Sefi'. 15, 1893.] 



FOREST AND STREAM. 



want the help of the great dailies. We want the help oE ! has done so much for the protection of game in Connecti- 



all the higher intelligence, of all the better orderp, of all 

 the finer and clearer minds. Areyoti with us, Dr. Thomas, 

 or do you see this thing plainly now? 



On one point small doubt remains, and the proper 

 course is plain. It will do good to have it widely known 

 that a heavy fine has been imposed in a prominent in- 

 stance of summer deer killing. This will do more than 

 any other one thing to stop other men from killing deer 

 intheeummer. The Illinois State Sportsmen's Associa- 

 tion should confer with the State game warden of Wis- 

 consin — with whom I am well acquainted — and the 

 warden should open correspondence with Dr. Thomas, 

 with a view to a plea of guilty, and the imposition of the 

 lightest fine the law permits. Unfortunately this can 

 not be lias than $;")() for each deer. 



Dr. Thomas also admits the deliberate killing of par- 

 tridges, of course illegal. The fine for each bird is not 

 less than $50. 



Dr. Thomas declares himself willing to pay for the 

 dama>i;e done the good State of Wisconsin, it he has vio- 

 lated the spirit of the law. He has violated the law both 

 in the letter and in the spirit, as I think the good S*;ate of 

 Wisconsin will show him as quick as it gets a chance. 

 Thit* spiritual argument doesn't go, even from a minister 

 of the Gospel. Ii is the minister of the Gjspel who needs 

 most to keep his skirts clean, his name free from any ac- 

 cusation. I doubt not Dr. Thomas will realize what this 

 necessity means in this case. He is too us«d to the meed 

 of respect and admiration which comes naturally to him 

 as one of the greatest divines and broadest thinkers of his 

 portion of the country— he is too upright, fearless and 

 self-respecting to care bo have one in his congregation 

 who could cynically smile as he listened, and say, "You, 

 who teach me thus, are no better than I am, for you do 

 what you want to do, and that is all I ever did by way of 

 sin." E. HOTOH. 



115 MoNFOB Stbket, Ohicago. 



THE ARKANSAS NON-EXPORT LAW. 



LiTTLK Rock, Ark., Sept. 9. — Editor Forest and 

 Stream: Tne Supreme Court has sustained our non- 

 exp jrt game law and I send you herewith copy of the 

 decision, which may be of some use to you. A notice 

 that such laws have been sustained may help the cause 



J. M. Rose. 



cut, was elected an honorary member. Available land 

 in this vicinity will be leased and an eflort made to en- 

 force the game and fish laws. Hon. J. M. Mm-cloch was 

 appointed attorney for the club. J. H. S- 



SuPdEME Court of Arkansas — Org-ant. State. 

 Interstate Commerce — Exporting G-ame, 



AcD April 12, 18b9, as amended by Acts 1891, c. 88, 

 prohibii.ing the exportation of fish and game from the 

 State, does not violate the Interstate Commerce clause of 

 the Constitution of the United States. 



Appeal from the Circuit Court, Crittenden County. 

 Hon. J. B. Riddick, Judge. 



Indictment against C. H. Organ for violation of an acb 

 prohibiting the exportation of iish. Judgment of guilty 

 and the defendant appeals. 



Hemingway, J, The ownership of fish is in the State 

 for the benefit of its people in common, and the Legisla- 

 ture has the power to permit individuals to catch them 

 upon such terms and conditions as it may imj)03e, and to 

 restrict the property actjuired in them when caught to 

 such extent as it deems proper. fllcCready v. Virginia, 

 94 U. S 391. American Express Co. v. People, 24 N. E, 

 R 758. Magner v. People, 97 111. .S33. It may prohibit 

 catching them entirely, or for a specified season ; or it 

 may permit them to be caught for the use of the person 

 who makes the catch, and withhold the right to sell them 

 or ship them for sale. When preserved for the common 

 benefit of the people of the State they are not articles of 

 commerce in any sense, and we cannot see that they be- 

 come such simply because the Legislature permits them 

 to be caught by individuals for use within the State only. 



One who catches them had originally no separate prop- 

 erty in them and no right to acquire it, except as the 

 Legislature might provide. As ail right of property in 

 them is derived Irom the State, it is subject to such 

 terms as the Legislature imposes. It saw fit in the act 

 assailed to confer a right of property, but to so limit it 

 that the article should not be shipped from the State, 

 the purpose being to restrict the use to those wh© origi- 

 nally owned it in common. Tne restrictions are imposed 

 by right of ownership, and not in the exercise of any as- 

 sumed power to regulate the commercial uses of private 

 property. 



