Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, U a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy, i 

 Six Months, $2. j" 



NEW YORK, MARCH 27, 1890. 



I VOL. XXXIV.-No. 10. 

 ! No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Duck Netting on Long Island. 



Death of Geneial Crook. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Notes by the Way.— n. 



Dungeness— A Winter Home. 



To "Nessmuk" (poetry). 

 Natural History. 



Cats and Dogs and Thing?. 



Evening Grosbeak in Connec- 

 ticut. 



"A Fire of Poplar." 

 Game Bag and gun. 



A New Rifle and Cartridge. 



Michigan Game Notes. 



Big Game in East Africa. 



A Game Law Opinion. 



Game Notes. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Aquaria Notes. 



Lobster Fishing in Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence. 



Alaska Black Bass. 



Fishes Insensible to Pain. 



A Line Dropped to Microp- 

 terus. 



Riparian Rights in Canada. 

 The Old Lake not for Lease. 

 Random Casts.— vi. 

 Flounder Fishing in Jamaica 

 Bay. 



FlSHCTTLTDRE. 



Distribution of Salmon Eggs. 

 Success of Trout Culture. 

 The Kenned. 

 Spaying. 



Baltimore Dog Show. 

 Worcester Fur Company. 

 Dogs of the Day. 

 Dogs of Any Day. 

 Kennel Notes. 

 Kennel Management. 

 Rude and Trap Shooting. 

 Range and Gallery. 

 The Trap. 



U. S. Cartridge Co.'s Tour. 



Elm City Gun Club. 



Instructions for Reloading. 

 Canoeing. 



1,500 Miles in an Adirondack 

 Boat.— xii. 

 Yachting. 



Canvas Boats. 



A First Experience at Boat 

 Sailing. 



Corinthian Y. C. of New York. 

 The America's Cup. 

 The Seventy-Foot Challer ge. 

 Corinthian Y. C. of Marble- 

 head. 



American vs. English Sails. 

 New Publications. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



DUCK NETTING ON LONG ISLAND. 

 HPHE practice of setting nets to catch ducks still 

 flourishes at Shinnecock Bay. It is carried on 

 openly, and to such an extent that it is said no less than 

 800 ducks have been taken at one raising of the nets. 



There appears to be no law to reach this abuse. The per- 

 sons who set the nets assert that they are put down for 

 the purpose of catching fish, not ducks, and that the cap- 

 ture of the ducks is only an accident. As a matter of 

 fact only ducks are caught, no fish being taken in these 

 particular nets, They are set close to the bottom, horizon- 

 tally, it is said, and are without floats. Ordinary fishing- 

 nets provided with floats are seldom found to contain 

 ducks, the birds having learned by experience that the 

 presence of such floats means a net near at hand. 



Efforts have been made at various times to put an end 

 to this nefarious business, which stands on the same 

 footing with the snaring of quail, and ought to be for- 

 bidden by law, as is that practice. Such efforts have 

 hitherto all been in vain. The nets have been seized by 

 the game protectors, but these officials have been sued in 

 the courts for damages, and the decisions have been 

 against them. 



Some five years ago a bill to remedy this abuse was in- 

 troduced at Albany by Senator Otis of Long Island, and 

 at one time there seemed a prospect that it might pass, 

 but a certain part of the Senator's constituents brought 

 pressure to bear on him sufficient to induce him to with- 

 draw the bill. 



It is manifest that this practice of netting ducks works 

 an injury to every man who shoots on Long Island. If 

 it is permitted to continue, and nets are constantly set 

 over the feeding grounds of the ducks, it is clear that at 

 no distant day the birds will either desert the bay or will 

 be all caught off. No class of men are so deeply inter- 

 ested in this matter as those who maintain shooting 



resorts on the south shore of Long Island. When the 

 ducks are gone their occupation will be gone, and they 

 will be forced to turn their hands to something new in 

 order to make a living. We should suppose that if any 

 men would make a strong effort to have this abuse 

 stopped it would be these, and no class can work so 

 effectively, for they can bring direct influence to bear on 

 their representative in the Legislature. 



