Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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



Six Months, $2. I 



NEW YORK, JULY 17, 1890. 



( VOL. XXXIV.-No. 26. 



} No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



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CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



The Black Bsss and Its Allies. 



The Pestiferous .Sparrow. 



Politics and Fish. 



Snip Shots. 

 Sportsman Tourist. 



Slide Uock from Many Moun- 

 tains. 

 Natural History. 



A Humming Bird's Nest. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Life with the Old Hudson Bay 

 Company. 



Nebraska Prairie Chickens. 



Chicago and the West. 



Shot Count, and Weignt. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



Some MascalloDge. Experience 



Chicago au<l the West. 



Angling in Costume. 



The Red House Club. 



Fish Notes from Cape Cod. 



Summer Day, Summer Sky 

 and Spa. 



Angling Notes. 



Jumping Bass. 

 Ftshculture. 



Waier Life. 

 The Kennel. 



Tickets. 



The Kingston Show. 



The Kennel. 

 Dog Talk. 



English vs. American Beagles. 

 The A. K. C. Affairs. 

 Philadelphia Kennel Club 

 Derby. 



St. Bernard Importations. 

 KenneJ Notes. 

 Kennel Ma-nagement. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting, 

 Range and Gallerv. 

 Our Riflemen in Germany. 

 The Trap. 

 Des Moines. 

 Towanda. 

 Catskill. 



The Corry Tournament. 



El Paso. 



Steelton. 

 Yachting. 



Eastern Y. C. Regatta. 



Minerva aud Gossoon. 



Beverly Y. C. 



Club Cruises. 



One Legal Deed of Gift. 



Racing Notes. 

 Canoeing. 



The Northern Division Meet. 



Tatassit C. C. 



New York C. C. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 



The Black Bass and Its Allies. 



npHE third fishing supplement offered to its readers by 

 Forest and Stream will be jrablished next week, 

 and will be devoted to one of the most popular and 

 widely known families of fresh-water fishes — the black 

 bass family. The illustrations will show the two basses, 

 the blue sunfish, the long-eared sunfish, the warmouth 

 perch, rock bass, Sacramento perch, calico bass, and 

 crappie, besides the stone catfish and the river crayfish- 

 two of the most important baits for black bass. The 

 young black bass and the stone catfish will here be fig. 

 ured, we believe, for the first time. 



Dr. James A. Henshall, the great authority on the 

 black bass, and now Secretary of the Ohio Fish Commis- 

 sion, has again contributed timely and valuable notes on 

 angling for the various species for this number. He has 

 written also a paper on the "Bass and Bass Islands of 

 Lake Erie." "Kingfisher," will recount "Some Personal 

 Recollections of the Bass Family" in the enjoyable style 

 which has enlivened his well known accounts of the 

 camps of the Kingfishers. Mr. W. P. Seal will describe 

 his recent interesting observations on the "Nesting of 

 the Sunfish," and Mr. Lung will contribute notes from 

 historic Wyalusing. Altogether we trust that the black 

 bass supplement will win its way into public favor as 

 the black bass, itself gag established |jg pjaim. on the pop, 

 ujar esteem,- 



POLITICS AND FISH. 

 TN connection with the present investigation of the 

 *- United States Fish Commission by Congress, there 

 are three points which must not be overlooked nor robbed 

 of their true weight. First, the investigation has been 

 entered upon for the purpose of providing an excuse for 

 making the bureau a political department. Second, this 

 transfer is asked for wholly in the interest of politics. 

 Third, politics will ruin the Fish Commission. 



When the place seekers and the patronage mongers 

 shall attain their ends, and the Commission be given over 

 into the hands of politicians, to be run on the same prin- 

 ciples as those on which the other departments of the 

 Government are conducted, its usefulness will be de- 

 stroyed. In the present investigation the real question at 

 issue is not whether the Commission's affairs are con- 

 ducted in the most economical manner possible; it is 

 whether the Commission can be captured by the poli- 

 ticians for what there is in it. And their eagerness to get 

 hold of the bureau is to be accounted for wholly by their 

 belief that it has tremendous opportunities for them and 

 for their jobbery. Political control and economic fish- 

 culture cannot go hand in hand. 



THE PESTIFEROUS SPARROW. 



IF the imported English sparrow is really the menace 

 to agriculture that it is claimed to be by intelligent 

 investigators, it must be confessed that the people of this 

 country are displaying a most foolish indifference to the 

 subject. One by one the several Legislatures have re- 

 moved the protection once accorded to the sparrow, but 

 heretofore in no single instance has any adequate method 

 of campaign been set on foot to reduce the bird hordes by 

 destroying them. The Massachusetts Legislature, after 

 a discussion extending over several weeks, has now 

 passed an act entitled, "An act providing for the exter- 

 mination of the English sparrow in the Commonwealth." 

 and reading as follows: 



Section 1. In all cities of the Common wealth the officers hav- 

 ing charge of the public buildings, and in all towns thereof such 

 officers as the selectmen shall designate and appoint, shall take 

 aod enforce such reasonable means and use such appliances as in 

 their judgment may be effective for the extermination of the 

 English sparrow therein; but in so doing poisons shall not be used. 



Sec. 2. Any person who shall wilfully resist the persons in any 

 city or town charged with the execution of the provisions of this 

 act, while engaged therein, or who shall knowingly interfere 

 with the means used by them for said purpose, to render the same 

 less effective, shall be punished by fine not exceeding twenty-five 

 dollars for each such offense. 



Sec 3. Nothing in this act shall be so construed as to allow an 

 officer to enter on private property without consent of the owner 

 or occupant thereof. 



