Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $i A Year. 10 Gts. a Copv. { 

 Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, MARCH 17, 18 92. 



I VOL. XXXVIII.-No, 11. 

 ) No. 318 Broadwat, Kuw York. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



March Days. 



The National Park Grab Bill. 

 Snap Shots. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



A Day in the Tierra Caliente. 

 Diana's Reminisences. 



Natural History. 



Catching Wild Animals— tv. 

 The Wood Buffalo Country- 

 Chamberlain's Nuttall'a 

 Manual. 



Game Bag and Gun. 



About Hoodlums. 



A Virginia Bunting Ground. 



A Northern Wisconsin Hunt. 

 "Mr. Cleveland at Spesutia. 

 I.Chicago and the West, 

 t An Esquimau Caribou Hunt. 

 ^The Antelone Country. 



A Kentucky Convention. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



Tarpon Luck. 

 Connecticut Trout. 

 Bass of the Chagrin. 

 A Big Thing on Ice. 

 Anerling Notes. 

 Through to TwitchelL 

 Massachusetts Association. 

 Chicago and the West. 

 Bos on Anglers. 



Fishculture. 



The Mechanics ville Fish way. 

 The Kennel. 

 Washington Dog Show. 

 Our Dog Show. 

 Pittsburgh Dog Show. 

 Chesapeake Bay Dog Club. 

 Dog Chat. 



Answers to Correspondents. 

 Canoeing. 

 A Canoe Trip in the Maine 



Woods. 

 The W. C. A. Meet. 

 News Notes. 



Yachting. 



Corinthian Y. C. of Philadel- 

 phia. 

 The Naval Exhibit, 

 That Famous Old Cup. 

 News Notes. 



Rifle Range and Gallery. 



New Jersey Rifle Shooting. 

 "Forest and Stream" Tourna- 

 ment. 



Trap Shooting. 



Drivers and Twisters. 

 Matches and Meetings. 



Answers to Queries. 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page 265. 



Any person who cannot find the " Forest and 

 Stream" for sale at any news stand in the coun- 

 try, is requested to report the fact, with location 

 of stand and name of dealer, to the Forest and 

 Stream Pub- Co., 318 Broadway, New York. 



THE NATIONAL PARK GRAB BILL. 



THE bill to incorporate the Yellowstone Park Company 

 which is now before Congress notifies the public 

 that there are some people who are dissatisfied with the 

 supervision exercised over the reservation by the Cabinet 

 officers, in whose hands Congress saw fit to put the Park, 

 These people are the directors of a corporation, which 

 now has a practical monopoly of the. Park, and which 

 wishes Congress to strengthen this monopoly, to sanction 

 a continuance of it for forty years, and practically to 

 free the corporation from governmental control. 



The bill authorizes this Yellowstone Park Company 

 "to acquire and operate hotels and all appurtenant 

 buildings or establisments in or near the Yellowstone 

 National Park for the accommodation of all persons vis- 

 iting or sojourning in and going to or from said Park."' 

 Notice the phraseology, "all persons," not for the accom- 

 modation of persons who may visit the Park, not for 

 such persons as it can induce to patronize its hotels, but 

 for the accommodation of all persons. It may also trans- 

 port people between its own hotels by horse, cable or 

 electric power, may run steamboats on the lakes, may 

 acquire, for nothing, twenty-year leases of ten parcels of 

 land of ten acres each, may operate telegraph and tele- 

 phone lines, may make contracts with steam railways 

 running near the Park. It may use the public timber, 

 stone and brick clay in the Park, may graze cattle, sheep 

 and horses and build pastures for such stock. The power 

 to keep the corporation in order, to prevent it from im- 

 posing on the public is taken away from the Secretary of 

 the Interior and is given to no one. Vague mention is 

 made of the Superintendent, and there is an effort to 

 make it appear that he has some power. As a matter of 

 fact, he has none at all. If this bill should become a law 

 the only authority exercised in the National Park will be 

 that of the Yellowstone Park Company. 



We see in this bill very much for the Yellowstone Park 

 Company but nothing at all for the Government. It is a 

 grave menace of the rights of the people. To pass the 

 bill would be to hand over to a great monopoly the Park, 

 which for twenty years has been sedulously guarded for 

 the public. During five administrations, Eepublican and 

 Democratic, the Yellowstone National Park has been 

 under the charge of the Secretary of the Interior. Its 

 affairs on the whole have been managed wisely and well. 

