Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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

 Six Months, 82. I 



NEW YORK, APRIL 24, 1890. 



( VOL. XXXIV.— No, 14. 



1 No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Destroying Connecticut Shad. 



To the House of Representa- 

 tives. 



Snap Shots. 

 The Sportsman Tourist. 



Olla Podnda. 



Florida Fishing. 

 Natural History. 



Birds of Gull Island, N. Y.-u. 



From Eastern Massachusetts. 

 Game Bag and gun. 



The Boy Gets his Gun. 



A Treaty Right. 



An Outing. 



The Adirondacks. 



Chicago and the West. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



California Catfish Catchers. 



The Tautof?. 



Aquaria Notes. 



Angling Notes. 



Random Casts. 



Whiteflsh take the Hook. 



Why Salmon take Flies. 



Sea and River Fishing. 

 British Fisheries. 

 Maine Prospects. 



FlSHCULTURE. 



Successful Fisheulture. 

 The Kennel. 



Buffalo Dog Show. 



American Greyhound Club. 



National Greyhound Club. 



Kennel Management. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



The Trap. 



Incidents in a Peregrination. 

 Canoeing. 



1,500 Miles in an Adirondack 

 Boat.— xvi. 



Wah-wah-tay-see. 

 Yachting. 



The Keel Cutter Wayward. 



Challenge of the 70-Footers. 



The New Deed of Gift. 



Iverna. 



Found— A Forty-Footer. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 



BY a bill about to be reported by the Public Lands 

 Committee a great wrong is threatened which you 

 can prevent. 



Eighteen years ago Congress established and set aside 

 for ever the Yellowstone National Park as a pleasuring 

 ground for the whole people. Up to the present time its 

 boundaries have never been exactly determined, and it 

 has been without a law. During each of the last four 

 sessions of Congress, bills have been passed by the Senate, 

 defining the limits of the Park and providing laws for its 

 care and preservation, the last of which is now about to 

 be reported by the Public Lands Committee. 



This bill, which was carefully framed with the help of 

 those most familiar with the needs of the Park, looks 

 solely to the present and future usefulness of this lovely 

 spot. It is drawn in the interest of the Park, and so 

 of the public. The Public Lands Committee have so 

 amended the bill that a right of way is granted to 

 the Montana Mineral Railway to lay its tracks through 

 the National Park. The vote on this matter in the com- 

 mittee was very close, the railroad people gaining their 

 point by a majority of only one. 



This amendment is contrary to the whole spirit of the 

 bill. It is special legislation of the worst kind. As passed 

 by the Senate, the bill is drawn in the interest of the 

 whole people and solely for the general good. It grants 

 no exclusive privilege to any individual or set of indi- 

 viduals. It should not have an amendment tacked on it 

 in committee which grants such privileges. 



The corporation to which it is proposed to give this 

 franchise does not expect to build any railway. It is 

 striving to obtain from Congress a right which it can dis- 

 pose of to other corporations. Relying on your supposed 

 ignorance of the subject, it desires to obtain from you 

 at no cost, other than the fees paid to its agents in 

 Washington, a franchise which is worth a great sum of 

 money. This amendment is a daring effort on the part 

 of speculators to use Congress to fill their pockets. 



By cutting off a narrow strip on the northeast corner 

 of the Park, a railway can be built wholly outside the 

 reservation, and such a road would give to Cooke City 



the outlet which it desires. But the speculators do not 

 care about this. They know that if this strip were cut 

 off, the Northern Pacific R. R. would be free to build to 

 Cooke. What they want is something that they can sell; 

 a franchise which will give them an absolute monopoly 

 of the freight traffic from Cooke City, and of tourist 

 travel in the Park. 



No railway should be allowed in the. National Park, 

 and under no circumstances should a right such as is 

 asked for here be given to any corporation in an amend- 

 ment tacked on a bill which is professedly drawn to 

 benefit the whole people. If the requirements of com- 

 merce shall at any time demand the building of a railway 

 through the National Park, the road will be built, and 

 the pleasure ground of the people will not be allowed to 

 stand in the way of the country's development, but when 

 that time comes, those who wish to obtain such a fran- 

 chise should ask of Congress the privilege they desire 

 fairly and squarely on the merits of their proposition. 

 They should not try to smuggle it through as a rider to a 

 good bill. 



To grant a right of way to a railway to run through 

 the National Park is to destroy it. Should such a right 

 be granted to one road, a similar right cannot be denied 

 to another. There will be a race between corporations 

 to reach points of interest in the Park, the reservation 

 will be gridironed with tracks, disastrous fires will 

 destroy the pine forests which clothe the mountain 

 sides, springs will dry up, and great reservoirs, like the 

 Yellowstone Lake, will no longer supply waters to fill 

 the mighty rivers which now irrigate the plains of Mon- 

 tana. Dakota, Idaho, Oregon and Washington. 



Last Saturday, in the House, was devoted to eulogies of 

 the late S. S. Cox, who was an ardent advocate of the in- 

 tegrity of the National Park. Three years ago his elo- 

 quence defeated, by a vote of 169 to 70, a bill granting a 

 franchise to a railway to run through the National Park. 

 If the dead statesman could speak to-day, all his great, 

 influence and all his superb eloquence would be used to 

 defeat the amendment which has been added to the Park 

 bill by the Public Lands Committee. We ask each mem- 

 ber of the House to give his vote to kill this amendment, 

 which is a mere grab, and to pass the Park bill as it came 

 from the Senate. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



A FRIEND curious in figures sends us the following 

 estimate of the natural increase q£ one pair of 

 ruffed grouse in a period of ten years, supposing their 

 number to be decreased only from purely natural causes. 