The subject has received considerable attention in 

 Massachusetts; and the Boston papers have discussed it 

 pro and con, with a good deal of energy. During the dis- 

 cussion of this bill a resolution, introduced by Mr. Bick- 

 nell of Boston, was passed in the House which provided 

 that the Board of Agriculture be requested to make in- 

 quiry and investigation as to the birds that inhabit the 

 State, and report thereon as to their character, habits and 

 value as insect destroying and grain and fruit destroying 

 birds, and to advise such legislation as may be necessary 

 for the protection of private and public interests. 



At this late date, it is probably vain to hope that the 

 English sparrow can be exterminated, but there is no 

 doubt that energetic action and unceasing vigilance can 

 reduce this bird from being a great injury to the farmers 

 to one whose influence will be but little felt. We have 

 in mind a number of places near New York city, where, 

 by energetic persecution on the part of the residents, 

 these birds have during the present summer been so 

 thinned out that their presence is scarcely noticeable. 

 In the sections where this has taken place a noticeable 

 increase of native birds has followed, and the results 

 have been so encouraging that householders have deter- 

 mined to continue their efforts in the hope that in the 

 course of a few years the sparrow may be gotten under 

 control. 



The methods which have been followed by these good 

 results consist in destroying the nests as fast as they are 

 built, and in shooting, with tiny loads, the sparrows at 

 all times. While a very great number of the birds have 

 been killed, it is thought by those who have watched the 

 matter that those which have not been destroyed have 

 learned that the places where they are thus pursued are 

 dangerous. At all events, the fact that lawns and yards, 

 once entirely given up to the sparrows, are now entirely 

 deserted by them, is evident, 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 T3 REPARATIONS are being made to ship to the Yel- 

 J- lowstone Park for planting in its waters a large 

 number of the fry of valuable food fishes which are to be 

 turned into lakes and streams which have heretofore 

 supported fish food but no fish. As stated last winter in 

 Forest and Stream, there were set aside for this pur- 

 pose 30,000 landlocked salmon, 25,000 Loch Leven trout, 

 100,000 lake trout (namaycush), 25,000 European trout 

 {S. fario), and 25 000 Eastern brook trout. So soon as the 

 snows have sufficiently melted to admit of the passage of 

 pack animals across the range, the car containing these 

 fish will start for the Park. It is understood that if Col. 

 McDonald can get away from Washington he will accom- 

 pany the car and will himself superintend the planting 

 of these fish. 



Just as we go to press we are in receipt of the full text 

 of the decision recently rendered by Judge Craig in the 

 Illinois Supreme Court, in re American Express vs. the 

 People, and shall publish it next week. The Illinois law 

 prescribes that quail may not be killed for sale, nor trans- 

 ported after sale or for the purpose of sale; and the de- 

 cision is to the effect that the law is constitutional, the 

 State having power to make such a regulation. Judge 

 Craig's conclusions are sound law, but we do not agree 

 with his premise that game is the property of the State. 

 On the contrary, as we think has been satisfactorily 

 shown in these columns, property in game vests in the 

 owner of the land on which it is found, by the term pro- 

 perty being meant, however, only the exclusive right to 

 take the game. This principle of private ownership in 

 no way precludes the State from making such regula- 

 tions, under the police power, as may be deemed proper 

 for the conservation of the game supply. We shall re- 

 turn to this subject next week. 



Fish Warden Hague, of ' Pittsburg, Pa., has created a 

 reign of terror along the Allegheny river. He set out 

 the other day on a campaign of net confiscation and 

 netter prosecution. He discovered that about every resi- 

 dent along the river who cared anything for fish was in 

 the habit of seining illegally. Whole villages professed 

 ignorance of the law; but the fishermen themselves 

 knew enough to elude Warden Hague when they could. 

 Seven men fled from the State. Several thousand dol- ' 

 lars' worth of unlawful tackle was confiscated. The out- 

 look is for a radical change in law observance in that 

 district. The warden will now turn his attention to other 

 rivers, and if he shall persevere in the good work, west- 

 ern Pennsylvania rivers will once more have a supply of 

 food fish. 



There is money in some of the fish and game preserve 

 enterprises. Members who go in "on the ground floor" 

 often find the value of their shares doubled or quadrupled 

 within comparatively short periods. Some years ago a 

 party of three salmon anglers bought Brandy Brook in 

 the Restigouche county of Canada, paying for it $600. 

 Subsequently they sold a portion of their property for 

 $15,000. Nearer home, there are Adirondack clubs and 

 Atlantic coast ducking club3, which have proved to be 

 capital investments. 



The initial meeting of the British National Rifle Asso- 

 ciation is on this week at the new Bisley ranges. There 

 were some misgivings about the change from Wimble- 

 don, but with such a live, energetic body of riflemen as 

 made up the Wimbledon contingent for a score of years 

 past, the chances are that the old record of the Common 

 near London will be repeated and excelled upon the new 

 and commodious ranges. 



And now it is reported that the word "woodcock," 

 which appears in an act of the last New York Legisla- 

 ture designed simply to relate to ruffed grouse, was sur- 

 reptitiously inserted. The effect is, as we have already 

 reported, to defer the opening of the season from August 

 1st to September 1st. If this was a piece of forgery, who 

 did the forging, and why was it done? 



Next week we shall publish the rules of some thirty 

 Western railroads respecting the transportation of hunt- 

 ing dogs. The information there given will be of value 

 to sportsmen who a,r@ oontempiat4n^ a shooting excursion 

 in the West, 



