Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $i a Yeab. 10 Cts. a Copy. 1 

 Six Months, $3. j 



NEW YORK, JUNE 23, 1892. 



J VOL. XXXVTIL-No. 35. 

 I No. 318 Broad way, New York. 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Congress and the National 

 Park. 



The Decline of Creedmoor. 

 Rearing Fish for Distribntion. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



Camps of the Kingfishers.— i. 

 Sport in France.— n. 

 "Podgers's" Commentaries. 



Natural History. 



Bntcher Birds and Hawks. 

 Rattlesnakes and Their Ways. 



Game Bag- and Gun. 



The Cold Storage Game Case. 

 To Tan a Hide. 

 Objections to the Cannon. 

 Farmers and Farmers. 

 Nebraska Prairie Chickens. 

 Chicago and the West. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



Wane of Adirondack Fishing. 

 Tom's Creek. 

 Raiding the Mill-Pond. 

 The Red-Eyed Gray Bass. 

 Fish in the Wheat Fields. 

 Chat by the Way. 

 California Trout Streams. 

 The Sale of Cultivated Trout. 

 After Canada Brook Trout. 

 Chicago and the West. 

 Angling Notes. 

 B r ston and Maine. 



FIshcuIture. 



Rearing Fish for Distribution. 

 U. S. Fish Commission. 



The Kennel. 



Evolution of Dog "Judges." 

 Borzois— Psovois. 

 The Beagle Standard. 

 Hamilton and Rochester Date 

 Clash. 



Central Field Trials Club's 



Derby Entries. 

 Pacific Field Trials Club's 



Derby Entries. • 

 Flaps from the Beaver's Tail. 

 Points and Flushes. 

 Dog Chat. 

 Kennel Notes. 



Answers to Correspondents. 

 Canoeing. 

 Marine and FieW Club Race. 

 New York C. C. Cup. 

 News Notes. 



Yachting. 



Eastern Y. C. Handicap. 

 The Corinthian Navy. """" 

 The Great Steam Yacht Race. 

 Royal Canadian Y. 0. 

 June Regattas. 

 News Notes. 



Rifle Range and Gallery. 



Revolver Championship. 

 New Jersey Rifle Shooting. 



Trap Shooting. 



New York State Shoot. 

 Drivers and Twisters, 

 Matches and Meetings. 



Answers to Queries. 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page 605. 



THE DECLINE OF CBEEDMOOB. 

 The action, noted in another column, of the National 

 Rifle Association in abandoning Creedmoor, is a move 

 which has been forced upon it by the short-sighted policy 

 of the militia authorities of the State, Apart from the 

 rank ingratitude of thus ousting the N. R. A. from its 

 range at Creedmoor, the move is one of the silliest of 

 which evem the newest of gold- laced subalterns could have 

 been guilty. 



Early in the seventies a few men noted the absurdity 

 of a guard with guns but no shooting skill. Some were in 

 the National G-uard, others were not. "Wingate, Hawley, 

 Gildersleeve, Fulton, Yale, Hepburn, were among those 

 who at the start recognized tbe deficiency and set about 

 its remedy. They did it by the organization of the 

 National Rifle Association. Everything was new and 

 untried. The Regular Army had no provision whatever 

 for rifle practice; the militia were even worse off. The 

 programmes from Wimbledon were something of a guid- 

 ance, and the most rudimentary details were gone over 

 with patient precision by men who really knew very 

 little more of the art than the tyros they were instructing. 

 The press, daily and weekly, encouraged the movement, 

 the more advanced of the militiamen took hold of it with 

 vim, and then the international matches and the luck of 

 winning them gave the whole scheme tremendous impe- 

 tus. It settled back into a routine matter, but it did not 

 die. When the regiments had taken up rifle practice 

 under the tutelage of graduates, so to speak, of the 

 National Rifle Association, the parent body drew back 

 and watched the growth, not only in this but in other 

 States, and saw too the somewhat haughty regulars com- 

 pelled to follow the excellent example set them by the 

 militia shots. 



