Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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



Six Months, gl I 



NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 8, 18 8 8. 



J VOL. XXXI.-No. 10. 



1 No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Forests of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains. 



Shall Adirondack Does be 



Spared? 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 

 Notes on Western Florida. 

 Two Months a Cowboy. 

 Natural History. 

 The Ways of Snakes. 

 The Domestication of Game. 

 The Egyptian Lotus. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 

 Goose Shooting on the 



Roanoke. 

 Deer Hunting in California. 

 October Outing in West 



Florida. 

 Rifles for Small Game. 

 The Dardenne Club. 

 Chicago and the West. 

 Failure of the Woodcock 



Flight. 



Hunt at the Adirondack Club. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 

 Trout in Colorado. 

 A Trip to the "Soo." 

 New York Game Protectors. 

 Wildfowl Shooting. 

 The Tomahawk Lakes. 

 The Angling Season. 



FlSHCULTUBE. 



Some Peculiarities of the Ova 

 of Pishes. 



The Work in Missouri. 

 The Kenned. 



Practical Judging. 



The Sense of Smell in Dogs. 



Dog Talk. 



The Spaniels. 



Coyote Coursing. 



Concerning Reliability and 

 Record. 



Tracking with Bloodhounds. 



Distemper. 



Rheumatism in Dogs. 



Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 

 Yachting. 



Gossip about Gafftopsails. 



A Fast Catboat. 



Yachts for Southern Cruising. 



The Voyage of the Liberdade. 



Clara. 



Montgomery Sailing Club. 

 Canoeing. 

 Canoeing on a Fresb. Water 

 Ocean. 



Answers to Correspondents. 



SHALL ADIRONDACK DOES BE SPARED? 



CONSIDERED with respect to the numbers of hunters 

 who annually resort to it for deer, the Adirondack 

 region of New York bears a close relation to the deer 

 forests of Europe. If the game supply of the Adiron- 

 dacks is to be conserved it is reasonable to assume that 

 the rules which obtain in the deer forests should be in 

 force there. One point in the code of ethics governing 

 deer hunting in the European forest is that the stags only 

 are legitmate game; the does are spared. No deer stalker 

 in Scotland would think of killing a female deer; this 

 feat would be the last thing in the world about which he 

 would make boast. By the operation of this rule the 

 supply of game is kept up from year to year; the deer 

 could never be exterminated by the allowed killing of 

 male deer of a certain age. 



In this country many have made it a rule in big game 

 hunting to refrain from killing the females. With a cer- 

 tain class of the best and foremost sportsmen this is a 

 point in the code of field ethics on which they hold 

 strongest convictions. The sentiment is a growing one, 

 that in the Adirondacks and similar regions, where by 

 indiscriminate slaughter of bucks and does the game 

 supply is endangered, this rule of sparing the does should 

 be adopted by all classes. Certain of the Adirondack 

 clubs have a rule on their books forbidding the destruction 

 of does. There ought to be a law on the statute books to 

 that effect. It would mean a material advance in the 

 solution of the deer preserving problem. 



We would be glad to have the views of our readers on 

 this subject. Unless we mistake the attitude of those 

 who concern themselves not alone with the question of 

 where they can find a deer to day, but also the consider- 

 ation of where others can find a deer ten or twenty or 

 fifty years hence, the time is ripe for a law to forbid doe 

 killing and for practice in conformity with such a law. 



FORESTS OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 

 in. 



THE report of George B. Sudworth on the forest flora 

 of the Rocky Mountains is a valuable contribution to 

 our knowledge of the botany of the region, and Prof. E. 

 J. James contributes a carefully considered and powerful 

 xgument on the duty of the Government to assume con- 

 trol of its forests, and administer them systematically. 

 Dr. B. E. Femow laments the present system of neglect 

 of the forests, their reckless spoliation, and the utter in- 

 adequacy of Government measures to avert it. He insists 

 that State control of forest operations is indispensable, 

 and the only means by which the people can utilize the 

 usufruct, while preserving to the forest its forest charac- 

 ter in perpetuity. All this is quite true, but it is not im- 

 mediately practicable. The Government is not ready to 

 embark its surplus millions in an enterprise of the proper 

 conduct of which it knows nothing; and even were it 

 willing, we have no trained department adequate to the 

 proper administration of this vast property. Forty-five 

 million acres of forest distributed over seven times that 

 area of mountain region call for professional knowledge 

 and a great deal of administrative ability, not merely in 

 the head of the department, but in a very large staff of 

 deputies. It is all very well to assert as an abstract pro- 

 position that the public interests require that the forests 

 be administered by the Government. The assertion can- 

 not be reiterated too often or too emphatically, but Dr. 

 Fernow may go on reiterating it until the last acre of 

 Government forest is cut over, and no practical results 

 must be looked for until he is prepared to demonstrate 

 not merely the desirability but the feasibility of govern- 

 ment administration. 



Let us look at the problem in all its bearings, not merely 

 with the object of comprehending it intellectually, but 

 with a view to determine the practical measures best de- 

 signed to awaken the Government to the realization of 

 the feasibility of embarking in the administration of its 

 forests with prospects of financial success. So far as we 

 can ascertain, no such practical proposals have yet been 

 submitted to the Government. Grants of a few hundred 

 thousand dollars have been asked for with the object of 

 preventing depredations on the forests, but we never 

 heard of any proposal designed to demonstrate experi- 

 mentally that the head of the Forestry Division is capa- 

 ble of keeping the market supplied with fuel and timber, 

 and of improving the forest area from which it is drawn 

 at the same time. 