Under this limitation, fish never pass from the domin- 

 ion of the State as i)roprietor, or become articles of com- 

 merce in the sense contended for by the defendant, be- 

 cause the qualified right is conferred upon the condition 

 that the use shall be restricted, and shipment from the 

 State not allowed. It follows that the act does not vio- 

 late the Commerce clause of the Federal Constitution, 

 and it could not be seriously contended that it violated 

 any other Constitutional provision. 



We are aware that a different conclusion has been 

 reached by the courts of Kansas and Idaho. State v. 

 Saunders, 19 Kan. 121. Territory v. E^ans, 26 Pac. 115 

 But that announced seems to us the better one, and is 

 sustained by the Supreme Court of Connecticut in an 

 opinion to which we refer for a more extended discus- 

 sion of the subject. State v. Cleer, 22 Atl. 1013. 



Afflrmed. 



A Combination Arm. 



I WANT a rifle and shotgun combined with over and 

 under barrels, rifle barrel on top a .88 55 rifie and 12 -gauge 

 shot barrel, the barrels not to touch each other their entire 

 length, but be screwed into breech frame, with space 

 between, and I don't want it for nothing, but would be 

 willing to pay well for such a gun. lb would be just the 

 gun fur hunting in the South, where there are deer, 

 turkey and quail on the same grounds, I would like two 

 or three agreeable companions to join me in a hunt in 

 Arkansas this winter; not game hogs, but sportsmen of 

 the regular Forest and Stream type. I think we could 

 have some spore, I did last winter, and we did not kill all 

 we had a chance at, either. En Ami, 



The Portland Game Club. 



Portland, Conn., Sept. 1. — An association known a 

 the Portland Game Club was organized here Aug, 31 

 Active membership includes only residents of the town, 

 and already over forty have expressed a wish to join. 



ANGLING NOTES. 



Dr. Elisha Sterlingr and Dr. Theodatus Garlick. 

 In a foot note in Supt. Mather's report to the New York 

 Fish Commissioners in their twentieth annual report, 

 just published, occurs this statement: "Dr. Elisha Ster- 

 ling was a very celebrated surgeon and assisted Dr. Gar- 

 lick in the first attempt to breed trout in America in 

 1852." This contains two errors that should not be 

 allowed to pass imcorrected. Perhaps it is not so strange 

 that Mr. Mather should have made a slip when it is con- 

 sidered that the Transactions of the American Fisheries 

 Society perpetuated an error upon the same subject in a 

 paper" written by a friend and contemporary of the 

 '■Father of Fishculture in America," who witnessed some 

 of Dr. Garlick's experiments. In 1850 Dr. Sterling was 

 a pupil of Jean Jacques Victor Coste, in Paris, and was 

 present during the experiments of artificially hatching 

 trout eggs by Joseph Re my, acting under Coste, in the 

 cellar of the Observatory, Luxemburg Gardens. Dr. 

 Sterling was a resident of Cleveland, Ohio, and so was 

 Dr, Garlick, and they were life-long personal friends. In 

 1853 Dr. Garhck, having read in a Washington paper an 

 account of Remy's experiments in Paris, procured some 

 trout from the" "Soo" and spawned and impregnated 

 eggs artifici«lly -in ponds constructed on the farm of 

 Prof. H. a. Ackley, two miles from Cleveland, Dr. 

 Garlick has explaised that Prof. Ackley, his partner in 

 the practice of surgery, bore a portion of the expense 

 and built the dam on his farm while he, Garlick, was at 

 Sault Ste. Marie for the trout; but Prof. Ackley made 

 none of the experiments, nor did he publish anything 

 about them. The first eggs were taken Nov. 21, 1853, 

 and on Jan. 9, 1854, one of the eggs was placed under a 

 microscope by Dr. Goodby and the embryo discovered. 

 On Jan. 22 the first fish was hatched. In audition to 

 being a pupil of Coste, in Paris, Dr. Sterling was before 

 that time a pupil of Prof. Ackley, in Cleveland, so that it 

 is not strange that the conclusion should be drawn from 

 bis association of Coste and Remy, in France, at the 

 time that they hatched trout artificially, and his friend- 

 ship with Garlick and Ackley, in Ohio, that he was con- 

 nected with the initial experiments of hatching fish by 

 artificial means in the United States. In fact, he wrote 

 me that more than one writer seemed bound to connect 

 his name with Dr. Garlick's experiments. Really the 

 strangest thing about it was that he was not a partici- 

 pant, for he was in Cleveland at the time, but on three 

 separate occasions he has written me that he knew noth- 

 ing of them. To quote his own words in one of the let- 

 ters: "The credit oelongs to Dr. Garlick alone. While 

 witnessed the experiments of Remy and Coste, in 

 Paris, I thought no more about the matter until I saw 

 Dr. Garlick's embryo trout under Dr. Goodby's micros- 

 cope in the winter of 1854." Certainly Dr. Stealing's tes- 

 timony on this subject should be final. 