 Successive Secretaries have appreciated its wonders and 

 its value to the public and have done all in their power 

 to protect it from spoliation and from the greed of cor- 

 porations. Experience has shown that in respect of the 

 National Park the Secretary of the Interior is an efficient 

 guardian of the public rights. 



The organic act establishing the Park gave the Secre- 

 tary of the Interior full control over it. The framers of 

 fhis bill propose to take this power from him, Not satis- 



fied with this they have inserted in tbe measure a section 

 which provides that the leases of the company can only 

 be forfeited by legal process in the courts, by suits which 

 might drag on for many years without being decided, 

 during all which time the company might continue to 

 impose upon the public such burdens as it saw fit. 



We believe that it is a long time since a bill has been 

 offered in Congress which so seriously reflects on a mem- 

 ber of the Cabinet. To enact the measure would be in 

 effect to say|to Mr. Noble, "All previous Secretaries of the 

 Interior have done their duty by the Park, and it has 

 been left in their hands. You have failed to fulfil your 

 trust, and so we take it away from you and turn it over 

 to this corporation/' It would be an extraordinary 

 spectacle if Congress were to do this thing, if at the bid- 

 ding of a great corporation it were to put upon a Cabinet 

 officer such a slight at this. 



It is alleged by the bill promoters that these enormously 

 valuable privileges must be granted in order to enable 

 the Yellowstone Park Company to prepare for the tre- 

 mendous influx of travel to be anticipated in 1893. It is 

 not likely that travel to the Park in that year will be 

 much greater than in ordinary years. Residents of the 

 United States will turn their faces toward Chicago in 

 1893, not toward the Yellowstone Park. There will be 

 some increase in the number of foreign travelers to the 

 Park in that year, but a diminution of citizens of the 

 United States. But even if the travel thither were to be 

 great, it would be better that all who might go there 

 should suffer discomfort than that the United States 

 Government should abandon for forty years its rights to 

 the National Park. Nothing very terrible will happen if 

 the company can not accommodate all the visitors to 

 the World's Fair. 



MARCH DAYS. 



O ACK and forth across the land, in swift and sudden 

 alternation, the March winds toss days of bitter cold 

 and days of genial warmth , now out of the eternal winter 

 of the north, now r from the endless summer of the tropics. 



Repeated thawing and freezing has given the snow a 

 coarse grain. It is like a mass of fine hail stones and with 

 no hint of the soft and feathery flakes that wavered down 

 like white blossoms shed from the unseen bloom of some 

 far-off upper world and that silently transformed the un- 

 seemliness of the black and tawny earth into the beauty 

 of immaculate purity. 



One day, when the wind breathes from the south a 

 continuous breath of warmth, your feet sink into this 

 later coarseness come of its base earthly association, with 

 a grinding slump, as in loose wet sand, so deep perhaps 

 that your tracks are gray puddles, marking your toilsome 

 way. 



As you wallow on, or perch for a moment's rest on a 

 naked fence-top among the smirched drifts, you envy the 

 crows faring so easily along their aerial paths above you. 

 How pleasant are the voices of these returning exiles, not 

 enemies now, but friendly messengers, bringing tidings 

 of spring. You do not begrudge them now the meagre 

 feasts they find, the frozen apple still hanging, brown and 

 wrinkled, in the bare orchard, or the winter-killed young- 

 ling of flock or herd, cast forth upon a dunghill, and 

 which discovering, one generous vagabond calls all his 

 black comrades to partake of. 



Watching them as they lag across the sky so much 

 swifter than the white clouds drift above them, you 

 presently note that these stand still as you may verify by 

 their blue shadows on the snow, lying motionless, with 

 the palpitating shadows of the crows plunging into them 

 on this side, then, lost for an instant in the blue obscurity, 

 then emerging on that side with the same untiring beat 

 of shadowy wings. Then comes a puff of wind out of the 

 north, then an angry gust and then a howling wintry blast 

 that the crows stagger against in labored flight as they 

 make for the shelter of the woods. 



