Forest and Stream, 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



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

 Six Months, $3. ( 



NEW YORK, AUGUST 21, 1890. 



f VOL. XXXV.-No. 5. 



) No. 318 Broadway, New York, 



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CONTENTS. 



Editoriad. 

 Cages in Place of Bullets. 

 The Giffard Gas Arm. 

 Luck. 



Snap Shots. 

 Sportsman Tourist. 

 Mutable. 



Mr. Rastus's Experience.— u. 



Antoine Bisse'te's Letters.-iv. 

 Natural History. 



Chase of the White Goat. 



Chinese Pheasants. 



The Ways of a Robin. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



The Big Swamp 'Hear. 



Morning with the Shore Birds. 



Still-hunting Foxes. 



Boston Notes. 



Th« Transgressors' Corner. 

 Sea and River Fishing. 



South Branch of the Potomac. 



A Few Remarks on Bass. 



Chicago and the West. 



Angling Notes. 



On Canadian Rivers. 



Chicago Discounted. 



A Lake St. John Winninish. 



Brook Trout in North Carolina 

 The Kennel. 



The English Setter. 



A. K. C. Affairs. 



The Kennel. 



Toronto Dog Show. 



The Wilmington Dog Show. 



Dogs of the Day. 



Indiana Field Trials. 



Kennel Notes. 

 Rifle and Trap Shooting. 



Range and Gallery. 



San Francisco. 



The Trap. 



A New Division Scheme. 



Colt Tournament. 



Toronto Tournament. 



Montreal. 



St. Louis. 



Stamford. 



Claremont. 



Hackettstown. 

 Yachting. 



Corinthian Y. C. Sweepstakes. 



Beverly Y. C. 



Racing Notes. 

 Canoeing. 



American Canoe Association 

 Meet. 



Western Canoe Association 

 Meet. 



Northern Division M^et. 

 Answers to Correspondents. 

 New Publications. 



"Sport." 



Good Things to Come. 



Here is a partial programme of what will be 

 given to the readers of this journal during the next 

 few weeks. 



In our next issue we shall publish the first part (to 

 be concluded the week after) of a lively account of 

 shore shooting — 



Around Cape Hatteras, 



written for the Forest and Stream by "Chasseur." 

 In the same number will be begun the publication of 

 a series of illustrated papers descriptive of 



The Clubs of the St. Clair Flats. 



Written by Mr. E. Hough, illustrated, and relating 

 to one of the most famous shooting and fishing local- 

 ities in the West, these papers cannot but prove of 

 sustained interest. In the same number we shall 

 also print the first one of a series of chapters entitled 



Trapping Days, 



from the pen of Orin Belknap, and relating his ex- 

 perience as a trapper in that region lying in the 

 Dakotas, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, which Mr. 

 Belknap declares to have been the finest trapping 

 ground for furred animals in the United States. 



CAGES IN PLACE OF BULLETS. 

 "DEARS haTe become abundant in the National Park. 



While protecting other game, the Government has 

 provided also a refuge for the large species of vermin, 

 and has insured for them an abundant supply of food in 

 the elk, and deer, and buffalo in the Park limits. 



At Norris Geyser Basia last summer, one of the regular 

 sights was to go out behind the hotel and see them come 

 down out of the timber to feed on the kitchen refuse. 

 They were as tame as so many hogs, and quite as regular 

 at their meals. 



It will be remembered that when the question of Adi- 

 rondack deer hounding was before the New York Legis- 

 lature some years ago, Paul Smith or some other hotel 

 landlord who wanted to insure his guests the privilege of 

 driving deer into water to be clubbed to death, gravely 

 argued before the Assembly committee that it was in fact 

 beneficial to the deer to be run by dogs; for the running 

 was only a healthy form of exercise, which made them 

 strong and healthy and sharp-witted and keen-scented 

 and alert and competent to take care of themselves and 

 to get away from the still-hunters; in short the persistent 

 and unflagging hounding of deer was held up to be a 

 most efficacious mode of preserving them. We presume 

 that an equally good case might be made out for the 

 grizzlies and other carnivors in the National Park, which 

 by getting the better of and devouring the weak, aged, 

 decrepit and infirm elk and deer and buffalo, would 

 weed out all such inferior stock and insure the survival 

 of the fittest. 



But all such theories aside, it has been officially decreed 

 that the bear supply must be diminished; and authority 

 having been given to the Superintendent, Scout Wilson 

 has been deputed to. make away with some of the super- 

 fluous Ephraims. Now, if the Government has more 

 bears than it can find profitable use for in one of its pre- 

 serves, instead of killing them in this way, why should 

 it not transfer them to some of its other wild animal pre- 

 serves, the National Zoological Park, at Washington, for 

 instance ? This is, indeed, a very good opportunity for 

 the authorities at Washington to secure a series of living 

 bears, lynxes, wildcats, and other wild animals for their 

 collections at the Capitol. If the Superintendent of the 

 Park has authority to kill these animals, no doubt he is at 

 liberty to trap them ; and if the Zoological Park authorities 

 would send out to him some cages and a little money 

 with which to hire men for the work, he could no doubt, 

 at the proper season, supply a fine series of living bears. 



THE GIFFARD GAS ARM. 

 n^HE announcement of the invention by a French mech- 

 anician of an arm in which the change of condition 

 from the liquid to the gaseous form of carbonic acid gas 

 is made to do service as an explosive, has created no small 

 interest among riflemen and gun shooters as well. Mili- 

 tary men and civilian shots are alike concerned about this 

 last and cleverest demonstration of the efforts now push- 

 ing so vigorously forward in this special line of inventive 

 art. The main wonder is, to our mind, that the thing had 

 not long since been brought out. Years ago in discussing 

 the antiquated character of black powder we remarked 

 that the improvement most needed, especially in small 

 arms, was not in the direction of better mechanical de- 

 vices, breech actions, safety clutches, and all that, but in 

 the abolition of the black powder cartridge, with its 

 heavy, cumbrous form and many dangerous qualities 

 and the multitude of objections connected with its use. 