Good Fishing Means Prosperity. 



New London, New Hampshire, boasts of a charming 

 little publication, a cross between a magazine and a 

 newspaper, called Summer Rest, published in the interest 

 of "pleasure, recreation and all things restful." The 

 staff appears to consist of visitors to that lake and moun- 

 tain region. The Souvenir Annual for 1892 has a full- 

 page colored mip of New London and vicinity including 

 3unapee Lake; several haif-tone illustrations, and em- 

 braces an illustrated article upon "New London's Interest 

 in Fishculture," by Prof. John D. Quackenbos, in which 

 the note upon Sunapee fish in Forest and Stream, 

 July 28, 1892, is quoted. The author adds to the Forest 

 AND Stream list of fish in Sunapee, yellow perch and 

 silver dace, but that is not why I refer to the article. 

 Near New London is a beautiful sheet of deep clear cold 

 water, known at Pleasant Pond, and as its outlet is the 

 little iiamlet of Scytheville of which Dr. Quackenbos 

 writes thus: "Scytheville may have lost her prestige as 

 a manufacturing village, but a grander future awaits her 

 if the lake, which is the pride of her people, shall become 

 the home of the landlocked salmon, or famous winninish, 

 superlatively the finest game fish in the world. This 

 prediction is based on precedents. The name of Sunapee 

 Lake was unknown beyond the limits of New Hampshire 

 until the fish commissioners stocked it with black bass; 

 but to-day the fame of its Alpine trout extends the world 

 over, and the six miles of its New London shore, undeni- 

 ably its choicest shore, with a wide western outlook and 

 a constant westerly breeze, is rapidly developing into the 

 town's most valuable section. And what but our trout 

 has wrought the change from tenantless wldernesa to 

 cottage clusters and crowded resorts?" It will be noticed 

 that it is the trout (and it may be added, landlocked 

 salmon), not the black bass, that has built up the shores 

 of Sunapee Lake. The black bass planting called atten- 

 tion to the lake, but fishes of the salmon family made it 

 famous. There are other lakes in the land that may be 

 built up in a similar manner if planted with suitable fish, 

 but it cannot be done unless good judgment is exercised 

 in selecting the fish to be planted. Tiiere is far too much 

 of hasty ill-advised fish planting going on now. Small 

 ponds and mountain lakelets that have been excellent 

 trout waters are planted with black bass, and thereafter 

 the bass amount to nothing except to unfit the waters for 

 other fish. It is a good rule not to plant black bass in 

 waters that have maintained trout — brook trout — for they 

 are rarely large enough to provide permanent black bass 

 fishing. Many waters have already been planted with 

 black bass that never Avill afford good fishing, and those 

 who planted the bass would be glad to have them out, 

 but it is easy to put them in and impossible to get them 

 out. In some trout waters pike — the so-called pickerel — 

 have made their appearance, either through accident or 

 by design, and at once there is a demand for black bass 

 to fight the pike. 



The New York Fish Commissioners, in their last re- 

 port, speak of the appearance of pike in some of the 

 Adirondack lakes and say: "Where they are found in 

 sufficient numbers the trout go to the wail. Where pick- 



lodge them, and the commissioners can suggest no 

 rernedial legislation. The only course remaining, in the 

 commissioners' opinion, is to stock these lakes with black 

 baas." Like trout will never be destroyed or seriously 

 interfered with, if at all, by either pike or black bass. 

 Where lake trout will thrive there is plenty of room for 

 the other two fishes. It is the shallow water trout, brook 

 trout, Loch Lp.ven and brown trout that must suffer if 

 any are to suffer, and in Great Britain and continental 

 Europe some of the best waters are infested with pike. 

 They are kept down to a minimum, or below the danger 

 point, by netting. It is true that the pike is far more 

 prolific than any of the trout, but they go into the creeks 

 and marshes to spawn, and it is comparatively easy to 

 net them in the spring; but the bass spawn in the lakes, 

 and it would be a more difficult matter to get rid of 

 them. In Loch Leven itself there are pike, big fellows 

 of over 20lb3., yet the trout increase each year, and when 

 I say increase it is not guesswork, for an accurate account 

 is kept of all trout taken, both number and weight, as 

 the loch is controlled by a fishing company. The trout 

 supply is kept up by natural spawning and by planting 

 fry, and the latter has never exceeded 300,000 annually. 

 Mr. Fuller, of Meacham Lake, in the Adirondacks (this is 

 one of the lakes in which the pike have gained a "foot- 

 hold"), has begun a war on the pike, and he believes that 

 he will have good trout fishing for many years to come, 

 and I do not think he will apply for black bass as long as 

 he can operate his trout hatchery. The New York law 

 now provides for netting pike out of waters where there 

 are better fish, and this is worth trying before bass are 

 put in to fight the pike. Trout and salmon doubtless will 

 build up certain i^laces as favored resorts, where the 

 black bass fishing would not pay to advertise in a single 

 issue of Forest and Stream. A. N. Cheney. 



