Forest and Stream, 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



^^•**^^^?g^-^^°^"'f NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1893. \^o. sintS^.^^'Ao.., 



The Forest and Stream is put to press 

 on Tuesdays. Correspondence intended for 

 publication should reach us by Mondays and 

 as much earlier as may be practicable. 



Christmas Books. 



Every year just about Christmas time we receive by 

 mail and telegraph many orders for books from persons 

 who have put off until the last moment the purchasing of 

 their holiday gifts. When these customers have finally 

 made up their minds what it is that they want, they wish 

 to have their orders filled at once — by telegraph, if that 

 were possible. 



This year we urge those who contemplate sending to us 

 for their Christmas gifts to forward their orders at once, 

 so that they may be sure to receive in time whatever it is 

 that they desire. About Christmas time all business 

 people are pushed- to their utmost to fill their orders; the 

 mails and express companies are overwhelmed with par- 

 cels; transportation is slower than at other times, and 

 mistakes in the delivery are likely to occur. It will, 

 therefore, be a real advantage to our customers as well as 

 a great help to ourselves if orders can be sent in at once. 



To facilitate this, by aiding customers to making a 

 selection, we print in this issue a very full descriptive list 

 of our books covering two pages of Forest and Streajni. 

 To this list we refer such of our friends as may contem- 

 plate ordering books for the holidays. In it will be found 

 standard works on all forms of out door sports, and at all 

 sorts of prices, so that a selection should not be diflScult. 



FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHINE CO. 

 • • • 318 Broadway, New York. • • • .. 



THE MASSACHUSETTS TROUT LAW. 



The proceedings instituted by Mr. "Walter L. Gilbert, 

 of Massachusetts, to test the meaning of the statute for- 

 bidding the sale of trout during the close season has just 

 been terminated by a decision adverse to ]Mr. Gilbert 

 handed down by the Supreme Court. 



Mr. Gilbert is engaged in the industry of ti-out culture. 

 He raises fisb. for the market and has long been contend- 

 ing for the privilege of marketing them in the close sea- 

 son. He was the author and promoter of a bill in the 

 Legislature to permit the sale of artificially reared trout 

 at times when wild trout might not be taken. The bill 

 was defeated, its opponents contending, and rightly, that 

 thus to open the market for domestic trout would result 

 in the captui'e and sale of wild trout. 



Then, throwing consistency to the winds, Mr. Gilbert 

 claimed that the law already existing gave him the very 

 privilege which he had been endeavoring to secure by the 

 proposed new law. He contended that the statute forbid- 

 ding the sale of trout in close time was intended to apply 

 only to wild trout; and that in despite of it he might law- 

 fully seU his cultivated fish. To test the case he sold one 

 of his own trout in the close time, and induced a friend to 

 lodge complaint and institute a prosecution. The lower 

 courts decided against him and he appealed to the 

 Supreme Coui-t, which (in the opinion printed in fuU in 

 our angling columns) declares that artificially bred fish 

 are not exempt from the provisions of the statute. The 

 court further holds that such a law is constitutional, even 

 though "owners of property may thereby to some extent 

 be restricted in its use," for '-it has often been declared 

 that all property is acquired and held under the tacit con- 

 dition that it shall not be so used as to destroy or greatly 

 impair the public rights and interests of the community." 



This outcome of Mr. Gilbert's putting the statute to the 

 test is just what we predicted it would be. There is a 

 vast deal more of bed-rock constitutionality in the fish 

 and game laws than many lay critcis give them credit 

 for; and the more clearly the principles of protective legis- 

 lation are comprehended, so much the more reasonable 

 and constitutional do the statutes reveal themselves to be. 



We have never fully shared the ferocious opinion that 

 Mr. GHbei-t should be drawn and quartered for his as- 

 sault upon the trout law. We are quite ready to believe 

 that he has been engaged in an honest fight for what he 

 thought to be his individual rights. Now that the courts 

 have fomd against him, and that his eflcorts have resulted 

 only in demonstrating the impregi^bility of the statute 



he was contesting, we trust that he may still flind abun- 

 dant reward for his commendable enterprise as a trout 

 culturist, with the opportunities afforded him vmder the 

 law as it stands. 



AN APPEAL FROM "PISECO." 

 The story was told the other day of the experience of 

 "Piseco" (Capt. L. A. Beardslee, of the Navy) and his com- 

 mand in the terrible storm which swept the Sea Islands 

 last August; and some account was given of the devasta- 

 tion then wrought, and of the suffering which followed. 

 But the half has not been told, nor can it be told, of the 

 desperate condition of the survivors. The storm destroyed 

 everything — houses, clothing, food, crops. The people, 

 some thirty thousand of them, were left absolutely desti- 

 tute of the means of subsistence, without even the opportu- 

 nity of working to earn food. All that now stands be- 

 tween them and death by starvation, cold and disease, is 

 the supply of rations, clothing and medicine contributed 

 from outside and issued to them under the direction of the 

 Red Cross. 



