Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Ybak, 10 Cts. a Copy. 1 

 Six Months, $2. f 



NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 10, 1892. 



J VOL. XXXIX.-No. 19. 

 1 No. 318 Bhoadway, New York 





CONTENTS. 



Editorial. 



J'amiliar Acquaintances. 

 The Fall's Snooting. 

 Dur Amateur Photographs. 

 Snap Shots. 



The Sportsman Tourist. 



A Trip to Wyomiue. 



Moose Hunting In Nova Scotia 



Natural History, 



Echoes of the Panther's 



Screom. 

 How a Snake Sheds Its Skin. 



Game Bag and Gun. 



Olncago and tbe West. 



Marooning in High Altitudes. 



The Syracuse Quail Case. 



A Maine Hum . 



Olid Barrels. 



'"Panthers and the Hair." 



Sea and River Fishing. 



Salmo Kamlonps. 



The Fall Months at B'loxi. 



More Kekoskee Confirmation. 



The a me Oat fish of the Pecos 



Potomac Notes. 



Nevada Notes. 



The Kennel. 



New England Pield Trials. 



The Kennel. 



Philadelphia K. 0. F. T. All- 

 Aged Stake. 



New Eneland F. T. Oluh All- 

 Aged Entries. 



California Coursing Items. 



Points and Flushes. 



Flaps from the Beaver's Tail. 



Dog Chat. 



Answers to Correspondents. 

 Yachting. 

 Changes in Measurement 



Rules. 

 Loss of the Catarina. 

 International Racing, 



Canoeing. 



In a Rowing Boat. 

 Rifle Range and Gallery. 



How Can Rifle Shooting be 



Revived? 

 New Jersey Notes. 



Trap Shooting. 



Charter Oik Tournament. 

 Ohicago Traps. 

 Matches and Meetinga, 



Answers to Queries. 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page v. 



OUB AMATEUR PHOTOGBAPHS. 



If the estimate may be based on the requests for ama- 

 teur photography competition conditions the interest in 

 M^hat the Forest and Stream has undertaken to do in 

 this direction is widespread. 



Now that so many outers have returned or are return- 

 ing from the outing of 1892, with camera souvenirs of the 

 vacation time, we hope that our collection may not be 

 forgotten. 



With the co-operation of amateur photographers we are 

 giving some capital pictures of outdoor sport in field and 

 wood, and in lake and stream. The addition of camera 

 sketches to the pen pictures by Forest and Stream con- 

 tributors has been recognized as a happy thought. 



FAMILIAB ACQUAINTANCES. 



THE BULLFROG. 



The flooded expanse of the marshes has shrunken per- 

 ceptibly along its shoreward boundaries, leaving a mat of 

 dead weeds, bits of driftwood and a water-worn selvage 

 of bare earth, to mark its widest limits. The green tips 

 of the rushes are thrust above the amber shallows where- 

 on flotillas of water-shield lie anchored in the bub, while 

 steel-blue devil's needles sew the warm air with intangible 

 threads of zigzag flight. 



The meshed shadows of the water-maples are full of 

 the refl ctions of the green and silver of young leaves. 

 The naked tangle of button bushes has become a green 

 island, populous with garrulous colonies of redwings. 

 The great flocks of wild ducks that came to the reopened 

 waters have had their holiday rest and journeyed onward 

 to summer homes and cares in the further north. The 

 few that remain are in scattered pairs and already in the 

 silence and seclusion of nesting. You rarely see the 

 voyaging muskrat or hear his plaintive love calls. 



Your ear has long been accustomed to the watery 

 clangor of the bittern when a new yet familiar sound 

 strikes it, the thin, vibrant bass of the first bullfrog's 

 note. 



It may be lacking in musical quality, but it is attuned 

 to its surroundings, and you are glad that the green- 

 coated player has at last recovered his long-submerged 

 banjo and is twanging its water-soaked strings in prelude 

 to the summer concert. He is a little out of practice and 

 his instrument is slightly out of tune, but a few days' use 

 will restore both touch and resonance, when he and his 

 hundred brethren shall awaken the marsh-haunting 

 echoes and the sleeping birds with grand twilight 

 recital, 



It will reach your ears a mile away and draw you back 

 over the happy days of boyhood when you listened for 

 the bullfrogs to tell that fish would bite and it was time 

 for boys to go afishing. 