Mr. J. B. Brainerd was elected President, and Edward D. _ ^ 



Strong secretary, Mr. A, C, Collins, of Hartford, who • erei have gained a foothold it is alraost inipos^ible to dis- 



WHY THE FISH ARE FEW. 



One hears numerous complaints concerning the scar- 

 city of game fish in waters that should, from their isola- 

 tion and natural surroundings, abound in the "smart set" 

 of the fish tribe. Surely there is some explanation of this 

 scarcity, and if it is due to illegal fishing it is the duty of 

 the wardens to investigate more fully than they do the 

 illegal acts which tend to the destruction of game fish. 



The amounts appropriated by the several States for this 

 object are inadequate, however, for a decent enforcement 

 of the laws, and a great deal depends upon the activity of 

 the amateur sportsman in discovering and reporting vio- 

 lations of the laws. 



Sportsmen are ever ready to growl at the wanton de- 

 struction of trout, but how many of them take it upon 

 themselves to inform the warden of such destruction? 

 Most of them are either too lazy to do this, or else, being 

 satisfied with their present success, they lack the fore- 

 sight which should warn them of the impending death of 

 their favorite fish ; or possibly they are afraid to make 

 such reports, fearing bodily injury from the law breakers. 

 The last reason, however, should be overlooked, as any 

 respectable warden would consider such communications 

 as strictly confidential. 



Sportsmen should bear in mind the fact that the few 

 wardens now in office cannot cover the large tracts of 

 comparatively uninhabited lands which most need their 

 attention ; also, that the wardens are usually known by 

 the law breakers and their approach carefully watched 

 for. The amateur sportsmen then should be the warden's 

 detective, keeping a careful watch and reporting all cir- 

 cumstances in cases where his suspicions are aroused. 

 There should be hearty co-operation between the wardens 

 and sportsmen, and it is by this co operation, and by it 

 only, that the laws can be well enforced. 



The greater part of the illegal fishing is done by 

 "natives" who fish for the market, largely in supplying 

 hotels in their immediate neighborhood, and also by so- 

 called sportsmen who fish for a record only. 



My experiences this summer have brought this matter 

 strongly before me, and I do not think my experience 

 differs from that of most 8j)ortsmen, I fail to see why it 

 should. 



At the White Mountains I found the hotel men eager 

 for the enforcement of the laws, especially as regards 

 fishing out of season, but they sadly neglect the lOlbs. 

 limit law, I have seen many messes weighing over 

 lOlbs. , the result of one day's fishing by one man, brought 



in and accepted readily by the landlord. At the 



House two market-fishers brought in eight hundred little 

 fingerling trout, the result of a two days' tour. These 

 trout were very small and were in all probability the 

 result of stocking by the State, taken in small streams 

 which are the feeding grounds for the larger streams. I 

 do not think the State places spawn or young fish in 

 these streams for the sake of gratifying such unconsider- 

 ate fishermen. 



There is a pond not far from North Conway, where 

 winter fishing is practiced, and the fishermen make no 

 secret of it, but boast openly of the size of the fish so 

 taken. Dynamiting is also carried on there. It is too 

 bad, for this pond offers unusually good fishing and many 

 large fish, 



I know of other ponds in New Hampshire where the 

 laws are grossly violated. One case of seining was re- 

 ported, but the official lost his man by getting drimk on 

 the way up. At the same place I examined some large 

 trout weighing from 1 to 2^1bs. each, but found no 

 signs of any hook marks. Oa another day nine beauties 

 were brought in by a market-fisher, which were not 

 caught on a hook. 



At another place I found a night line in the possession 

 of a native, and also a seine some 80ft. long in a boat be- 

 longing to a man who lets his boats to amateur sports- 

 men. 



I reported these cases to the warden, but have not yet 

 had the satisfaction of having my report acknowledged. 

 Perhaps he is too busy to attend to it. 



On a trip in Maine I found that June fishing for small- 

 mouthed bass was common practice, and that strangers 

 were invited to come there and indulge in the illegal 

 sport. No secret is made of it, and no warden has ever 

 interfered. The majority of the strangers going there 

 are unaware of the law restricting fishing until July 1. 

 The bass fishing in this place is wonderfully good, but is 

 growing poorer each season, and will soon be unworthy 

 of any notice. 



The above cases have come to my notice casually dur- 

 ing this season's fishing. Will other sportsmen join me ' 

 in an endeavor to enforce laws which were made for our 

 benefit? Montinus. 



