Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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

 Srs Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, DECEMBER 19, 1889. 



) VOL. XXXIII.-No. 22. 

 1 No 318 Broadway, New York. 





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Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 

 No. 318 Broadway. New York City. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Our Christmas Number. 



The Long Island Coursing. 



Netting Wild Ducks. 



Our Florida Number. 



Suap Shots. 

 Natural History. 



Out-of-Door Papers.— VII. 



Grouse Notes. 



The Swimming Hare. 

 In Foreign Lands. 



On the Trombetas. 



The Reporter. 



First Spear. 



Acadian and Canuck. 



Dogs, Dingoes and Kuris. 



Three Days in Jamaica. 



Big Game in Boer-Land. 



A Run After the Longtails. 



Here and There. 



As They Live in Japan. 



Fishing a la Mode. 

 Days with the Elk. 



An Elk Hunt. 



An Elk Farm. 



Ttte Trial of it. 



Old Joe. 



Running Down au Elk. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 

 Forest and Stream Gun Tests. 

 Tubular Bullets. 

 Chicago and the West. 

 A New Jersey Gun Tax. 

 Pawnee Hero Stories. 



Game Bag and Gun. 



A Game Protection Scheme. 



The Death of Dr. Jobs. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Kentucky Fish and Game. 



Boat Fishing for Striped Bass. 



Angling Notes. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



Sawdust and Fish. 



Rescue of Illinois Fishes. 



United States Fish Commis- 

 sion Work. 

 The Kennel. 



Eastern Coursing Meet. 



Central Field Trials. 



The St. Bernard Club Prizes. 



Foxhounds in Bench Shows. 



Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Rifle and Trap shooting. 



New English Arms. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



Corry Gun Club. 



Kingbird Tournament. 

 Canoeing. 



Why We Didn't. 



Red Dragon C. C. 

 Yachting. 



Georgian Bay and Its Islands. 



A Small Singlehander. 



Classification by Corrected 

 Length. 



Answers to Correspondents. 



OUR CHRISTMAS NUMBER. 



THIS issue of the Forest and Stream consists of 

 thirty-two pages, with an added illustrated supple- 

 ment. Tt is the largest number ever issued; and in the 

 wide geographical range of contents and their diversified 

 character and entertaining qualities, our Christmas Num- 

 ber has never been surpassed by any issue of a sports- 

 man's paper in this country. Without emulating the 

 ignorant and arrogant cartographers of the old times, 

 who used each one to reckon his own city as the exact 

 center of the world, we may yet with a good show of 

 reason claim that the Forest and Stream office is a 

 center to which converge good things from the remotest 

 corners of the globe. 



Our pages to-day are rich in accounts of sport, life and 

 adventures in foreign lands — Jamaica, Brazil, France, 

 Sweden, South Africa, India, New Zealand, Australia 

 and Japan— what a world-embracing list it is. And the 

 best of all is, that for the most part, these strange scenes 

 are described as seen by American eyes. "Nessmuk " in 

 the Brazilian forests is a live Yankee, looking at things 

 from a Yankee standpoint; "Podgers," an American in 

 Paris, finds in the Seine mode of fishing a ludicrous ele- 

 ment not recognized by French eyes; Henry Macdonald, 

 who will be remembered as the author of a series of 

 papers we printed last year on Western frontier life, 

 paints a picture of Japan as it presents itself to American 

 eyes, and an exceedingly vivid and living picture it is. 

 Taken all in all, there is material in these pages for more 

 than one evening's entertainment in this Christmas week; 

 and with this substantial contribution to his pleasure, 

 the Forest and Stream wishes each one of its thousands 

 of readers and friends a very Merry Christmas. 



NETTING WILD DUCKS. 

