Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Tekms, $4 A Yeah. 10 Ots. a Copy. I 

 Six Months, $2. j 



NEW YORK, OCTOBER 27, 1892. 



) VOL. XXXIX.-No. 17. 

 ( No. 318 Broadwat, New Yokk 



CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



Salmoi Fisheries of Alaslia. 

 The Susquehanna "Salmon." 

 Panthers and the Hair. 

 The Lost P irk Buffalo. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



Troutine in the Coast Range. 

 The Ruffed Grouse. 



Natural History. 



The Pauthei 's Scream. 

 Game Bag and Gun. 



Velocity of Sliot. 

 An Open Letter. 



Sea and River Fishing. 



Jacli and I on a Trip to Isle 

 Royal.— n. 



A D ly on ihe Gasconade. 



Iq Camp on C<che River. 



"The British Angler's Lexi- 

 con." 



Chicago and the West. 

 Angling Notes. 



Kentucky Fish and Game 

 ■ Club. 



Camps of the Kingfi«hers-xm 

 Fishing on the Metabetchouan 

 Fox Lake Fishing. 



Fishculture. 



Vermont Fishculture. 



The Kennel. 



National Beagle Clab Bench 



Show. 

 Russian Wolfhounds. 

 American Field Trial Club's 



All-Aged Stake. 

 U. S. F. T. Club's All- Aged 



Stake. 



American Coursing Club 



Meeting. 

 Flaps from the Beaver's Tail. 

 Dog Chat. 



Answers to Correspondents. 

 Yachting. 



Lord Danraven's Challenge. 

 "Podgers" on a Cu'ter. 

 The D;ed of Gift Discussion. 

 La Gloria. 

 News Notes. 



Canoeing. 



Cruisers and Cruising. 

 Chicago C. C. 



Rifle Range and Gallery. 



Chicago Rifles. 

 Trap Shooting. 

 Kansas City. 



Great Shooting in West Vir- 

 ginia. 



Answers to Queries. 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page v. 



SALMON FISHERIES OF ALASKA, 



Toward the close of the first session of the 52d 

 Congress the Senate directed the Commissioner of Fish 

 and Fisheries to communicate to that body any informa- 

 tion in his possession relative to salmon fishing in Alaska, 

 its extent, and whether the methods of the fishery are 

 likely to cause the diminution and eventual extermination 

 of the salmon, together with his views as to the measures 

 necessary for the protection of the fish and the permanence 

 of the industry in Alaskan waters. In his report, trans- 

 mitted in obedience to this resolution, the Commissioner 

 discussed: 1. The Origin and Development of the 

 Fisheries. 2. The Statistics. 8, The Present Condition. 

 4. The Methods and Apparatus Employed. 5. The Pro- 

 tective Regulation of the Fisheries, including recom- 

 mendations as to further legislation in reference to them. 



Appended to the report are papers by Dr. T. H. Bean, 

 upon the Life History of the Salmon and the Publications 

 Relating to the Salmon of Alaska and Adjacent Waters. 



The document is illustrated by a general view of the 

 Karluk canneries, reproduced from a photograph made by 

 Dr. Bean in 1889, and by 24 figures of the salmon, grayling, 

 whitefish, trout, smelt and capelin of the Territory. 



This report taken in connection with an earlier one on 

 the same subject, issued in 189D, completes the record of 

 the Alaskan salmon industries to June of the present 

 year. It shows that from 1883 to 1891 the yield of canned 

 salmon was valued at $11,000,000, and was obtained 

 chiefly at Kadiak Island and the Alaska Peninsula. Over 

 4,000,000 of red salmon were taken in and near the mouth 

 of a narrow river, only about 30 miles long, in the 

 summer of 1889. 



Without regard to the permanence of the industry, the 

 canners pursued destructive methods of fishing, involving 

 the absolute prevention of natural spawning in the rivers,, 

 until Congress imposed restrictions upon their operations 

 and overproduction reduced the market value of salmon 

 below a profitable limit. The combination of protective 

 legislation and limitation by agreement among the canners 

 has placed a temporary check upon excessive and de- 

 structive fishing. 



Alaskan rivers contain five kinds of salmon — red, 

 quinnat, silver, humpback, and dog — and four kinds of 

 trout — Gau'dner's, red-throated, lake trout and Dolly 

 Varden, All of these are valuable food fishes, but some 

 of them outrank the others for commercial purposes. The 

 Territory has additional wealth in its numerous whitefish 

 grayling, smelt, eulachon and capelin, bringing its aggre- 

 gate of species of the salmon family as high as that of any 

 other country of equal area. 