In the first days of his return to the upper world of 

 water this old acquaintance may be shy and neither per 

 mit nor ofl:er any familiarity. The fixed placidity of his 

 countenance is not disturbed by your approach, but if 

 you overstep by one paoe what he oonsidero the proper 

 limit, down goes his head tinder tjover of the floodi 

 Marking hie jerky coutse With sh underwftke and « 



shiver of the rushes, he reappears to calmly observe you 

 from a safer distance. 



Custom outwears his diffidence and the fervid sun 

 warms him to more genial moods, when he will suffer 

 you to come quietly, quite close to him and tickle his 

 sides with a buUrush, till in an ecstacy of pleasure he 

 loses all caution and bears with supreme contentment 

 the titillation of your finger tips. His flabby sides swell 

 with fullness of enjoyment, his blinking eyes grow 

 dreamy and the cornez's of his blandly expressionless 

 mouth almost curve upward with an elusive smile. Not 

 till your fingers gently close upon him does he become 

 aware of the indiscretion into which he has lapsed, and 

 with a frantic struggle he tears himself away from your 

 grasp and goes plunging headlong into his nether ele- 

 ment, bellowing out his shame and astonishment. 



Another day as you troll along the channel an oar's 

 length from the weedy borders, you see him afloat on his 

 lily pad raft, heeding you no more than does the golden- 

 hearted blossom whose orange odor drifts about him, nor 

 is he disturbed by splash of oar nor dip of paddle, nor 

 even when his bark and her perfume-freighted consort 

 are tossed on your undulating wake. 



As summer wanes you see and hear him less frequently, 

 but he is still your comrade of the marshes, occasionally 

 announcing his presence with a resonant twang and a 

 jerky splash among the sedges. 



The pickerel weeds have struck their blue banners to 

 the conquering frost, and the marshes are sere and silent 

 and desolate. When they are warmed again with the 

 new life of spring, we shall listen for the jubilant chorus 

 of our old acquaintance, the bullfrog. 



A MASSACHUSETTS MUDDLE. 



The Massachusetts Association for the Protection of 

 Game and Fish caused the arrest of a Boston restaurant 

 keeper for having exposed quail for sale in the close 

 season. The defense set up was that there was no law in 

 Massachusetts forbidding the sale of quail at any season 

 of the year; and this defense was accepted by Judge 

 Adams, of the Municipal Court, who thereupon dismissed 

 the case. 



This is the way in which such an anomalous condition 

 of afl:airs comes about. The game law of 1886 in the first 

 section forbade the killing of quail, woodcock, ruifed 

 grouse, etc., between certain dates; and in the third sec- 

 tion prohibited the sale of such game during the periods 

 within which killing was forbidden by the terms of the 

 first section. 



In 1891 a law prescribing seasons for killing was 

 adopted. This was an independent new law, not an 

 amendment of the first section of the old law, which 

 section was declared to be repealed. The repeal of the 

 first section, it was held, nullified the third section with 

 respect to quail and the other species designated. 



While it certainly could not have been the intention of 

 the Legislature to remove prohibition of sale in close 

 season, and while the enactment of the 1891 statute in 

 its present form was manifestly a piece of carelessness, 

 Judge Adams's ruling appears to be sound. But whether 

 or not the present law forbids the sale of game in close 

 season, it may be practicable to provide a new 

 law early in the next session; and if that 

 shall be done, the consequences of the blunder can- 

 not prove of a grievous nature. The moral is that eternal 

 vigilance is the price of game protection, and the vigi- 

 lance must be exercised in the framing of statutes quite 

 as diligently as in enforcing the laws. 



Rev. J. B. Harrison, the well known apostle of forest 

 preservation, has been talking on his favorite theme to 

 the people of his own State of New Hampshire. Public 

 forestry meetings have been held in the midst of the 

 political campaigning, and that under such conditions 

 the gatherings have been large and the audience s inter- 

 ested is a demonstration both of Mr. Harrison's skill as a 

 teacher and of the gratifying growth of forestry senti- 

 ment. Mr. Haarison has a way of talking hard, common 

 "horse" sense; he discusses the forestry problem on the 

 hard-pan basis of the profit and loss involved for the 

 people of the Granite State; and by so demonstrating the 

 practical bearing of the subject upon the financial wel- 

 fare of the people, he is preparing the way for the adop 

 tioa ef a better and wiser gconomyi 



THE FALUS SHOOTING. 