 HPHE business of netting and snaring wild ducks for 

 market is carried on extensively on the Atlantic 

 coast, particularly in Virginia, whence hundreds and 

 thousands of the fowl are shipped to the cities. There 

 are laws forbidding this, but not by any means prevent- 

 ing it. In the case of a Maine duck netter something 

 has been done; Detective McNamara, of the State game 

 warden force, recently arrested and secured the convic- 

 tion of a man who has for a long time netted ducks on 

 one of the lakes of Township 10. The netting has been 

 carried on to such an extent in Maine that some species, 

 notably the beautiful little woodduck, have become quite 

 rare. 



New York has a law forbidding the taking of ducks in 

 nets, but it does not amount to anything, for when taken 

 to task the netters have always found an easy way out by 

 lying. They claim that their nets are set for fish, not for 

 ducks, and if the ducks will persist in getting into the 

 nets, they, the netters, cannot help it. This plea usually 

 works well. It will be remembered that State Game 

 Protector Whitaker, of Long Island, made trouble for 

 himself wdieu he destroyed certainnets which he declared 

 (and we have no doubt truly enough) were designed for 

 taking ducks, but which the owners claimed were set for 

 fish. Now Protector Armstrong, who has been investi- 

 gating the duck-netting at Good Ground, which we re- 

 ported the other day, states that under the law this abuse 

 cannot be reached, since the old claim is made that the 

 nets are intended for fish only. If that is the case, a 

 revision of the law is in order. 



THE LONG ISLAND COURSING. 



AS was reported last week, the slipper of the Eastern 

 Coursing Club, who had been arrested for partici- 

 pating in the sport at Hicksville, Long Island, was 

 acquitted of the charge of cruelty preferred against him 

 by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. 

 This was the second case decided against the Society and 

 in favor of the club; and the members were quite justi- 

 fied in accepting the result of the two trials as at least a 

 local indorsement of the propriety of their mode of cours- 

 ing. They then proceeded to finish the programme of 

 the meeting, only to see the officers again interfere and 

 arrest the slipper for the second time. 



Tne practice followed by the Eastern Coursing Club at 

 Hicksville was described last week in our Kennel 

 columns. In brief, the jack rabbits are driven out from 

 a corral, are given a fair start, and have a free field be- 

 fore them. The point at issue between the club and the 

 Society is as to the cruelty herein involved; and inasmuch 

 as the Hicksville methods differ in no essential details 

 making them more cruel than the established and popu- 

 lar form of coursing as practiced in the West and in 

 other countries, the question resolves itself into the 

 cruelty, or freedom from cruelty, of coursing. 



There is nothing whatever in the Eastern Club's mode 

 of procuring the jack-rabbits in the West and restricting 

 their liberty in a large field that affects the question of 

 cruelty. If there is any cruelty involved it must be in 

 the actual chase of the jack and in the actual putting to 

 death of it by the dog. A studious effort has been made 

 to befog the public mind as to the conditions preceding 

 the actual chasing. It has been represented that the 

 jacks were dropped from the hands of attendants in 

 front of the hound, and that the victims were then torn 

 apart; but all this is purely imagination on the part of 

 those who make such statements. The Society has an 

 appearance of having been misled by these mistaken 

 descriptions of the Club's mode; to have made up its 

 mind when so misled; and now to be persisting in its 

 prosecution — or persecution — of the members purely for 

 the sake of consistency. We have so high a respect for 

 the Society and for the magnificent work it has done that 

 we regret exceedingly to see it thus led into what appears 

 to us to be a grave mistake. 



If it be cruelty within the statute to chase a jack rab- 

 bit with greyhounds, it must likewise be cruelty within 

 the statute to chase hares with beagles or other dogs; yet 

 this is a regularly recognized form of sport, and has 

 never been interfered with by the authorities. Again, 

 hares are killed with the shotgun. It is well understood 

 that when a hare is killed by a greyhound, the death is 

 instantaneous. This is not always the case with a hare 

 wounded by the gun. Of the two modes, the actual kill- 

 ing by the dog is quite as speedy as by the gun: and the 



pain inflicted surely cannot be greater. If it be cruelty 

 within the statute to kill hares with greyhounds, it must 

 likewise be cruelty within the statute to kill hares with 

 guns. If one be allowed by law and by public approval 

 so must the other be also. 