If Shinnecock Bay and Great South Bay could be prop- 

 erly protected, they would form a ducking preserve 

 which would give splendid shooting to all New York for 

 many, many years; but they never have been wisely 

 treated, and so year by year the shooting grows poorer, 

 until now, many men who used to visit them several 

 times each season have given up Long Island in dis- 

 gust. 



Will things ever be any better there? 



DEATH OF GENERAL CROOK. 



G1 ENERAL GEORGE CROOK, U. S. A., Commanding 

 ^ the Department of the Missouri, died last Friday in 

 Chicago. His death removes one of our best known sol- 

 diers and most successful Indian fighters. 



General Crook was born near Dayton, Ohio, Sept. 8, 

 1828. He was appointed cadet in the U. S. Military 

 Academy when he was 19 years old and graduated July 

 1, 1852. He was then assigned to the Fourth U. S. In- 

 fantry, in which regiment General Grant was at that time 

 a captain, and served for a short time at Fort Columbus. 

 Later he was transferred to Benicia, Cal., and in 1855 

 took part in the Rogue River expedition. In 1857 he 

 commanded the Pitt River expedition, during which 

 there was some fighting with the Indians, and in one of 

 these engagements he was wounded in the leg by an 

 arrow. He was with the Yakima expedition in 18 58. In 

 1861 he was made captain and returned to the East, when 

 he was appointed colonel of the Thirty -sixth Regiment of 

 Ohio Volunteers. During the war he saw constant ser- 

 vice and achieved the rank of full Major-General of Vol- 

 unteer, and Brevet Major-General U. S. A. He was 

 wounded more than once and was captured at Cumber- 

 land, Maryland, but exchanged. It was at the close 

 of the war that his most important Indian fighting 

 began. This was first against the Snakes in Idaho and 

 later against the Apaches in Arizona. In 1875, '76 and 

 '77 he was in the field against the Sioux and Cheyennes. 

 In 1883 he was in Arizona again punishing Apaches. He 

 was appointed full Major-General in the United States 

 Army in 1888. 



General Crook was a very successful hunter and a good 

 frontiersman. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



rr^HE Journals of the Massachusetts Legislature of 

 -L March 17 and 18 contain the answers of Senate and 

 House to the petitions for more stringent legislation in 

 regard to dogs, on which we commented week before 

 last. The House Committee on Agriculture reported 

 March 17, granting to the petitioners for additional legis- 

 lation concerning the licensing and proper care of dogs 

 leave to withdraw, and further that it is inexpedient to 

 legislate on the order relative to compelling all dogs run- 

 ning at large in any street, lane,. park, common or any 

 other public place to be muzzled, or that all dogs running 

 at large unmuzzled shall be killed, or that the tax on dogs 

 shall be increased. All these reports were accepted in 

 concurrence, and it seems likely that this will be the end 

 of attempts at dog legislation in Massachusetts during 

 the present session of the Legislature. The House Com- 

 mittee on Fisheries and Game of the Massachusetts Legis- 

 lature has reported that it is inexpedient to legislate on 

 the orders requiring "market-hunters" to take out licen- 

 ses and obtain permission from owners of land whereon 

 game is killed. 



Inquiries which come to us about the spring shooting 

 of the English snipe must of necessity be answered with 

 some uncertainty. About this shooting in the fall there 

 is less doubt, because at that season the country is usually 

 dry and the migrating snipe, in order to find food, must 

 drop down into the marshes, pond holes and wet meadows. 

