Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, M a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. / 

 Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 6, 1890. 



t VOL. XXXIV.-No. 3. 



~l No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



The Future of Creedmoor. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Slide Rock from Many Moun- 

 tains.— m. 



Out-of-Door Papers. 



The North Woods. 

 Natural History. 



Wingless Birds of New Zea- 

 land. 



Evening Grosbeak in New 



England. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 

 Uncle Nathan's Birthday. 

 Vermont Game. 

 Notes from Michigan. 

 Pattern and Penetration. 

 Among the Squirrel Barkers. 

 The New York Codification 



Bill. 



The Megantic Club Dinner. 



After-Dinner Topics. 



A Maine Deer Case. 



Game Notes. 

 Camp-Fire Flickrrings. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Angling Notes. 

 " On the North Shore.— n. 



Pennsylvania Black Bass 

 Fishing. 



Trout in Mexico. 



A North Carolina Black Bass 

 Pond. 



The Tarpum on the Table. 



Sea and River Fishing. 

 Heavy Bass Casting. 

 Well-Stocked- Michigan 



Streams. 

 Fishes of Cortez Banks. 



PlSHCULTURE. 



The National Marine Aquaria. 



Foreign Exchanges o* the 

 U. S. F. C. 

 The Kennel. 



The Pacific Field Trials. 



Baltimore Dog Show. 



A. K- C. Treasurer's Report. 



Dogs of the Day. 



Charleston Dog Show. 



His First Time on the Track. 



A Fox Hunt of the Old School. 



Kennel Notes. 



Kennel Management. 

 Riele and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



U. S. Cartridge Co.'s Tour. 



Chicago Trap Shooting. 

 Yachting. 



Second Cruise of the Orinda. 



Walter Mitchell's Naval 

 Poems. 



Royal Nova Scotia Y. C. 



Yachts versus Tugboats. 

 Canoeing. 



1,500 Miles in an Adirondack 

 Boat.— vi. 



Brooklyn C. C. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



THE FUTURE OF CREEDMOOR. 

 rpHE formal transfer of the property at Creedmoor 

 from the National Rifle Association to the Militia 

 ^Department of this State completes a step which had 

 been determined upon a long time ago, and which was 

 fully discussed at that time. It means not that the 

 National Rifle Association will cease to exist, but that it 

 will go on with its work unhampered by the load which 

 the Long Island grounds had grown to be. It was no 

 small matter to keep up such a big tract of outdoors as 

 the range had grown to be. The most severe use to 

 which the range was put came from the militia of the 

 two cities, and as this includes more than half the uni- 

 formed troops of the State, it is plain to be seen that the 

 most active customer of the range was the State. The 

 officers of the Association were in almost every case 

 officers of the State as well, so when the suggestion was 

 made to transfer the control from the Association with 

 its poorly provided treasury to the State with its ample 

 purse, it was little wonder that so much approval met 

 the plan. 



Even without the actual control of a rauge there is 

 plenty of work to occupy the officers of the Association, 

 and enough to justify the continuance of the existence 

 of the Association. The American Shooting Association 

 has no grounds, but from its modest little office in New 

 York it can reach out and organize shoots here and there 

 over the country, can draw up sets of rules which are 

 accepted as standard by shooters everywhere, can classify 

 shooters, can settle disputes, and generally can and is do- 

 ing more for the art of trap-shooting than any single 

 local club, however large its membership or extensive its 

 club grounds, could possibly do. 



This is to be the future of the National Rifle Associa- 



tion. It will remain to give its annual fall meeting, 

 where marksmen from all sections may meet on neutral 

 grounds and compare their skill with the records which 

 have for a score of years been added to the list of merit 

 at these gatherings. The rules of the Association have 

 become standard for the sport in this country, and no 

 young or growing shooting club can fail to find assistance 

 by opening a correspondence with the parent association 

 here, and getting points on how to organize and conduct 

 the club business. 



Freed from the limitation which the ownership of the 

 Creedmoor range imposed upon it, the Association may 

 now become more truly national than it has ever been, 

 and take up the sport in all its ramifications and in a 

 measure rid itself of the excess of military management 

 which seemed to be about It. Furthermore, it would be 

 something of a crime to allow the National Association 

 to die. Its history has been the history of all there is 

 to rifle shooting in the country. "We have oft and again 

 told the story of how deficient our make-believe citizen 

 soldier and our barely better regulars were in the mat- 

 ter of shooting ability, when in 1873 the first shot was 

 fired at Creedmoor. That shot went echoing round the 

 world. It brought the foreign teams here for a friendly 

 visit and honorable defeats. It sent American teams 

 abroad to win victories and to suffer defeat, but best of 

 all, it was the first of a fusillade of millions of shots 

 right here in Arnerida, and now regulars and militia each 

 year spend days and days in seeming command of their 

 weapons, until now they not only look like soldiers, but 

 they are soldiers. Changes there may be at Creedmoor, 

 and the only danger is that over-zealous militarism may 

 turn the place from one of pleasure-giving sport into a 

 sort of hated penal colony for unwilling militiamen. 

 There is danger that in place of making practice before 

 the butts as easy as possible, it will be made irksome by a 

 plenitude of red tape. What is wanted is a resident 

 shooting master at Creedmoor on every shooting day dur- 

 ing the season. Let the men go down when and how 

 they will, get a dose of good advice if they need it, or 

 make their record scores if they are competent so to do 

 and flit away again. But no, there will probably be 

 orders by the yard, drums by the dozen, no end of in- 

 convenience, a wonderful amount of attention to the fit 

 of belts, the hang of the visor, and a mere minimum to 

 instruction to the individual, and this is after all where the 

 real work is done and where the real progress is made. 

