Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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



Six Months, $2. j 



NEW YORK, MAY 19, 18 8 7. 



I VOL. XXVIII.-No. 17. 



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



CORRESPONDENCE. 

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Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 



New York City. 



Nos. 39 and 40 Park Row. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



The American Kennel Club. 



Sparrows. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



An Adirondack Winter Trip. 

 Natural History. 



Earth Builders. 



Grouse in Captivity. 



The Coming of the Birds. 



Domesticating Woodducks. 

 Camp-Ftre Flickerings. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



A British Subaltern in Canada 



Delaware Bay in 18G2. 



Among Minnesota Wildfowl. 



Brant Shooting in Monomoy. 



New J ersey Game. 



Michigan Warden System. 



United States Field Trials 

 Club. 



New York Game Law. 

 Rifles and Bullets. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 

 Peak o' Moose. 

 Monks Goes Fishing. 

 A Fishing Trip Experience. 

 A Fish Pricker. 

 Farmer Brown's Trout. 

 The Large Tarpon Record. 

 Potomac Bass Record. 



Sea and River Fishing. 

 The Fly-Casting Tournament. 

 Maine Waters. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



Salmon in the Hudson. 

 The Kennel. 



Am. Kennel Club Methods. 



Pacific Coast Derby. 



American Field Trials Club. 



Eastern Field Trials Derby. 



Mastiffs and Judges. 



Pointers at New York. 



Detroit Bench Show. 



Kennel Management. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



Decoration Day Trophy. 

 Canoeing. 

 Brooklyn Challenge Cup. 

 Racing and Cruising Canoe 

 Notus. 



A November Cruise in Rhode 

 Island. 

 Yachting. 



The Dabchick. 



Gen. Paine's Steel Yacht. 



Launch of the Titania. 



Yachting Notes. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THIRTY-TWO PAGES. 

 Four pages are added to the usual twenty-eight, and this 

 issue of Forest and Stream consists of thirty-two pages. 



THE AMERICAN KENNEL CLUB. 

 ^T^HE American Kennel Club is in a fair way to make 

 itself just about as popular under the present man- 

 agement as it was under that of Major Taylor; in other 

 words, it is acting in a way to disgust honest people. It 

 seems a pity that this should be so, for if it would only 

 do its duty in an honest and straightforward manner it 

 might have the support of all the dog men of the country. 

 If the governing body of the A. K. C. will not do what 

 is fair and right, if they have one sort of treatment for 

 their friends and another for those whom they regard as 

 their enemies, if they are going to form themselves into 

 a ring or clique, if no one who does not belong to this 

 clique can expect just treatment while those who do are 

 to receive favors — why then there is nothing surer than 

 that they will incur the contempt of all right-minded 

 men, and before long they will be the laughing stock of 

 the better portion of the community. 



The reported action of the club in a number of recent 

 dog show matters is very discouraging. It seems as if 

 there were one rule for one set of men and another en- 

 tirely different rule for others. Everything done by one 

 man is right, everything done by another is wrong. Of 

 course this sort of thing will not do at all, and the Ameri- 

 can Kennel Club will have to mend its ways if it is to 

 continue to exist. 



When Major Taylor went out of office we were prom- 

 ised a change of methods, and the dog public waited 

 patiently and respectfully for a fulfilment of the pledge. 

 The public is waiting still, but no longer with patience 

 nor with respect. On the contrary, it is beginning to jeer 

 at the American Kennel Club and to speak of it in lan- 

 guage more forcible than polite. 



It should not be necessary for us to point out to the 



governors of the American Kennel Club that the ques- 

 tions which come up before them are not about Mr. 

 Mason or Mr. Smith or Mr. Munhall or Mr. "Watson, but 

 have to do with matters of principle. Just as at our dog 

 shows the merits of the dogs and not their owners are to 

 be passed upon, so, in matters coming before the A. K. C, 

 justice and right should govern decisions, and not likes 

 and dislikes or prejudice and passion. 



The governing body of the A. K. C. is not a convention 

 of partisans, brought together for the purpose of seeing 

 that their faction shall secure all the spoils that can be 

 snatched away from some hostile clan. Their office is 

 quite a different one. They constitute a high court to 

 pass upon matters of abstract justice, to determine the 

 facts and announce the law on these matters as they may 

 come up. 



If they fail to appreciate then position and its duties, 

 they may be sure that the public will not be equally 

 obtuse, nor equally lacking in comprehension of what an 

 American Kennel Club ought to be and ought to do. The 

 average man has a fair sense of justice, a contempt for 

 trickery, and a hearty sympathy with any one who is 

 badly treated. 



The American Kennel Club has thrown away its oppor- 

 tunity twice already. Not to put too fine a point upon it, 

 the officers and delegates from clubs have shown that 

 they are incompetent to handle the most ordinary matters 

 of dog show policy. If no one can be found with brains 

 enough to grapple with the questions which must come 

 up before such a body, the club had better be disbanded 

 and give place to an organization which can accomplish 

 something. 



SPARROWS. 



'TTHE English sparrow has been justly credited with 

 vast and varied capabilities for mischief, and the 

 added charge may now be brought against the feathered 

 nuisance that it has led the New York game law patchers 

 to make themselves foolish in a new direction. 



Mr. Erwin's bill, which in its original shape permitted 

 the killing of hawks and other birds in his own district 

 of St. Lawrence county, was subsequently amended to 

 apply to Long Island and Staten Island; and its scope has 

 now been further enlarged to provide a penalty for feed- 

 ing or harboring the English sparrow. By the terms of 

 the law any man, woman or child who throws crumbs to 

 the sparrow or who gives it shelter is thereby guilty of a 

 misdemeanor for which arrest, trial and punishment may 

 follow. 