Now comes a latter day generation of managers, who 

 are too self-satisfied and too heedless to read up a bit in 

 the history of the movement. They are given authority 

 and must show it and proceed to do so with a senseless 

 disregard of the proprieties of the situation. What are 

 the latest facts? The New York State and National 

 Guard, and particularly those in New York and Brook- 

 lyn, have set days for practice. Many of them can not, 

 or at any rate do not, go down. The wiser heads of the 

 N. R. A. saw this difficulty aud put in practice a measure 

 of relief. It was to put on matches at convenient dates 

 during the shooting season. These matches were at the 

 regulation official distance and being fired over by guards- 

 men with the State arm, the scores carefully taken and 

 authenticated were placed on the State record to the 

 credit of the men. The men paid their own fares, 

 bought ammunition, paid entrance fees in the matches, 

 had all the excitement and rivalry of any match, won 

 prizes, and left a modest surplus in the hands of the 

 National Rifle Association, which surplus was expended 

 to the last cent in carrying on the annual fall meeting at 

 Creedmoor and defraying the other very limited ex- 

 penses of the Association. There have been for several 



years past no other sources of income. The result of all 

 this opportunity for practice was that the regiments, and 

 particularly some of them having energy and zeal, made 

 remarkably fine showing in the art of rifle shooting. 

 Then went up a plaint from the more shiftless 

 guardsmen that those having time and money 

 could go down and qualify to the seeming detri- 

 ment of others. This cry seems to have struck 

 a listening ear in the new State Inspector General 

 of Rifle Practice, and the process of leveling downward 

 was entered upon. The N, R. A. matches were cut off. 

 The regular order days for parade under uniform were 

 kept on and certain free days for voluntary practice 

 scattered through the year. What the N, R. A. did well, 

 guided by an intelligent experience, the State will strug- 

 gle with and show results not at all proportionate to the 

 outlay. There will be expense to the State and no cor- 

 responding gain to the guard. The shiftless regiment 

 will find they cannot drag the competent guardsmen 

 down, and the comparative showing of inefficiency will 

 still remain. The only positive result will be, or rather 

 it has been, the driving out into an itinerant existence 

 of the N. R. A. This year it is to have its challenge peri- 

 odical match shot at Sea Girt through the shrewd 

 courtesy of the New Jersey Guardsmen. The great 

 Empire State has taken a step backward; but one very 

 small man, trying to fill out to the dimensions of a " Gen- 

 eral," has thought it clever to issue a very absurd set of 

 orders on an important part of the duties of the militia. 



Discipline prevents members of the guard from ex- 

 pressing their opinions. The directors of the N. R. A. 

 have too much respect for their own dignity and the 

 distance to their adversary to stoop low enough to meet 

 him on his own level. But the public at large who know 

 the facts will not hesitate to say that some one has blun- 

 dered, and that the blunder is a well blended mixture of 

 idiocy and malice. 



BEARING FISH FOB DISTRIBUTION. 



Abstracts of three articles on the best method of 

 stocking waters are published in continuation of our 

 series of papers read at the last meeting of the American 

 Fisheries Society. The subject is now considered one of 

 the most important in the range of fishcultural opera- 

 tions. The various arguments in favor of fry planting or 

 the introduction of yearlings are pretty fully and clearly 

 brought forward in the articles of Messrs. Clark, Mather 

 and Nevin, together with the subsequent discussion. 



Mr. Clark fed 250,000 fry upon liver chiefly, and at the 

 age of one year they had cost a little less than one cent 

 each. He iearned by actual experiment that the pro- 

 portion of yearlings destroyed in confinement with larger 

 fish is very small, while the loss of fry was almost total. 

 The loss of yearlings in transportation also is small, but 

 large numbers of fry die in transit. He remarks that 

 there is never any uncertainty about the number of year- 

 lings planted, because they are easily counted by sender 

 and receiver, but fry cannot readily be numbered. He 

 finds that artificially reared trout will rise to natural bait 

 or the artificial fly as readily as wild trout. Mr. Clark 

 further notes that the planting of fry has not been at- 

 tended with results commensurate with the outlay 

 involved. 



Mr. Nevins and Mr. Herschel Whitaker called attention 

 to the successful planting of many streams in Michigan 

 and Wisconsin by means of fry. Mr. Whitaker also 

 mentioned the increase of salmon in the Penobscot 

 through the introduction of very young fish. In some 

 cases he found that 500 fry were sufficient to stock a 

 stream. Mr. N. K. Fairbank expressed his belief that fry 

 planting has succeeded in Michigan and Wisconsin 

 because the streams are deep; he considered the shallow 

 waters of New York, Pennsylvania and New England not 

 adapted to fry planting. Mr. Mather startled his hearers 

 by producing statistics to show that the food of a yearling 

 fish alone costs 11 cents; but we have corrected his calcu- 

 lation in connection with his article. Commissioner W. 

 H. Bowman admitted that yearlings are better than fry 

 for distribution, but opposed their use on account of the 

 expense of rearing and carrying them. The New York 

 Commission aims to secure the best results which can be 

 obtained for a small outlay. 



