Forest and Stream 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Crs. a Copt. I 

 Srs Months, $2. ( 



NEW YORK, APRIL 6, 1893. 



( VOL. XL.— No. 14. 



I No. 318 Broadway, New York. 



DELMONICO PAYS $450.00. 



The end of the notorious Delmonico woodcock case 

 has been reached, and it is a triumph for game protection 

 in this State, for Game Protector Kidd, for the sportsmen 

 of N6w York, and for Forest and Stream. 



The Delmonico concern, for the offense of serving wood- 

 cock out of season in July, 1890, have settled up by pay- 

 ing a fine of $450. 



As reported last week, the case was set for trial Wednes- 

 day, April 5.. But when Dr. Kidd, with his witnesses, 

 went to the District Attorney's office yesterday, he was 

 met by Assistant District Attorney Townsend with the 

 same old story that the case had been set for the day but 

 would not be reached until some time in the future. As 

 a matter of fact it was not on the calendar for the day at 

 all, and never had been. 



Thanks to the persistency of Protector Kidd acting on 

 the suggestion of the Forest and Stream, Judge McCarthy 

 of the City Court promised that it should be brought up 

 to-day. 



At last the Delmonico woodcock suit and the unwilling 

 officials of the District Attorney's oflice had been pushed 

 to the point where the case must be tried. The J.uly 

 woodcock restaurant concern's counsel were advised that 

 it could not be postponed beyond to-day. Then they did 

 what we have always told Dr. Kidd they would do when- 

 ever they should be convinced tliat District Attorney 

 NicoU and his subordinates really meant business — they 

 settled up, and were not slow about it either. They paid 

 down the cash, $2.5 per bird for eighteen birds, $450 in 

 all. 



There was nothing else for them to do. Dr. Kidd has 

 never lost a case, and has told us that this was the strong- 

 est case he ever had. Not only could he.swear to having 

 found the woodcock in Delmonico's in that July of 1890, 

 but there were present yesterday Messrs. OdeU and Van 

 Nostrand, of Newburg, who were with him at the time. 

 He had also two of the heads of the Delmonico birds 

 served to him, and there were present yesterday Messrs. 

 D. G. Elliott, of the American Museum of Natural His- 

 tory; Wm. A. Dutcher, of this city, a well-known 

 ornithologist, and Mr. WHmot Townsend, to iden- 

 tify these as heads of American woodcock. The 

 case was perfect. There was no good reason 

 under heaven, except only its culpably shiftless 

 mismanagement by District Attorney Piatt, of West- 

 chester county, and District Attorney Nicoll, of New 

 York coimty, why this final result should not have 

 been reached months and years ago. That it has been 

 reached at all is due to the perseverance and tenacity of 

 Protector Willett Kidd and to the activity of the Forest 

 AND Stream. Without the agency of this journal the 

 Delmonico woodcock case would have been lost sight 

 of long ago. 



When we began this fight, it was said by more than 

 one, who had had experience with these afl:airs, that we 

 never would accomplish what we had set out to do; that 

 Delmonico would never pay his fine. But he has paid it. 



That justice has at length been meted out to the Fifth 

 avenue purveyor of caUow game birds out of season is a 

 distinctive and honorable triumph of sportsmen's journ- 

 alism. We congratulate Dr. Kidd and the sportsmen of 

 New York and of the country that after all these months 

 the final victory has been won. 



The result is a demonstration of the fact that with the 

 vigilant co-operation of such a journal as this, game and 

 fish suits may be forced to trial and offenders, however 

 rich and influential, may be punished, in spite of the tor- 

 tuous ways of disti-ict attorney offices. And it is a result 

 for the attainment of which the Forest and Stream 

 may always be depended upon to do its full part. 



"DAN VIS folks:' 



The characters who play their parts in Mr. Rowland E. 