The existence of the anadromous salmon is dependent 

 upon their free access to their natural spawning grounds 

 in the gravelly shoals of rapid rivers or in the cold, snow- 

 fed lakes from which they flow, "and in this natural law 

 is to be found the suggestion of such legislation as may 

 be necessary 'to maintain the salmon fisheries under 

 permanent conditions of production.' " 



Protective regulation of the fisheries, in the opinion of 

 the commissioner, must provide for adequate reproduc- 

 tion of the salmon either by permitting the spawning fish 

 to ascend to their breeding grounds or by artificial propa- 



gation and distribution of the young to their feeding 

 places on a scale to compensate for the limitation of 

 natural reproduction by the operation of the fisheries, 



"If it be tlie policy of the Grovernment to depend upon 

 natural reproduction to maintain supply, this can be 

 made effectual only by the enactment and enforcement 

 of such regulation of the fisheries as will assure adequate 

 reproduction under natural conditions. The dilfesent 

 agencies which may be invoked, either separately or in 

 conjunction, to accomplish this end are: 



(o) A weekly close season from Saturday evening to 

 Monday morning. 



(6) A close season during September and October of 

 each year. 



(e) The establishment of national salmon parks or sal- 

 mon reservations, as proposed by Dr. Livingston Stone. 



(cZ) Absolute prohibition of the capture of salmon by 

 the use of nets or other apparatus within 100yds. of the 

 mouth of any river, 



(e) The prohibition of the use of more than one seine in 

 the same seine berth. 



(/) The leasing of the privilege of taking salmon and 

 the limitation of the catch, in accordance with the recom- 

 mendation of the Commissioner of Fisheries, based upon 

 continued and careful investigations of the conditions of 

 the fisheries." 



The establishment of national salmon parks was pro- 

 posed in a paper read by Dr. Stone before the American 

 Fisheries Society, and published in Forest and Stream, 

 June 16, 1893. 



The Commissioner believes that the future of the sal- 

 mon can best be assured "by limiting the catch in each 

 stream to its actual productive capacity under existing 

 conditions, and by leasing the privileges of taking the 

 salmon to the highest bidders," We cannot leave this 

 important subject without again calling attention to the 

 fact that the existence of the native population of Alaska 

 is equally involved with the permanerce of the salmon 

 industry in the policy of the Government in dealing with 

 fishery methods^ 



THE LOST PARK BUFFALO. 



But little information has been gained during the week 

 concerning the Lost Park buffalo. So far as known 

 nothing has been seen of the hunters who were supposed 

 to have killed the thirteen head. Mr, J. P. Lower and 

 John Higginson have made a thorough search of Lost 

 Park without finding any signs of them. Mr. Higginson 

 is an old hunter and is believed to know every foot of 

 Lost Park, and he should be able to find, if not the hunt- 

 ers, at least their old camps and signs of their work if 

 they have been there recently. It would seem probable 

 that if this bunch of bulf alo had been disttu-bed by hunt- 

 ers the marauders would long ago have taken the alarm 

 and slipped away through the mountains. 



More definite information than has yet been had with 

 regard to this bunch of buffalo comes to us from Mr. D. 

 N. Cassell, of Cassells, Col., who lives quite near to the 

 range of the bison. He says: "The runway of this 

 bunch is from five to twenAy miles from Cassells, What 

 is called Kreg Park heads about five miles south of Cas- 

 sells and runs east into Lost Park, About the middle of 

 last June two friends of mine were prospecting in there 

 and came across two bunches of bison. One band con- 

 sisted of seventeen head, mostly cows, with about five 

 calves in the lot; in the other band there were twenty-one 

 head, cows and calves and four large bulls. As nearly as 

 the surrounding neighbors can estimate, there are in all 

 about forty head left. 



"There was a report started some weeks ago to the 

 effect that some parties had killed thirteen head. This 

 has been contradicted, and I do not believe that any have 

 been killed this fall, for the citizens are watching hunters 

 very closely." 



