Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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

 Six Months, $2. I 



NEW YORK, MARCH 14, 1889. 



J VOL. XXXII.-No. 8. 



1 No 318 Broadway, New York. 





CORRESPONDENCE. 

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 garded. No name will be published except with writer's consent. 

 The Editors are not responsible for the views of correspondents. 



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Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 

 No. 318 Broadway. New York City. 



Editorial. 



Practical Forest Restoration. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



A Month in the Bocky Moun- 

 tains. 

 Natural History. 



More About the Otter. 



Crows and Poison Ivy. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Spring Duck Shooting. 



Shooting Clubs of Chicago. 



Snaring Ruffed Grouse. 



Maine Game Law. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Drum Fishing at Beaufort. 



A Springfield Club in Canada. 



A Fish Stringer. 



Tuckerton Waters.— in. 



Fishing Rights in Private 

 Waters. 

 Fishculture. 



Ohio Fish Commission. 

 The Kennel. 



Albany Dog Show. 



CONTENTS. 



! The Kennel. 



Greyhounds and Coursing. 

 Irish and Gordon Setters at 



Field Trials. 

 Fox-Terriers at New York. 

 Eastern Coursing Club. 

 Dog Talk. 

 Kennel Notes. 

 Kennel Management. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 

 Range and GaUery. 

 Pistol Shooting. 

 The Trap. 

 Trap Chat. 

 Yachting. 

 About the Lower Bay in a 



Singlehander. 

 A Cruise of the Monaitipee on 



Great South Bay, L. I. 

 Biscayne Bay Y. C. Regatta. 

 Seawanhaka C. Y. C. 

 Canoeing. 

 Canoe Tents and Camp Outfits 

 Puritan C. C. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



PRACTICAL FOREST RESTORATION.— II. 



WE have already discussed the problem of how best 

 to treat a forest which has had all its choice timber 

 cut out, leaving nothing mature or growing, of any con- 

 siderable present value, but which at the same time pre- 

 serves the general characteristics of forest land; that is to 

 say, which has a floor rich in humus, the product of the 

 decomposition of fallen leaves, decayed timber, and the 

 droppings and remains of insects which have preyed on 

 them, along with a sufficiency of standing timber to 

 shade the ground from the direct rays of the sun. 



But this is by no means the invariable condition of the 

 forest after the lumberman has made his cutting by 

 selection. The forest floor, strewed with dry leaves, 

 branches, chips and rejected timber, and more or less 

 opened up to the direct rays of the sun, is rendered so 

 inflammable that a spark is sufficient to ignite it; and 

 very frequently it happens that fire follows the lumber- 

 man and destroys all that he has spared. 



Fire running through standing timber destroys, but does 

 not ordinarily consume it, neither does it consume the 

 forest floor, sheltered by standing timber. When the fire 

 has run its course the scarred and blackened trunks of the 

 green timber remain standing, and although the dead and 

 fallen timber and light surface stuff may have been con- 

 sumed, along with the seedlings and buried seed, the soil 

 has lost nothing of its fertility; on the contrary, it is 

 enriched by the ashes of the stuff burnt on the surface. 



At this stage it is very desirable to restock it without 

 delay, and this is especially the case in mountain regions 

 where the permanent loss of forest character, by consid- 

 erable areas, may amount to a national calamity. A 

 forest floor covered with dead timber, with nothing to 

 shade it from the rays of the sun, very soon j>arts with 

 its moisture, and becomes so combustible that if a fire 

 once get hold of it, and be allowed to run its course, 

 unchecked, the whole bed of humus will be burned off, 

 leaving nothing on the subsoil but a thin stratum of 

 ashes, which may be washed away by the first rainfall, 

 and w T ork of ages undone. ' 



Even if fire be guarded against; a forest floor exposed 

 to the rays of the sun in hill country, the surface matter 

 instead of forming humus dries to powder* layer after 



layer, and is drifted about by the winds, rain courses cut 

 channels into the soil, and in a few years it is all washed 

 away. 