 Robinson's new series of chapters, "Danvis Folks," will 

 need no introduction to the many readers of Forest and 

 Stream, who six or seven years since followed with such 

 delight and interest the records of rural life of fifty 

 years ago, in those remarkable and admirable papers, 

 "Uncle Lisha's Shop," and "Sam Lo vol's Camps;" nor to 

 those who possess the two notable volumes into which 

 the chapters were gathered. That these simple hunters 

 and fishermen wiU be greeted with a cordial and sincere 

 welcome we have no doubt. Indeed this has ah-eady 

 been assured by the numerous letters received since our 

 announcement of the third series by Mr. Robinson. 

 For the benefit of new readers to whom these old-fash- 

 ioned Vermont folk are strangers, it may be told that 

 Uncle Lisha was a shoemaker and the little shop was 

 the exchange where his gossiping, stoiy-telling neighbors 

 met to discuss news, and, as they phrased it, to swap lies. 

 Here came Sam Lovel, the hunter; Joseph Hill, son of 

 the veteran Josiah Hill, whom Arnold had aided in taking 

 Ticonderoga; Solon Briggs, a man addicted to the use of 

 great and heretofore unprinted words; Antoine Bissette, 

 an expatriated hero of the Canadian rebellion; Pelatiah 

 Gove, the youngest of the frequenters of the place, and 

 occasionally others who need not be named. 



After long yearning for their only son, who had mar- 

 ried and settled in far-off Wisconsin, Uncle Lisha and his 

 wife sold their house and shop and httle farm and went 

 to live with their first-born. But the new home did not 

 prove a happy one, nor the prairie soil congenial to aged 

 trees that were nourished in the stony earth of the hills; 

 and now, at the time of the opening of this new series, 

 overcome by a longing for old Vermont, they have set 

 out on their return to the Danvis home. Hither they 

 come, and having made their bows and curtsies to you, 

 these kindly, homely folk of fifty years ago most earnestly 

 desire that they may not have estranged old friends, but 

 may have made some new ones when the candle shaU be 

 blown out and the shop be closed for the long night. 



money to pay his fine he is about to be led away to the 

 lock-up for ten days' imprisonment, when he recognizes 

 in the signature of the justice affixed to the commitment 

 paper the name of a Marylander who is a cousin of his 

 Danvis deceased wife's sister's husband; and forthwith 

 the Yankee claims his hberty, asserting himself to be "a 

 connection by marriage of a bona fide citizen of said 

 county," and as such, according to the letter of the 

 statute, exempt from the non-resident shooting law, its 

 pains and its penalties. The facts of the connection by 

 marriage being proven to the satisfaction of the magis- 

 trate, the prisoner is not only discharged, but with true 

 Maiyland hospitality is invited to accompany the justice 

 home and puts in a week of partridge shooting, at the 

 close of each day's sport fervently blessing his deceased 

 wife's sister for having married a bona fide resident of 

 Dorchester. 



There was once a time when a trapper or fur trader in 

 the Indian country might find it advantageous to marry 

 into the tribe. Dorchester county, Maryland, is perhaps 

 imique as the only division of a civilized country, where, 

 to assure himself immunity from imprisonment for par- 

 tridge shooting, the non-resident sportsman would do well 

 to connect himself directly, or through his sister, or his 

 cousin, or his aunt, by marriage with some of the bona 

 fide natives. _^ 



ANIMAL PORTRAIT SUPPLEMENTS. 



We print to-day the fourth of a series of five Ameri- 

 can animal portraits by Mr. Ernest E. Thompson. These 

 are given as f uU page supplements, with the first issues 

 of the months as foUows: 



Jan. 5.— The Wolf. 



Feb. 3.— The White Goat. 



March 2,— The Coyote. 



April 6. — The Antelope. 



May 4.— The Fox. 



The dates of the former series (of which copies can be 

 supplied) are as foUows: Sept. 8, 1892— The Panther. Oct. 

 6— Ocelot. Nov. 3— Canada Lynx. Dec. 1— Bay Lynx. 



MARRYING INTO THE TRIBE. 



