never a respite but to get together Satur- 

 day night and drink beer? 



A 'fire of unexplained origin which broke out in the 

 Forest and Stream office early in the morning of last 

 Thursday did considerable damage, chiefly by the destruc- 

 tion of valuable files. Among other things a large num- 

 ber of American Kennel Registers, reserved for binding, 

 were burned. The full extent of the loss has not yet 



been determined, but it is quite probable that it will be 

 found necessary to reprint some of the Register numbers, 

 as the demand for bound volumes is constantly increase 

 ing. It will take something hotter than a newspaper 

 office fire to affect the prosperity of the A. K. R, 



The members of the National Field Trials Club, who 

 have formed a new organization with the expressed in- 

 tention of dissolving the old one, have evidently taken 

 this step as the readiest way to get rid of rotten timber, 

 Instead of trying to regain lost public respect for a body 

 that has repeatedly permitted field trial rascality to go 

 unwhipped of justice, they have made a new start alto- 

 gether. The public will welcome the change, and will 

 be more than ready to accord to the American Field 

 Trials Club all the support its direction may deserve. 



By the way, when those gentlemen at Cincinnati, the 

 other day, came to the conclusion that the National Field 

 Trials Club was " in bad odor," we wonder if they re- 

 called, among other causes leading to unsavory reputa- 

 tion, the club's action a few years ago, when, in direct 

 violation of good faith, it turned over to a Chicago pub- 

 lisher certain kennel pedigree registries which the club 

 had secured from the Forest and Stream only with the 

 distinct understanding that no such disposition should 

 ever be made of them. That stud book venture has so 

 far had the retributive bad luck that sometimes hangs 

 over a scheme conceived in iniquity. 



Col. Tom Picton, pupil, companion and biographer of 

 Frank Forester, once thought it would be a bright notion 

 to establish a sportsman's club room in New York, where 

 anglers and shooters might congregate for social inter- 

 course. This scheme may be realized if the National 

 Rod and Reel Association shall put into execution its 

 social club project. Picton, by the way, has a most re- 

 markable vocabulary, and an astonishing command of it 

 in writing or talking. 



Here is another triumph of fishculture. In our review 

 of the Georgia Fish Commission in another column will 

 be found the statement that no shad were found in the 

 rivers that empty into the Gulf of Mexico until these 

 waters had been stocked with them. Since the plantings 

 nearly every river in Georgia, and some in adjoining 

 States, which empty into the Gulf, have shad in them. 

 These plantings were all made by the United States Fish 

 Commission. 



Worse than good for nothing are two Adirondack of- 

 ficials, who regularly draw their game protector salary, 

 and one of whom last summer, camping with a party, 

 put out his own hounds and ran deer in close season; 

 while the other one, having arrested and jailed a man 

 for taking trout through the ice, himself sat down to eat 

 with relish trout caught in the same unlawful manner by 

 another individual. 



The oldest member of the Piegan tribe of Indians out 

 in Montana bears the name of Almost a Dog. Into 

 Atlanta, Ga. , the other day came an old man who thought 

 himself altogether a dog. Georgia State Lunatic Asylum 

 officials had him in charge, leading him by a string tied 

 to his coat lapel; the old gentleman barked like a dog, 

 and tried hard to prick his ears forward when he saw 

 anything interesting. 



Among the clubs memorializing Congress to pass the 

 Yellowstone Park bill, was the Jersey City Heights, 

 (N. J.) Gun Club. It is hoped that the numerous clubs 

 and associations which have shown such an interest in 

 this matter may renew their efforts when the subject 

 again comes up at Washington. 



Little baby lobsters boiled to a bright red are some- 

 times set forth as "free lunch" bait in barrooms. Assem- 

 blyman Finn has introduced a bill at Albany to repeal 

 the law which forbids- traffic in little baby lobsters. Finn 

 runs a barroom in New York city. 



A Maine lumberman states that it costs only 87^ cents 

 a week per man to board his logging crew. How much 

 crusted venison is to be included in the provisions ? 



When in debate on game or fish legislation a man 

 howls for " cheap food for the people," he will bear close 

 watching. 