After all, it is a reasonable view to take of it. that the 

 members of the Eastern Coursing Club may be quite as 

 competent and worthy judges of the ethics of the case as 

 are the officers of the Society. These coursing men are 

 not, as some of the hysterical editorial paragraphers of 

 the press allege, dudes, nor dudlets, nor apers of British 

 customs, nor idle young fellows with more money than 

 brains. They are business and professional men, holding 

 positions of trust, engaged in honorable pursuits. Taken 

 one and another, they are fairly representative of the re- 

 spectable right-thinking, intelligent class of society. In 

 coursing they seek and find the recreation which others 

 find in lawn tennis, boating, yachting, deer hunting or 

 fishing. They participate in their form of sport led by 

 much the same motives that induce others to go shooting 

 or fishing. It is equally untrue to aver that the man who 

 goes hunting is led by a morbid taste for blood , and that 

 coursing men enjoy the infliction of pain on a jack rabbit. 

 If on the ground of cruelty coursing is to be condemned, 

 we see no logical halting place short of abolishing all 

 field sports where animal death is involved. As a matter 

 of fact, coursing]has been practiced for years in the West; 

 it has been there approved by public sentiment. There 

 is no reason to doubt that rightly understood it would be 

 approved by public sentiment in the East. 



A PARK FENCE. 



T THE project of fencing in the National Park, suggested 

 by a correspondent in last week's issue, is not new. 

 It has been brought forward a number of times before, 

 but never, we fancy, by any one who had thoroughly 

 familiarized himself with the reservation and its needs. 

 The matter is not one that requires to be seriously dis- 

 cussed at present. Before this is done the boundary lines 

 of the Park must be settled by law, and a survey made to 

 show where these lines run. After this has been done, 

 which will not be this year, it will be time enough to 

 show the inpracticability of fencing in the National Park 

 as suggested. At the same time it is always encouraging 

 to receive suggestions of this kind, for they indicate the 

 great and increasing popular interest which is felt in 

 this reservation. 



OUR FLORIDA NUMBER. 



THE issue of Jan. 9 will be a special Florida number, 

 with an illustrated supplement giving portraits of 

 the fishes of those waters, with descriptive text; and 

 accounts of shooting, fishing and adventure in that sunny 

 land. It will be a welcome addition to the Forest and 

 Stream's already voluminous and many-sided literature 

 relating to that State. 



OUR illustrations of the elk have been very carefully 

 drawn from instantaneous photographs, and they furnish 

 accurate, as well as life-like representations of this grand 

 American game. Quite the most noteworthy point in all 

 the papers which accompany the illustrations is the fact 

 that the scene of "Antler's" exploit in running down a 

 live elk was amid the mountains of Pennsylvania. In 

 that region to-day the elk is as unknown as the mega- 

 therium. That within the memory of men now living 

 this game should have roamed the wilds of the Eastern 

 States, and should long ago have been exterminated, 

 is only a presage of what will soon be accomplished in 

 the West, where the species is not gradually nor unwit- 

 tingly but rapidly and wantonly being destroyed. Under 

 present conditions the elk in the West is doomed to ex- 

 tinction. It is high time that the intelligent citizens of 

 Western States and Territories joined in a concerted 

 and determined movement to secure for this species some 

 adequate system ©f protection. At this stage of civiliza- 

 tion it should be known that there is a better use for 

 large game than to permit it to be butchered by the 

 wholesale for its hides or for market, or by trophy-mad 

 foreign sportsmen. 



Next week we shall give a most interesting chapter on 

 the white goat in captivity; also a record of the work 

 accomplished by the New York Association for the Pro- 

 tection of Game. 