Certain of the newspapers came out the other day with 

 a story of the discovery of a great wall somewhere down 

 in southwestern Texas, said to rival in immensity the 

 great wall of China. In due time we shall learn that this 

 is a figment of the "fake"-maker's fertile fancy. But as 

 most sportsmen, who have been shooting in Maryland, 

 know very well, there are Chinese walls in profusion 

 there, and the curious feature of their existence is that 

 no one appears to think them anything strange or out of 

 place in this period of the union of the United States. 

 A Maryland correspondent sends us some particulars of 

 them, which are printed elsewhere, as an illustrative 

 commentary upon our remarks the other day respecting 

 the un-American nature of non-resident discriminations. 



These gi-otesque Maryland statutes have certain comical 

 aspects. One pointed out by our correspondent is that a 

 duck, on its way from the North to the South, may at a 

 certain point in the air, in its passage over Maryland 

 waters, be lawfully shot by one citizen of the State, while 

 another citizen of the same State, but aiming his gim 

 from across a county dividing line, may shoot the same 

 bird at the same place and at the same instant, only at 

 the risk of forfeiting §50 or going to jail. 



Among the non-resident laws of thirteen several Mary- 

 land counties is the highly-complicated statute of Dor- 

 chester, \\4iich we commend to Mr. Rowland E. Robin- 

 son, or some other equally ingenious witer of stories 

 flavored with a dash of romance and the incense of sport- 

 ing brands of g-unpowder. Under the working of this 

 special law this chain of events would be quite possible: 

 A Vermonter, say Sam Lovel from Danvis, a stranger 

 in Maryland, is caught shooting partridges (which are 

 rufted grouse in Vermont, but are quail in Maryland) in 

 Dorchester county without first having taken out Ms $5 

 hcense; he is arrested, haled before the local justice of 

 the peace and convicted and fined $35. Not having the 



SNAP SHOTS. 



Mr. Walter L. Gilbert, of the Old Colony Trout 

 Ponds, Plymouth, Mass., is made of good stuff, and we 

 admire his spiink, much as we believe him to be showing 

 it in a hopeless cause. Having failed to secure from the 

 Massachusetts Legislature a revision of the present law, 

 by which he might sell in close season his cultivated 

 trout, Mr. Gilbert has now set about the task of testing 

 the constitutionality of the statute, which, as he puts it, 



declares a business that is legal for a portion of the year 

 milawful during the rest of it." He has sold trout out of 

 season, has caused himself to be arrested for this, and an- 

 nounces that he will carry the case up to the Supreme 

 Court. Having the fullest confidence that the law wiU 

 stand the test, we sincerely ti-ust that Mr. Gilbert may live 

 to fight this thing through, and may be blessed with per- 

 severance to stick to it to the bitter end. There have 

 been so many unfulfilled pledges to carry game and fish 

 cases up to the courts of last resort that we have become 

 decidedly skeptical in such matters. 



The Governor of Maine has appointed Mr. T. H. Went- 

 worth, of Bangor, to fill the vacancy in the Fish Com- 

 mission caused by the death of E. M. Stilwell. The new 

 commissioner, we understand, represents the game inter- 

 ests rather than those of fisheries, and as Mr. Stanley is 

 chiefly interested in fish the Commission is in this respect 

 well balanced. The appropriation for the Commission 

 has been increased this year to $13,500, with penalties 

 added amounting to $3,000 or $4,000, and in this respect 

 the Commission is in better shaiie than ever before. 



We would like to see Gov. Flower name as one of the 

 new forestry commissioners. Gen. D. H. Bruce, of Syra- 

 cuse. There would be an appointment of the right man 

 to the right place. Gen. Bruce is deeply interested in the 

 Adirondack Park undertaking and in the subject of 

 forestry. As a commissioner he would render intelligent, 

 capable, and public-spmted service. 



Maine sportsmen repudiate the non-resident Hcense fee 

 project; they declare that it did not come from them and 

 does not represent their attitude. Indeed, no one appears 

 to know clearly where the brilliant scheme originated. 

 Now that the Legislature has adjourned without acting on 

 the matter, let us hope tliat we have heard the last of it 

 there. 