Any green thing that grows, not only trees but grass, 

 brambles, ferns, weeds, will all serve to protect the floor 

 from liability to destruction by fire or water, provided 

 the whole surface be covered with it, but as all these 

 things die down in the fall of the year, they are no suffi- 

 cient safeguard. The area should be restocked with tim- 

 ber trees as soon as possible. 



But as we have already pointed out, pine seedlings have 

 very small chance of development in a soil exposed to 

 the rays of the sun; they might possibly survive an ex- 

 ceptionally showery summer, but even in this case they 

 would not survive exposure to the extreme cold of win- 

 ter; and what is true of pine seedlings is to a greater 

 extent true of most tree seedlings. The standing forest is 

 the proper nursery for forest trees, and economic forest 

 culture requires that seedlings generally be raised in the 

 forest, or under artificial conditions favorable to their 

 development as in nurseries. 



But in almost every climate, or at least to so general 

 an extent as to be of very considerable economic import- 

 ance, nature provides some tree or subarboreous form, 

 which is a prolific seed bearer and capable of thriving on 

 denuded forest areas in complete indifference to sun or 

 frost. In Pennsylvania and the Middle States it is the 

 wild cherry, in the Adirondacks it is the aspen or poplar, 

 in northern Michigan the pitch pine. These trees, of 

 but little economic value for their timber, are of great 

 economic importance from their tendency to take posses- 

 sion of denuded forest areas, following in the wake of 

 fires, springing up and preserving the forest character of 

 the floor, and in time forming a nursery favorable to 

 the first stages of growth of such pine or other timber 

 seedling as may chance to spring up in its shade. 



Left to natural conditions, the aspen, cherry or other 

 suitable nursery may exist for generations before any 

 considerable number of pine or other valuable trees make 

 their appearance, but it is hardly possible to go through 

 a poplar grove in this region without finding a sprink- 

 ling of young pine or other coniferous trees of one or two 

 feet high, making but little growth, but capable of hold- 

 ing their own in the light shade of the aspen, unti], with 

 the decay of the first generation, it gets a chance to raise 

 its head and acquire predominance. Twenty or thirty 

 years later these isolated trees will begin to shed their 

 seed around, the young seedlings will pass through the 

 same stages as the parent tree, and, perhaps, in a century 

 or two the poplar will be crowded out and the pine forest 

 restored. 



The conditions are somewhat different in the pin cherry 

 woods of Pennsylvania. This subarboreous wild cherry 

 tree grows in thickets, affording too dense a shade for 

 anything else to thrive under it; but in fifteen or twenty 

 years tree after tree dies down, making gaps in which 

 any imported seed has a chance of germinating, and the 

 seedling of competing with the seedling cherry on equal 

 terms. Both the cherry and the aspen in their several 

 localities maintain the forest character of the soil. Tak- 

 ing possession by their hardihood and fecundity as seed 

 bearers, they enrich the soil with their annual carpet of 

 leaves, and although themselves of little economic value, 

 they create conditions favorable to the growth of more 

 valuable trees, which will inevitably sooner or later 

 eradicate and supplant them, provided there are forests 

 of such other trees in the neighborhood. 



We come then to the conclusion , firstly, that if a forest 

 tract in the mountains be laid bare by fire or the axe, 

 the consequent exposure of the forest floor to the in. 

 fluence of sun and frost is unfavorable to the production 

 of a fresh crop of pine or other valuable timber, and may 

 result in the destruction of the soil, but that if the soil be 

 taken hold of by poplar, pin cherry or tree of like 

 character, conditions will be created favorable to the 

 germination and developement of trees whose capacity 

 for enduring light shade, combined with their greater 

 longevity, will insure their final dominance in the strug- 

 gle, if they once secure a footing. 