 Up to the present time the shooting in the Eastern 

 States has not been good. Birds are apparently more 

 plenty than usual, but they are very hard to find. This 

 results from the extreme dry weather of the past two 

 months, which has so parched the ground that the scent 

 does not lie at all. The dogs cannot smell the birds, and 

 either run over them without giving the gunner warning or 

 else pass them by imnoticed. The result in either case is 

 the same. This drought appears to have prevailed oven- 

 almost the entire country, for the same story is heard from 

 the Atlantic Caast almost to the Mississippi Valley. In a 

 few places there have been local rains, which have moist- 

 ened the ground sufiiciently to make it possible for the 

 dogs to use their noses, but such places are the exception 

 to the rule. Out in Kentucky things are so bad that the 

 field trials which were to be held there have been given 

 up on account of the drougth, and the scene of the trials 

 transferred first to Columbus, Indiana, and again to Mis- 

 sissippi, 



Bat while the drought makes the shooting bad and the 

 bags light, it is certainly a good thing for the game 

 supply. There is always water enough for drinking, and 

 the birds scattered out on the dry uplands are safe except 

 when by accident they are stumbled on and two or three 

 shots are had at the bevy. To one species, however, this 

 dry weather brings danger: the woodcock cannot feed in 

 parched, hard ground, and is obliged to resort to the 

 swamps and wet places whose area is now so greatly 

 contracted. Usually in autumn these birds are dispersed 

 over a wide range of woodland and hillside, but in times 

 of drought they may be found in great numbers in the few 

 damp spots that remain in the dried-up swamps. 



Reports which come to us from Connecticut and Mass- 

 achusetts state that the woodcock are shifting now, and 

 under ordinary conditions the flight should be at its best 

 at this very time. Nov. 10 is a red-letter day on our 

 woodcock shooting calendar. All New England reports 

 tell of abundance of quail and ruffed grouse, but there is 

 universal complaint of the dry weather, and the leaves 

 are said to have hung on the trees longer than usual. 



But little can be said as yet of the prospects for the duck 

 shooting. We hear prophecies of a cold, hard winter. 

 It is said that there has been an early and unusually large 

 migration of small birds, that the wild geese and ducks 

 have all gone south already, that the muskrata have built 

 high, that the goose bone is hard and dark, and that the 

 corn husks are thick, So, it is said we ai'e to have a hard, 

 long winter. Let us wait and see. A cold, stormy win. 

 ter usually means good fowl shooting. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 It is understood that a shipment of wild animals cap- 

 tured in the Yellowstone National Park is now on its way 

 to Washington for the National Zoological Park. The 

 list is as follows: Two yearling elk (male and female) 

 and two calves (male and female), one mule deer (female), 

 two red foxes (male and female), two black bear yearlings 

 (male and female), three bear cubs (two male, one female), 

 one badger (male), one beaver (male). The three bear 

 cubs were taken from two different mothers, both of 

 which were followed by twins. One of the four captured 

 cubs died. In each of these two families the mother and 

 one cub was cinnamon color, or brown, and the other 

 cub black. Captain Anderson, Superintendent of the 

 National Park, had some other animals in captivity, but — 

 one night his yearling bullock broke into the pen where 

 the antelope was kept, and the next morning it was 

 found that the latter had gone where the good antelope 

 go. A wolverine died. The shipment under considera- 

 tion wiU, however, make a considerable addition to the 

 stock of animals now in the National Zoological Park. 



The late Elihu Phinney, of Cooperstown, New York, 

 was a life-long, consistent, active and influential advo- 

 cate of the protection and preservation of nature's boun- 

 ties of fish and game. He believed and held to the belief 

 by preaching and practice and by example that one 

 generation should enjoy these good things of the earth, 

 only with a jealous regard for the geaerations to follow. 



It is hoped that there may be a good attendance and a 

 profitable discussion of interests at the meetingjof the;ex- 

 eoutive committee of the New York State Association for 

 i the Proteebion of Fish and Game at Syracuse next Thuri- 