That is the problem. We have in the Rocky Mountains 

 an area of forty-five million acres, more or less, of forest, 

 whose influence upon the regulation of the water supply 

 is such as to render its maintenance as forest absolutely 

 indispensable to the future well-being of the whole 

 region. As natural forests, they yield no annual incre- 

 ment, growth and decay counterbalancing each other 

 from age to age, To render them productive it is neces- 

 sary to remove the old timber and restock the cleared 

 area with young growing plants. 



Natural reproduction can generally be relied on for 

 restocking cleared areas, but we have abundant evidence 

 to support the view that the operations of the lumberman 

 are not followed by reproduction. The forest area is con- 

 tracted annually by the area cleared. There is consider- 

 able local demand for timber for mines and building, rail- 

 way construction and maintenance, and for fuel for 

 smelting and for domestic purposes; but the demand, 

 although considerable, is probably far below the produc- 

 tive capacity of the forest area. According to Colonel 

 Ensign, the timber consumption of the area is about 

 25,000,000 cubic feet per annum, or little more than half a 

 cubic foot per acre for the whole forest area. Or, if we 

 approach the problem from another side, from 10,000 to 

 20,000 acres of sound mature trees would carry a stock 

 equal to a year's requirements in timber, and from 1,000,- 

 000 to 2,000,000 acres suffice to maintain the draft perma- 

 nently. But in our present imperfect knowledge of the 

 condition of the forests, no reliance whatever is to be 

 based on conclusions drawn from figures. Of one thing 

 at least we may be assured, and that is, that in the absence 

 of proper conservative measures and systematic treat- 

 ment, the forest will be exterminated in a few decades at 

 most. 



As far as regards the maintenance of the forest for 

 its influence upon the retention and distribution of the 

 water supply, there is nothing necessarily objectionable 

 in the lumberman's system of forest clearance; all that 

 is necessary is that it be complemented by artificial re- 



planting from nursery raised plants. The only or at 

 least the prime obstacle here is the financial difficulty. 

 At a very moderate estimate it would cost thirty dollars 

 an acre to restock the cleared areas by planting, and in 

 the present state of the timber market the standing 

 stock cannot be worked out to sell at a profit of one-half, 

 and perhaps barely one-fourth of that amount. Under 

 these circumstances artificial restocking is out of the 

 question. 



But the forests can be restocked by natural reproduc- 

 tion in the course of exploitation. The lumberman makes 

 a clean sweep of his selected area, and if any crop springs 

 up after the clearance it is unable to stand the exposure 

 to which it is subjected; but the forester with an eye to 

 reproduction, thins out his forest to encourage the ger- 

 mination of seedlings on the forest floor, makes another 

 thinning a year or two later to let in more light, and 

 makes the final clearance after a sturdy young crop has 

 got full possession of the forest floor. This makes the 

 getting out the timber somewhat more costly and incon- 

 venient because it necessitates the extension of operations 

 over a much larger area. 



So much for the distinction between the forester 

 and the lumberman in their treatment of high forestj 

 that is, mature timber. In working out small timber, 

 such as is used for telegraph and telephone poles, mining, 

 etc., the benefits of system are still more apparent. The 

 lumberman wants a million poles, and clears, let us say, 

 ten thousand acres to get them; the forester might take 

 the same number of poles from fifteen thousand acreSj 

 leaving half a million standing, that is one-third of the 

 original crop, evenly distributed over the whole area. 

 Following the lumberman's operations the cleared area 

 would remain practically bare, while a few years after 

 the forester's operations the remaining trees would have 

 closed up and be probably equal in timber contents to 

 the stock as it stood before thinning. 



It will now be readily intelligible that a government, 

 by its trained officers, could operate its forests with greater 

 economy as to yield and secure reproduction at a very 

 moderate advance upon the costs increased by the lum- 

 berman in clearing them and laying bare the exploited 

 area. We arrive now at these propositions: 



First, it is, if not absolutely indispensable, at least of 

 first-class importance to the immediate prosperity of the • 

 region , that its timber and fuel resources shall be rendered 

 available for the people. 



Second, that the maintenance of the forest area as 

 forest is absolutely indispensable to the development and 

 lasting prosperity of the region, 



These requirements cannot be harmonized except by in- 

 trusting the administration of the f orests to a skilled execu^ 

 tive; to place it under the control of an inexperienced 

 and consequently incompetent staff would be worse than 

 useless. 



Forty-five millions of acres are a large area, and even 

 on the perfectly legitimate assumption that the local 

 requirements in fuel and timber would not exceed the 

 usufruct of five million acres, the working of this smaller 

 area would still entail a large outlay. At a very moder- 

 ate estimate we should need a hundred skilled forest 

 officers, each in charge of a forest division of 50,000 acres 

 or thereabout, and a staff of 500 foresters under them, 

 entailing a cost for establishment of about $750,000 per 

 annum. Estimating the cost of getting out the timber 

 at, roughly, $10 per hundred cubic feet, this would call 

 for an outlay of $2,000,000 per annum for timber opera- 

 tion, and probably as much more would be required for 

 fuel— say $5,000,000 per annum in all. 



In working out fuel the Government should not only 

 have no difficulty in covering its expenditure, but should 

 be able to saddle it with a moiety of the costs of the 

 supervising establishment, but there is no guarantee of 

 similar results in working out its timber, first, because 

 the treatment for reproduction involves higher costs than 

 are incurred by lumbermen; second, because it will be 

 constrained to work out all the timber in the area under 

 treatment, while the lumberman would work out only 

 the one or two most marketable species; and in competi- 

 tion with outside timber which costs nothing beyond the 

 costs of bringing to market it is very possible that until 

 the price of timber advances, these forests could not be 

 worked for timber at any profit upon their working ex- 

 penses, and that to balance income and expenditure it 

 would be necessary to advance the price of fuel, but this 

 might be done safely without detriment to any interest. 

 But what reasonable prospect is there that the Govern- 