 We confess that we feel less trepidation about the future 

 of the N. R. A. than we do about the future of Creed- 

 moor range. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



SOME of Henry William Herbert's novels are making 

 their appearance among the cheap paper editions on 

 the news stands. It was to these products of his pen and 

 to his historical works that Herbert looked for his fame, 

 rather than to the sporting books he put forth under the 

 name of "Frank Forrester." Yet to-day, probably, a 

 hundred know him as a writer on field sports, where 

 one knows him ae a novelist. 



The latest instance of a hunter being taken for game 

 happened at Moose Hill, in Maine, last week, when a 

 sixteen-year-old boy was shot for a deer by his cousin, 

 when the two were hunting in the woods. It is curious 

 that so many of these fatalities happen to persons who 

 are engaged in violations of the game laws; the Maine 

 deer season had been closed nearly a month when this 

 boy was killed. 



The season is sadly out of gear; pickerel fishing and 

 smelt fishing through the ice have failed because there 

 has been no ice; and now from certain weather sharps in 

 agricultural districts comes the plaint that ground hog 

 day (last Sunday) was a total failure because the ground 

 hog did not wake up and come Out of his hole; the win- 

 ter has been so mild that he has been awake and out all 

 the season. 



Eastern railway companies are coming to recognize 

 the importance of fishculture in the development of land 

 values along their lines and as an element in the increase 

 of their passenger traffic. Application has recently been 

 made to President Eugene Blackford, of the New York 

 Commission, by the general passenger agent of the New 

 York, Ontario & Western Railway for a large lot of trout 

 fry. This agent, Mr. Anderson, desires to obtain 350,000 

 fish for stocking about 350 miles of pubKc trout streams 



near the line of his railroad in Delaware and Sullivan 

 counties, New York. These streams are admirably fitted 

 for trout, but have either never had any in them or 

 else have been fished out. It is stated that the residents 

 along the line of the road are willing to unite with the 

 railway officials in planting and caring for the fry, for 

 they realize that the visits to their sections by anglers 

 will benefit them as well as the road. The same company 

 had made application for 25,000 Oswego bass fry to stock 

 Silver Lake, in Sullivan county, and it is proposed to put 

 a similar number in Lake Sheldrake. As already noted 

 by us, the New York & Northern Railroad not long ago 

 made application to the State Commission for spawn and 

 fry for stocking streams and lakes along their line. Such 

 enterprise as this will be highly appreciated by the angl- 

 ing fraternity, and there can be little doubt that it will 

 pay railway companies to have these streams full of fish. 

 There is no reason why similar action might not be taken 

 in regard to game, and it is easy to conceive that rail- 

 way s might find the turning out of some thousands of 

 game birds along their lines a very profitable investment. 



'Buffalo 1 ' Jones is in Washington seeking to induce 

 Congress to give him the free use for ten years of a tract 

 of twerlty-four square miles of the public strip. He 

 wishes to use this as a grazing ground for his buffalo 

 during the experiments that he intends to carry on in 

 cross-breeding these animals with domestic cattle. The 

 Hon. Samuel R. Peters, of Kansas, has introduced a bill 

 in Congress intended to confer the privilege sought for, 

 in consideration of the probable value of the results to 

 the cattle growers of the West. A number of Western 

 Senators and members of the House are heartily inter- 

 ested in the success of this bill, and the Secretary of the 

 Interior has expressed his willingness to further the 

 undertaking by every means in his power. From the 

 knowledge which we already have of the great value of 

 the buffalo cross on the domestic cattle, it seems very 

 desirable that the free use of a part of the public strip 

 should be given to Mr. Jones for uses above specified. It 

 is probable that in ten years' time it can be conclusively 

 shown that this new breed of cattle can be established. 



New Jersey is considering a bill recently introduced in 

 the Senate, to require that any person, whether citizen 

 or stranger, who wishes to go shooting or to fish for trout, 

 must first go to the county clerk's office and pay for a 

 license before he can shoot his gun off. Furthermore, 

 county societies are to be organized, to which will be 

 intrusted the duty of seeing that this law is enforced, 

 and of punishing violations. New Jersey already re- 

 quires non-residents to take out a license for shooting or 

 fishing; the promoters of the new measure reason that 

 if it benefits the game and fish supply to tax the stran- 

 ger, added benefit will follow the taxing of home sports- 

 men. Everybody is hoping that one of these days an 

 efficient mode of game and fish conservation will be 

 evolved; and this New Jersey experiment will be watched 

 with much interest if the bill ever passes the Legislature. 



The English sparrow question bobs up serenely in one 

 Legislature after another. The Massachusetts Commis- 

 sioners have just recommended that the agricultural 

 interests of that State demand an abatement of the 

 sparrow plague, and we notice that a petition has been 

 sent to the Boston State House praying for action looking 

 to this end. The cycle of law-making with respect to 

 the sparrow in this country has been, first, protection 

 as a friend to man; second, removal of protection and 

 passive endurance; third, active warfare against the 

 bird as a pest. As things stand now, the sparrow 

 question is quite likely to bob up in State Houses for 

 many years to come. 



We print to-day the text of a bill introduced into the 

 New York Legislature providing for a commission to 

 codify the complex and obscure statutes relating to fish 

 and game. The bill is most admirable in purpose, for it 

 is of first importance to have a law which can be under- 

 stood. We hope to see this bill pass. Individuals and 

 clubs interested in game and fish protection can do no 

 better service this year than by using their influence 

 with their representatives at Albany to enact the codifi- 

 cation law. 



The report that wolves have made their appearance 

 oh the borders of Maine is said to be well founded; and 

 it is feared that they may menace the deer supply. 