The condition of the timber trade in this country is so 

 anomalous that the finest tract of pine timber in the 

 country could hardly be cleared at a profit sufficient to 

 cover the mere cost of planting up with nursery -raised 

 stock. Under these circumstances there can, of course, 

 be no inducement to restock denuded areas by systematic 

 planting, and the inexperienced in forestry seeing the 

 ground occupied by poplar or pin cherry would see in 



that circumstance only a still further obstacle to restock- 

 ing with valuable timber. The object of this paper has 

 been to dispel that illusion, and to show that the occupa- 

 tion of the ground by these trees preserves the forest floor 

 from destruction, and is the first stage in the process of 

 natural restoration of the more valuable forest trees. 



And when our observation is directed to the first pro- 

 cesses of natural reafforesting by these trees, when we 

 see a bare tract of several thousand acres of extent 

 dotted with a few aspen seedlings, which increase in 

 number from year to year, until at the end of ten years 

 it is covered with a compact growth, and we then find 

 on investigation that all the seed was wafted from one 

 tree, until the first sown young trees began to scatter 

 their own seed around them, we begin to realize that a 

 very little labor spent in distributing this seed may serve 

 for the restoration of large tracts of thousands of acres at 

 a cost below that of preparing the ground for a nursery 

 half an acre in extent. For such seed no preparation of 

 the ground is necessary. All that is required is to col- 

 lect the seed and scatter it over the surface. 



Systematic planting on a national scale must wait, and 

 will be sure to wait, until the little remnant of our forests 

 shall be administered economically, and at such a profit 

 on costs of exportation as will justify the outlay required 

 to cover costs of replanting, but meantime millions of 

 acres of denuded forest land may be preserved from the 

 destruction of its soil by fire, or its erosion by water, for 

 the trifling cost of collecting and scattering the seed over 

 their surface. The winds and the birds annually redeem 

 thousands of acres in this way, and Ave need only open 

 our eyes to the importance of their labors, to realize how 

 much may be done in the same way by systematic, intel- 

 ligent effort. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



MOST of the daily papers of last Monday suffered from 

 a bad attack of paroxy s mal silliness and gave accounts 

 of an Indian butchery of five French tourists in the Yel- 

 lowstone Park. The entire story was of course a canard 

 without any semblance whatever of authenticity, yet the 

 yarn was given an important place with startling head- 

 lines. The daily press of this country shows itself more 

 than willing to foist wholesale sensational lies on the 

 public, but when it comes to any intelligent appreciation 

 of the National Park as a valuable possession of the 

 people or to any wise discussion of adequately protecting 

 the Park and maintaining its integrity for the present 

 and the future, the average daily journal knows nothing 

 and cares less. 



The doubtful points w T ith respect to the application of 

 the fish laws are one by one set at rest. Last week we 

 recorded the decision that the statute providing for sum- 

 mary seizure and destruction of fishing nets unlawfully 

 employed was constitutional. That principle is a step 

 ahead in fish protection. To-clay we publish another 

 decision which bears on the application to waters which 

 are private of the close fishing season, as prescribed by 

 statute. Referee Northup's decision should be read with 

 care; it makes clear certain principles concerning which 

 there appears to be much popular misapprehension. 



Mr. Henry Bergh has been succeeded as President of 

 the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals by 

 Mr. James M. Brown, of Brown Brothers & Co. This 

 removes from the advocates of fox-terrier hare coursing 

 as a sport one of their stock arguments, which has been 

 personal abuse of Mr. Bergh. This will clear the atmos- 

 phere, and any discussion of the Hempstead coursing on 

 its merits will be more advantageous than the style hith- 

 erto indulged in of defending the practice by ridiculing 

 Mr. Bergh. 



The proposed amendments of the Maine game law, de- 

 signed to permit the sportsmen who visited that State to 

 carry home their game, have been defeated in the House, 

 and the Maine game law remains as it was before. We 

 regard the concessions proposed in the amendments as 

 judicious, and the House has made a mistake in reject- 

 ing them. 



Tarpon fishing has been growing in popularity, and a 

 number of anglers from across the water have come over 

 to test the game qualities of the Florida silver king. 



In this latitude April has invaded March; the balmy 

 weather and open waters suggest ?od and fly, and the 

 angler's fancy lightly4urns to thoughts of trout. 