 There is in this much food for thought for the student of 

 game protection and much argument for occasional close 

 seasons extending over a term of years. Our friend sup- 

 poses we had started in the year 1880 with one pair of 

 grouse. The table, he thinks, would then stand about as 

 follows: 



1880 (1 pair) 2 1884 162 1888 15,000 



1881 f 188ft 486 1889 60,000 



T«82 .18 1886 1,500 1890 150,000 



im V.. '■■ ■■ 54 1887 4,500 



In support of the approximate justice of the above 

 computation, may be cited the extreme success of the 

 late close season of three years on prairie chickens in 

 Illinois, and the wonderful increase of the Chinese pheas- 

 ants which were protected for five years on the Pacific 

 coast. If by any artificial cataclysm all guns could be 

 destroyed or silenced for ten years, this country would 

 swarm with game from one end to the other. 



During the past season we heard a great many surmises 

 as to where the birds have gone. Gunners in the West, 

 especially near Chicago, could not understand what had 

 become of the ducks. It seemed very mysterious. Last 

 week they had a large flight of ducks in Illinois and In- 

 diana and other Western States, and our Chicago corres- 

 pondent sends in the scores of ten or a dozen shooters, of 

 which he learned during a few moments spent in a gun 

 store. Roughly totting these up, we find that they 

 amount to between 1,000 and 1,100 birds killed by a few 

 men, who probably did not represent one-hundredth part 

 of the gunners in the field. Perhaps 100,000 ducks were 

 killed during this week or two. Of course this is the 

 loosest kind of guessing, but we may feel sure that the 

 number was large. These were spring birds, too. It is 

 more than probable that the annual destruction of water 

 fowl has for some years far exceeded the annual increase, 

 and if this is the case the decrease in the number of the 

 birds will go on in a rapidly increasing ratio. It will be 



the old story of the wild pigeon and the buffalo over 

 again. Men will shoot, and when the birds are all gone 

 the business of the manufacturers of clay -pigeons will 

 greatly prosper. In view of the news which we are con- 

 stantly printing, however, it does seem a little absurd 

 that gunners should express such prodigious astonish- 

 ment at the disappearance of the fowl. 



As already stated, the bill providing an appropriation of 

 $92,000 for a National Zoological Park was amended by 

 the House Committee on Appropriations by the insertion 

 of a provision that one-half of this sum should be paid 

 by the District of Columbia. The ground taken by 

 the House is, that the District will be greatly benefited by 

 the establishment of this park, and that therefore it 

 ought to pay one-half the expense. The Senate, how- 

 ever, does not agree with this view of the matter, hold- 

 ing that the institution is a National one which is for the 

 benefit of the whole country, and that it helps the people 

 of the District of Columbia only incidentally, as do the 

 National Museum, the Botanical Gardens and other pub- 

 lic institutions. The Senate declines to concur with the 

 House amendment and a conference has been called for. 

 Whatever the outcome may be, the delay in furnishing 

 this appropriation is an unfortunate one, for it is very 

 desirable that work on the National Zoological Park 

 should be begun at the earliest moment possible. 



Persons interested in the Adirondacks will read with 

 interest the article in another column, which we copy 

 from a New York contemporary devoted to the lumber 

 trade. If New York State could and would go into the 

 lumber trade, pass the necessary laws and spend a little 

 money to preserve and cultivate the forests of the North 

 Woods, its investment would be profitable in more ways 

 than pne. But until more interest is taken in the subject 

 by the public and more intelligent men are sent to repre- 

 sent the people at Albany, there is little hope that any- 

 thing practical will be done. The publication of this 

 article and others, however, cannot fail to advance the 

 work of forest protection. 



A report from E. S. Wilson, civilian scout in the Yel- 

 lowstone National Park, informs us that during a trip 

 made recently to Yellowstone Lake a number of buffalo 

 were seen. In one band on the head of Alum Creek 

 there were seventy-six buffalo. These were in excellent 

 condition and seemed remarkably tame. Other buffalo 

 were seen near the lake, but they were wilder, and it 

 was impossible to get a count on them. 



DESTROYING CONNECTICUT SHAD. 



SWIFTLY and surely the pounds in Long Island Sound, 

 at the mouth of the Connecticut River, are destroy- 

 ing the fishery of that stream, once famous for its shad. 

 The continued efforts of the State Commission and that 

 of the United States, to restock the depleted waters and 

 aid the ascent of the shad to its spawning grounds, have 

 been unavailing against the greed of the pound owners, 

 whose miles of netting intercept the spring migration 

 and do not allow enough fish to enter the river to keep 

 up its productiveness. It is even charged that no close 

 time is observed, and now, to make matters worse, the 

 pound men have broken down the legal barriers of their 

 own creation by obtaining permits from a majority of 

 the Board of Commissioners to use nets of fine mesh 

 for the ostensible capture of alewives until May 12. 

 There was serious objection within the Commission to 

 this destructive measure, but it proved unavailing, and 

 the wise and faithful public servant who raised the pro- 

 test resigned a service in which, it is said, he could no 

 longer maintain his self-respect. 



No argument is necessary to show that the Connecticut 

 yields less than one-twentieth as many shad now as it 

 did before the introduction of pounds into the Sound. 

 Everybody except the pound owners and those in 

 authority, who sympathize with them because of their 

 personal interest in the fishery, knows why shad are dis- 

 appearing from the river. 



We venture to assert, that if the catch of "whops" or 

 "alewives" were carefully examined, it would be found 

 to include a great many young shad. In fact we have 

 frequently seen a similar combination on both sides of the 

 continent, and we hope that the Connecticut Association 

 of Farmers and Sportsmen will extend their praiseworthy 

 vigilance to this field of inquiry. Get at the truth, meet 

 influence with influence, and by all other legitimate 

 1 means restore and protect the Connecticut shad. 



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