Notwithstanding this, persons at Kenosha, Colorado 

 continue to aflirm that some buffalo have been killed 

 and that the hunters have got safely out of the country 

 and will not be caught. It is stated that a pack train in 

 charge of two men came out from Lost Park a few weeks 

 ago, the jacks being loaded with packs bound up in can- 

 vas. Came Warden Land is said to be of the opinion 

 that a certain t£«:idermist of Floriscant has had a hand in 

 the killing and that he will be arrested as soon as he re- 

 turns to his home, 



A great slaughter of deer is reported in Routt county, 

 and Game Warden Taylor urges that assistance be sent 

 him. 



PANTHERS AND THE HAIR. 



When the teller of a panther story wishes you to 

 understand that the hero or victim was badly scared, he 

 avers that his hair rose or "raised," or "riz," or stood on 

 end, or lifted his hat. Thus in the graphic picture in to- 

 day's Forest and Stream, of life in the great woods of 

 the Nehalem country, Judge Greene tells us that his 

 companion, frightened by what was thought to be a 

 panther, posed "with hands thrown forward in a suppli- 

 cating manner and hair on end." And in his testimony 

 as to the panther's scream Mr. Rushton relates that when 

 he was scared one night by a cry "each separate hair on 

 his head stood up on end." A Washington correspond- 

 ent, whose letter is in hand, testifies that the panther 

 yarns told him in youth caused his hair to rise. In his 

 capital story of "A Cougar Skin," issue of Sept. 8 (a story 

 which Mr, Charles Hallock told us was one of the best 

 things he had ever read), "O. O. S," records: "A terrific 

 scream from the opposite shore fetched me all up stand- 

 ing again:" and probably his hair was included. 



The notion, if it be a notion, that fright, caused by a 

 panther or by something else, lifts the hair, is certainly 

 an old one, and venerable for its antiquity; this "hair on 

 end" may be said to be hoary with age. 



Job iv., 14-15, reads: 



Fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my bones 

 to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face; tbe hair of my 

 flesh stood up. 



Does not Virgil make his hero's hair stand on end in 

 that vox faucibus hceset passage? Thus Conington's 

 translation : 



While thus in agony I pressed 



From house to house the endless quest, 



The pale, sad spectre of my wife 



Confronts me, larger than in life. 



I stood appalled, my hair erect. 



And fear my tongue-tied utterance checked. 



We have Macbeth's testimony : 



why do I yield to that suggestion 

 Whose horrid image doth unflx my hair. 

 And make my seated heart knock at my ribs. 

 Against the use of Nature ? 

 And says the Ghost in Hamlet: 



I could a tale unfold, whose lightest word 

 Would harrow up they soul; freeze thy young blood; 

 Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres; 

 Thy knotted and combined locks to part, 

 And each particular hair to stand on end 

 Like quills upon the fretful porcupine. 

 No doubt a thousand and one instances of rising hair 

 might be cited from literature ancient and modern, from 

 the Book of Job down to this to-day's issue of Forest and 

 Stream, 



But does fright raise the hair? Will Judge Greene and 

 Mr, Rushton, and our Washington correspondent and 

 "O, O. S." please tell us whether they wish us to under- 

 stand their hair-rising testimony in a literal or a figura- 

 tive sense. The scientific authorities assure us that the 

 hair-rising belief is a notion without substantial basis in 

 fact; but the authors of text books presumably have never 

 had an opportunity to note just what does happen to a 

 man's hair when he encounters a panther. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



District Attorney Delancey Nicoll says that he is 

 anxious to have that Delmonico woodcock case brought 

 to a speedy trial. Giving him full credit for such a 

 desire, it would appear that for a chief prosecuting officer 

 he must be tremendously handicapped by inefficient 

 subordinates. Col, Townsend is the Assistant District 

 Attorney who has the notorious Delmonico case in 

 charge; and for the sake of Mr, Nicoll's good name, if for 

 no other reason, the Colonel should bestir himself. 

 People all over the State are cognizant of the facts of the 

 case, and are watching its progress—or more accurately, 

 its delay. 



The observations of Col. Habersham in this issue upon 

 the reproduction of the striped bass will be read with 

 interest. The subject is one about which little can be 

 found on record. It is certain that this noble game and 

 food fish will receive the attention of fishculturists very 

 soon — the sooner the better for the future of the species. 



Our next issue will contain as a supplement the thud 

 illustration of American Wild Animals by Mr. E. E. 

 Thompson. The subjectjwill be the Canada Ljnx. 