It was stated by Mr. W. L. Gilbert that the food of 

 30,000 yearling trout and 5,0001bs. of marketable trout 

 cost him $400. Mr. W. F. Page, of the IT. S. Fish Com- 

 mission, reared at Neosho, Mo., 35,500 trout to lengths of 



from 4 to lOin. at a cost of 8 cents per pound. These were 

 kept in small ponds, 8 by 20ft., supplied with a flow of 

 200 gallons of water per minute. The ponds were full of 

 natural trout food. Mr. N. K. Fairbank, in discussing 

 this subject, stated that he has at Geneva, III., about 25 

 trout ponds, 100 to 300ft. long and 50 to 75ft. wide. He 

 finds masses of water plants which are full of shrimp, 

 and these alone suffice for the rearing of his fish to the 

 age of yearlings. Fully 50 per cent, of his fry reach 

 yearling age — a greater percentage than by any other 

 mode of feeding. In stocking trout streams vegetation 

 can be introduced on which shrimp will grow and fur- 

 nish ample food for the trout. 



While there is no doubt that good results have been 

 produced in many instances by fry planting, it has been 

 generally agreed by persons who have seriouely studied 

 fish culture problems that better returns are assured 

 from the introduction of fingerlings, and this belief is 

 steadily gaining ground everywhere. If yearlings can 

 be reared on artificial food at a cost of one cent each, 

 and by means of natural food their cost can be still 

 further reduced, their well known advantages over fry 

 should determine their selection for stocking the waters. 



CONGRESS AND THE NATIONAL PARK. 



The extraordinary neglect by Congress of the needs of 

 the National Park is strongly emphasized anew by the 

 occurrences of this spring. Each year lawless characters 

 on the borders of the reservation come to understand 

 better that neither the troops in charge of the Park, nor 

 the civil authorities of adjoining States, have any power 

 to punish infractions of the regulations, and each year 

 these marauders grow bolder. This spring parties have 

 gone into the Park and caught young buffalo and elk to 

 take away and sell. Two such parties have been cap- 

 tured, all their live stock confiscated and the offenders 

 turned out of the Park. How many others have suc- 

 ceeded in getting away with the wild animals that they 

 had caught, we cannot know. What a farce this pre- 

 tended protection is. But Congress does not mind a 

 little thing like that. 



Meantime the grabbers, those who want the Park for 

 themselves so as to make the public pay them tribute, 

 stand about and lick their chops. It is uncertain to 

 which party the bone will be thrown, or indeed whether 

 it will be thrown at all. The Committee on Public Lands 

 of the House evidently does not know its own mind, and 

 it is even "doubtful whether it has a mind. 



In favorably reporting a bill for the right of way of 

 the Montana Mineral R. R., the Public Lands Committee 

 recommended that no cut-off be made at the northeast 

 corner of the Park. Now, a few weeks later, with 

 charming frankness and singular complaisance, it stul- 

 tifies itself by recommending the passage of Senator 

 Warren's bill which provides for this cut-off. It is a 

 prompt right-about-face. The committee evidently de- 

 sires to please everybody and has no opinions of its own 

 which will stand in the way of doing this. It is prepared 

 to face in any direction on short notice. The committee 

 evidently believes that consistency is no jewel. 



What the outcome of it all will be no one can say. 

 After having been guarded for twenty years, the integ- 

 rity of the Park is most seriously threatened. It is easy 

 to point out who will suffer by the neglect of Congress 

 to give adequate protection to the Park. The people 

 who will feel the effects of this neglect are not the poli- 

 ticians at Washington, nor yet the game thieves of 

 Montana. The public will be the losers; that is to say, 

 you who read these lines and men like you. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 If experience had not demonstrated that the lawful 

 sale of fish and game in close season promotes the unlaw- 

 ful killing of such fish and game in close season, there 

 would be no valid objection to such a law as that pro- 

 posed for Massachusetts, permitting the sale of reared 

 trout at a time when wild trout are protected. But ex- 

 perience has demonstrated this very thing. This is the 

 beginning, the middle and the end of sensible discussion 

 of Mr. Gilbert's proposal to open the Massachusetts mar- 

 kets for the traffic in cultivated trout. 



Miss Fannie P. Hardy once wrote that the people of 

 Maine would resent the establishment of game preserves 

 in that State. Now here comes Jonathan Darling with a 

 proposal to convert his Nicatowis Lake property into just 

 such an exclusive preserve. 