 A mere wafer of explosive material, we said, ought to 

 be sufficient to send the bullet on its course. 



M. Giffard has gone a step further: he has utilized a 

 material which has been known in every working labor- 

 atory for years. The great iron or steel cylinders into 

 which the. liquefied gas was forced and confined were 

 the prototypes of the little cylinder which M. Giffard 

 places beside the breech of his gun and draws on drop by 

 drop for his propelling power. All that is necessary to 

 send a bullet on its mission of destruction is a great body 

 of gas suddenly evolved and liberated in the rear of that 

 bullet as it rests in the gun chamber. Black powder does 

 this after a fashion with the simultaneous production of 

 a great volume of smoke and a residuum of soot and un- 

 burnt powder. The nitro-powders make this same vol- 

 ume of gas, or gaseous product, with somewhat less 

 smoke, but with other objectionable phenomena. There 

 are hundreds of unstable chemical compounds or mix- 

 tures which, under proper conditions, may be changed 



from the solid or liquid conditions into greatly increased 

 volumes of gases. Many have been tried; not a few with 

 disastrous results, as propulsives in firearms. The Giffard 

 attempt rids itself of many of the uncertainties which 

 attend the use of chemical mixture. His liquid has been 

 made mechanically, and it is a simple reversion of the 

 force which liquefied it that enables it to do its work in 

 the cartridge chamber. 



The experiments are as yet inconclusive, and on that 

 account much more is now claimed by the invention, or 

 at least claimed for it, than may be borne out by subse- 

 quent commercial test. It is certain, however, that this 

 latest invention will not go into the limbo of discarded 

 promises, so often the fate of clever inventions. It has 

 come to stay, either in a modified form or as a stepping- 

 stone to some other contrivance in the same line and 

 fully adapted to general use, 



LUCK. 



HP HE lucky sportsman is found in nearly every locality; 

 -* and is, in most cases, looked upon merely as a lucky 

 individual, while no thought is taken as to why he is thus 

 blessed above the ordinary man, who goes a-field with 

 dog and gun. He is lucky in always having a good dog, 

 a good gun; and above all, he is nearly always lucky in 

 obtaining a shot, while his companion? are generally in 

 the wrong places, and the birds persistently fly only in 

 the direction of the lucky one. It is generally in ruffed 

 grouse shooting that the lucky sportsman makes his 

 reputation. This king of birds is preternaturally wise 

 and wary; and when much hunted it takes a master hand 

 to cope with him, and it is no wonder the tyro sees noth- 

 ing but luck in his capture. 



Now, while we all know that with every shooter good 

 luck often has ever so much to do with filling the 

 game bag, and that bad luck is a sweetly consoling factor 

 in accounting for slim results, the mistake people make 

 is in ascribing to uniform good luck what is actually the 

 fruit of skill and care and hunting sense. Luck plays 

 its part with all of us in the field, but good luck does not 

 persistently attend any one individual season after sea.- 

 son, to the making of his reputation; nor does bad luck 

 dog the steps of another year after year. 



He who has the reputation of being a lucky sportsman, 

 then, is very rarely lucky in the sense that is ordinarily 

 understood, but he is indeed lucky in the possession of 

 perceptive faculties that enable him to do the proper thing 

 at the proper time. His dog is naturally no better than 

 others; but it has been handled in the manner that best 

 brings out its good qualities. His gun is not superior to 

 the guns of thousands of others, but the proper charge is 

 used in it, and that this is generally sent in the right di- 

 rection at just the right time, is to be credited, not to luck, 

 but to hunting sense. Of course the birds rise near him, 

 or if flushed by others, fly in his direction , but there is no 

 luck about it; he has been a close and careful student of 

 the game he seeks, and intuitively, as it were, he posts 

 himself nearly always in the right place, at the right 

 time. Even when on strange ground, a casual glance 

 shows him where the game ought to be; and the same 

 half glance also shows him just the line of flight the 

 birds wMl take when flushed, and mechanically, with 

 hardly a thought upon the subject, his feet take him that 

 way; and his companion again has occasion to congratu- 

 late him upon his luck. 



In most States the prevailing disposition of fines which 

 may accrue from convictions for the violation of the 

 game and fish laws is to devote them to the public school 

 funds. Now, if all the infractions of the protective 

 statutes were actually punished and the prescribed fines 

 collected, we should never hear of Blair Bills in Congress, 

 nor any other legislative measures to provide educational 

 funds. The fellows who shoot game out of season and 

 net fish would supply funds so abundant that the school 

 tax rate might well be lowered. 



Senor E. Chazari, Commissioner of Fisheries of Mex- 

 ico, in a letter to Col. John Gay dated Aug. 8, 1890, wrote 

 that the rainbow trout developed from eggs furnished by 

 the U. S. Fish Commission are doing admirably. He has 

 trout aged 30 months which are as large as some 6-year- 

 olds seen by him in the United States. The lake trout 

 eggs, numbering 50,000, yielded only one per cent, when 

 hatched, but all the other eggs of the Salmonidce did well. 

 Sr. Chazari is desirous of obtaining more eggs of salmon 

 and trout. The rainbow trout were reared in ponds in 

 the City of Mexico, 