You, too, toil to shelter and fireside warmth and are 

 thankful to be out of the biting wind and the treacherous 

 footing. The change has come so suddenly that the 

 moist, grainy snow is frozen before it has time to leach, 

 and in a little while gives you a surface most delightful 

 to walk upon, and shortens distances to half what they 

 were. It has lost its first pure whiteness wherewith no 

 other whiteness can compare, but is yet beyond all things 

 else, and in the sunlight dazzles you with a broad glare 

 and innumerable scintillating points of light, as intense 

 as the sun itself. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 'THE papers report a "rabbit drive" near Fresno, Cal., 

 last Sunday, in which, it is stated, 5,000 men, 

 women and children took part, and 25,000 rabbits were 

 surrounded, driven into a corral and clubbed to death. 

 Whereupon some one writes us'to remark that it was "a 

 very unsportsmanlike hunt." The Fresno rabbit plague 

 is altogether too serious to be coped with in a "sports- 

 manlike" manner. When the Californians shall have 

 reduced the supply to such normal proportions that there 

 will be some fun in hunting for the game it will be time 

 enough to talk about hunting the creatures as sportsmen 

 hunt. 



Last week a hearing was given by the Public Lands 

 Committee of the House of Representatives on the Dixon 

 bill, which is the Vest Yellowstone Park bill with the 

 cut-off, and the Montana Mineral Railroad franchise bill. 

 Messrs. Hague, Phillips and Hon. Theodore Roosevelt 

 addressed the committee in the interest of the Park, 

 Senator Sanders and Mr. Dixon in behalf of their 

 constituents, and Mr. Vinnedge in behalf of Cooke City. 

 The last-named gentleman stated that the Cooke City 

 people much preferred the cut-off to any grant of exclu- 

 sive privileges for any right of way. The gentlemen 

 who spoke for the Park presented its case in an able 

 manner. The discussion lasted two hours, and the 

 decision of the committee has not been announced. 

 There is no doubt that the sentiment of Montana is 

 wholly against the Montana Mineral Railroad right of 

 way bill. The Cooke City miners do not wish it to pass. 

 The State press opposes it, and the people of the State at 

 large are against it. The Livingston Enterprise, once a 

 strong advocate of this bill, is now entirely opposed 

 to it, 



A New York broker is undei'going trial in one of the city 

 courts as to his sanity. One of the witnesses, a physician, 

 testified the other day that once when the broker and he 

 were camping in the Adirondacks the broker took it into 

 his head that his companion was a wolf, and for half a 

 mile they had a wolf chase, the doctor going at his best 

 pace and the broker after him with a gun. It must have 

 been extremely lively while it lasted, and the incident goes 

 to illustrate the principle that the fun one gets out of a 

 woods trip depends largely upon the compatibility of his 

 hunting chum. 



By the death of H. P. Ufford, at Ms home in Lake 

 Charles, La., the Dor-est and Stream has lost a favorite 

 contributor, and its editors a personal friend, who was en- 

 deared to them by the familiar correspondence of many 

 years. As revealed in his letters no less than in his pub- 

 lished sketches, "H. P. U." was a high-minded man, of 

 wide and varied culture, lofty ideals, and attractive per- 

 sonal qualities. To know such a man was to love him ; and 

 the letter which brings news of his death brings with it, 

 too, a sinking of the heart. 



Among the individuals whose fitness for the office of 

 Fish Commissioner of New York is under discussion, is 

 an Albany man who enjoys the credit of having per- 

 formed a unique feat of sportsmanship. It was at Lake 

 George last deer-hunting season. A deer was driven into 

 the water by the clogs, and having been come up with by 

 the "guide," was duly tethered to a stake in the water; 

 and thus helpless in the shambles was shot by the Albany 

 man. 



It affords us much gratification to print to-day a call 

 for a convention of Kentucky sportsmen to be held in 

 Frankfort April 19; and we trust the response may be 

 hearty and full. Kentucky is sadly in need of intelligent 

 reform with respect to her fish and game interests. In 

 union there is strength ; this meeting of her sportsmen 

 citizens in convention for united action is full of promise. 



The Gould bill in the New York Legislature has been 

 weakened by the complacency of the Assembly in accept- 

 ing about every fool notion proposed for its amendment. 

 Nevertheless the bill should be adopted, and we again 

 urge the sportsmen of the State to use their individual 

 influence to secure its passage. 



New Mexico has suffered severely and unusually from 

 cold during the present winter. Deep snows have pre- 

 vailed and ice has closed many of the ponds to the certain 

 injury of fish and perhaps of the food of water birds, 