 During the vernal migration the conditions are usually 

 very different. The melting snows and the early spring 

 rains have made the ground moist and soft, and the snipe 

 can feed as well in the upland meadows as in the lower 

 ground. Moreover, in the spots wher6 this bird feeds in 



autumn the melting snows and the rain have now col- 

 lected, so that the snipe is forced away from them by 

 water too deep for him to work in. The wet meadows 

 along streams are now fairly afloat, holding the moisture 

 which falls on them, and often being overflowed by 

 freshets. The result of this is that the birds instead of 

 being concentrated about a limited number of wet places, 

 as they are in the autumn, are distributed over a wide 

 area and are found only by chance. These are the con- 

 ditions which usually prevail in the Eastern States, 

 where, at present, the English snipe are really too scarce 

 to make it worth while to look for them when they are 

 scattered. 



There is something absolutely comic in the way in 

 which certain newspapers inject politics info the every- 

 day affairs of life. This was curiously shown the other 

 day in the accounts published of President Harrison's 

 duck shooting trip to Benjies Point. A Republican 

 newspaper stated that the President brought down a 

 pair of plump redheads with his first shot, and after- 

 ward several fat eanvasbacks, while a Democratic paper 

 avers that he banged away all day without doing much 

 harm to the ducks, though he frightened some of them a 

 little. One paper called the President's gun a fowling 

 piece, an archaic term, which, however expressive it 

 may be, passed out of use long ago. As a matter of fact 

 Mr. Harrison had very good shooting, and on Friday got, 

 we believe, about forty ducks, chiefly canvas, redheads 

 and widgeons. The weather, though bad, when judged 

 by the usual standards, was good for duck shooting, and 

 we have no doubt that the President had a capital time. 



A curious feature of the heavy snow storm which vis- 

 ited this city March 19, was the presence in Battery Park 

 of a flock of about 500 crows. These birds seem to have 

 been flying from New Jersey to Long Island, and to have 

 lost their way in the thickly falling snow and alighted 

 bewildered in this city park. They remained there for 

 an hour or two, and then taking advantage of a lull in 

 the storm rose high in the air and flew off southward. 

 During their stay they fairly blackened the trees, walks 

 and benches. At the same time there were many black- 

 birds in Battery Park, and further north on the island 

 great flocks of redwings and crow blackbirds and of robins 

 were seen flying confusedly about in the snow. 



In his annual message to the Legislature for 1890, Gov- 

 ernor Francis E. Warren of Wyoming Territory recom- 

 mended the passage of a bill absolutely forbidding the 

 killing of buffalo within the Territory. We are glad to 

 learn that this recommendation has been acted on, and 

 that the Legislature, just adjourned, has passed a bill 

 prohibiting the killing of any buffalo in the Territory for 

 ten years. This is a matter in which all the inhabitants 

 of Wyoming ought to take an interest, for scarcely any- 

 where in the United States, except within her borders, 

 are any wild buffalo to be found. 



A somewhat vigorous correspondence as to the true 

 causes of destruction of Adirondack deer is being carried 

 on in the columns of the New York Times. While the 

 ground covered has been thoroughly gone over a great 

 many times, and is familiar to all sportsmen, this contro- 

 versy, carried on in a daily newspaper, is not without a 

 certain value. It will bring the subject before people to 

 whom the matter is a new one, and may awaken an in- 

 terest which will result in the passage and enforcement 

 of better laws for the North Woods. 



A bill has been passed in the lower house of the Massa- 

 chusetts Legislature which establishes an open season 

 for quail, woodcock and ruffed grouse from Sept. 15 to 

 Dec. 15, and wood duck, black duck and teal from Sept. 

 1 to April 1. It also forbids the transportation of the 

 birds first mentioned beyond the limits of the State. 

 Sept. 15 is too early to open the season for quail, for, as 

 is well known, many broods are then but half grown. 

 Oct. 1 to Dec. 15 would be a better season. 



A flood of bills for the protection of game and fish 

 have been recently introduced at Albany. Most of these 

 are local, providing for differing open seasons in various 

 counties, but one introduced in the Senate by Mr. Mc- 

 Carren makes the open season for quail and ruffed grouse, 

 and hares or rabbits, from Nov. 15 to Jan. 15. This ift 

 much too late a date for the season's closing, 