This action of the Legislature is presumably based upon 

 the recommendations recently sent out from the Division 

 of Economic Ornithology, which is a branch of the Agri- 

 cultural Department at Washington. In these recommen- 

 dations the sparrow was declared to be vermin, and State 

 legislatures were urged to provide for its destruction. 

 The Albany members perhaps imagined that they were 

 making such a provision when they passed this law, but 

 it is patent to everybody outside of the Senate and Assem- 

 bly that the sparrow clause can be nothing more than a 

 dead-letter. No one, unless maliciously, will dream of 

 causing the prosecution of a woman who throws table 

 crumbs to English sparrows; nor will little children who 

 feed the birds on the snow in winter ever be sent to jail 

 for the offense. The sparrow law will be a dead-letter, 

 as absolutely dead as the clause which declares it an 

 offense for ladies to wear song bird feathers in bonnets 

 has proved to be. 



If the sparrows be a pest they should be exterminated. 

 They cannot be exterminated, nor even diminished, by 

 enacting dead-letter laws at which the community laughs. 

 A bounty, however slight, would be of some account; 

 and if the sparrow question is worthy attention at all at 

 Albany, it is worthy of sensible action in place of child's 

 P^y. ________ 



Michigan sportsmen are organizing county game pro- 

 tective societies and subscribing funds to pay the deputy 

 game wardens for their services. This action evinces 

 appreciation of the new order of things. Thus substan- 

 tially supported by public sentiment the wardens may be 

 expected to do their duty. The Michigan Sportsmen's 

 Association worked eight years to get the warden system, 

 and now that their efforts have been crowned with suc- 

 cess it is noted that individuals who had become discour- 

 aged and given over their efforts are manifesting renewed 

 interest and activity. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 TAMES GEDDES, of Syracuse, N. Y., who died last 

 Monday, was one of the best known sportsmen of 

 the State. He was a man of earnest convictions, took 

 much interest in game protection and fishculture, when 

 a member of the Assembly in 1883-4 gave much atten- 

 tion to securing needed amendments to the game laws, 

 and for several years had been interested in restocking 

 some of the Adirondack waters. For the past thirty years 

 Mr. Geddes and an intimate friend, Mr. John W. Trues- 

 dell, made an annual pilgrimage to the North Woods for 

 hunting and fishing ; and with his cousin, ex-Governor 

 Tifft Jerome, resorted to Michigan deer forests. He was 

 an ideal camp companion, a wonderful man for expedi- 

 ents, and of sunny, open disposition in camp as well as at 

 home. Mr. Geddes held a number of responsible public 

 positions, always acquitting himself with credit, and did 

 much to develop the agricultural interests of the State. 



A professional pigeon shooting match a la mode is ar- 

 ranged in this way: The principals publish wordy chal- 

 lenges, amicably arrange who shall win the match, and 

 let in their friends; then the friends, betting on a known 

 sure thing, lay wagers with the outside public, which is 

 of course in blissful ignorance of how the match will end 

 and only too ready to be fleeced. Since the Carver- 

 Graham pigeon shooting matches at Newark, N. J., there 

 have been rumors of disgruntled gamblers who lost their 

 money because the prearranged result did not materialize 

 in other words, one of the shooters is charged with hav- 

 ing agreed to a certain result and then not sticking to his 

 agreement, all this at the expense of the pockets of his 

 friends. The victims who were bled will not have much 

 sympathy; in the game of lamb-shearing they are old 

 enough to look out for themselves. Individuals of mature 

 age who bet on a cut and dried professional pigeon 

 match, and then see the funds pocketed by greenhorns 

 whom they had hoped to swindle, will only be jeered at 

 by a heartless world. It is a case of the biter bit. 



The transfer of the Southern magazine, The Bivouac, 

 from Louisville, Ky. , to New York, where it will be pub- 

 lished by the Century Company, has been seized by the 

 critics as a new evidence that the South cannot support 

 a magazine of its own. If it be meant by this that there 

 can be no successful purely Southern magazine, it is per- 

 haps true enough. The same thing might be said of the 

 North and the West. The Atlantic, Century and other mag- 

 azines, though published in the North, are far from being 

 purely Northern in their make-up. Many of their best 

 things come from the South and always have come from 

 there. Any American magazine, wherever published, 

 will fail to attain great popularity if its material be lim- 

 ited by sectional lines; it is the variety that gives the spice 

 to the magazines, just as it does to the Forest and 

 Stream. 



The special prize lists of bench shows afford entertain- 

 ment when read with enlightened understanding. The 

 true philanthropist is he who gives a handsome and 

 valuable prize, which he is "dead sure" can be won by 

 no other dog than his own; in this way we have a silver 

 cup for the best black dog with one white ear, and a 

 house and lot for the best crack dog with a walled eye, 

 owned by a resident of Blank street, Blanktown. At the 

 last New York show an agent for a John Bull brand of 

 dog cake offered a barrel or two of his product under con, 

 ditions that took it to his own dog; and the rival agent of 

 a Brother Jonathan brand followed suit with a cask of his 

 dog cakes, and in due time saw it safely landed in his 

 own kennels. 



Some enthusiastic anglers of Dakota county, Minne- 

 sota, are so sure of the moral influences of angling, that 

 they recently sent to the reform school commission a 

 string of trout caught in the Vermillion River as substan- 

 tial evidence that the school should be established in that 

 vicinity. 



"Shootist" is the term employed by a growing number 

 of editists and reportists to designate the sportsman who 

 shoots. By and by we will hear of fishists and anglists. 

 But why not stick to the English language ? 



Entries for the Forest and Stream's Decoration Day 

 Trophy competition must be mailed next Saturday, May 

 21. It is hoped that a large number of States may bo 

 represented by teams. 