By virtue of his position as commandant of the Naval 

 Station on Paris Island, Capt. Beardslee has had thrust 

 upon him the responsibility of caring for the hundreds of 

 helpless people on the island, and, assisted by Mrs. 

 Beardslee, he has been acting as Miss Barton's agent on 

 the island. For months Capt. and IVIrs. Beardslee have 

 been surrounded by this misery and distress, to the miti- 

 gation of which their daily thought and endeavor have 

 been devoted. To bear up imder this constant strain, we 

 may well believe, has called for fortitude in an imusual 

 degree. 



With the coming of cold weather the condition 

 of the storm sufferers is more desperate than before. 

 The demand for succor should be answered more promptly 

 and more generously than ever before. 



Because of the pleasant, and in a way intimate, rela- 

 tion which "Piseco," as a contributor to Forest and 

 Stream, has so long enjoyed with its readers, and because 

 we honor him for the noble work he is doing and for the 

 lofty spirit which animates him in that work, we second 

 his appeal in behalf of the storm sufferers of the Sea 

 Islands. 



" Thus it stands," he writes. "There are 30,000 Ameri- 

 can, citizens who must be almost entirely supported by 

 charity xmtil they can get a spring crop in April or May. 

 Unless they are furnished with food they will starve; with 

 bedding, they will die from exposure; with medicines, 

 they will perish of fever. Everything not perishable is 

 needed, especially money to buy lumber, nails, brick and 

 hardware to rebuild the houses; cast-off and warm cloth- 

 ing, cooking utensils, pans, pots, spoons, &c. Most of the 

 express companies send free all articles directed to 



MISS CLARA BARTON, 

 President Red Cross Association, 

 For Storm Sufferers, Beaufort, S. C. 



Articles sent to the Clyde S. S. Co., Pier 39, East River, 

 New York, then to care of James E. Edgarton, Agent, 

 will be forwarded to Beaufort free. 



MEDAL AND DIPLOMA. 



The World's Fair medal, which is to come to Forest 

 AND Stream one of these days, will be of bronze and in 

 diameter a half -inch more than the width of this column. 

 The design has been submitted to the Secretary of the 

 Treasiu-y by Aug. St. Gaudens and the medals will be 

 ready for dehvery in about six months. The obverse side 

 bears a figure of Columbia, which in this particular 

 instance is typical of the character of the Forest and 

 Stream as a national journal — national in scope, in sym- 

 pathy, in influence, in warm support. On the reverse 

 will be a figure of Youth, which on our individual medal 

 will signify that the prize- winning sportsmen's journal 

 of America will never lose the buoyancy, the vigor, the 

 enthusiasm, the sprightliness and the joyance of the 

 youthful spirit. 



The diplomas wiU be ready with the medals. Mr. John 

 Boyd Thatcher announces that the matter to be placed on 

 each diploma wiU be limited to 300 words. Now does 

 any one dream that it will be possible to put into 300 

 words aU that ought to be said about the Forest and 

 Stream's exhibit at Chicago? 



THIRTY-SIX PAGES. 

 This issue contains thirty-six pages, provision thus 

 being made for the prompt giving of our annual list of all 

 the field trial winners of the year. 



SOME FOREST AND STREAM CONTRIBUTORS.— L 



COL. SAMUEL WEBBER— "VON W." 



No ONE who should have seen "Von W." in mature 

 life, standing over 6ft. 2in. in his stockings, would have 

 supposed that he was such a puny infant that his grand- 

 mother made a standing joke of having put him in the 

 coffee-pot when a baby (in 1823); but it was, perhaps, due 

 to that very delicacy in infancy that he owed the robust- 

 ness of later years. 



His father, an old physician, devoted as much care to 

 his physical development as to his mental education, and 

 he was brought up, like most country boys, to groom and 

 drive the horses, take care of the cows and pigs, hoe corn 

 and potatoes, and saw and chop wood, and encouraged to 

 frequent holidays in the woods and fields. Like Christo- 

 pher North, he became a fisherman as soon as he was 

 breeched, and at twelve years old was the possessor of an 

 old-fashioned French flint-lock fowling piece and was a 

 pretty fair rifle shot. 

 From that time until he left home at seventeen to get a 

 mechanical education in the 

 mills and shops at Lowell, 

 all his holidays were spent 

 in the woods, and if neither 

 fish nor game were in season 

 he collected wild flowers 

 and rare plants. In those 

 boyhood days, from 1836 to 

 1841, the hills of the Con- 

 necticutVaUeywereclothed 

 ^ with a heavy old growth of 



.J: oak, beech and chestnut, 



' ~ • the abode of numerous gray 



squirrels, and it was no uncommon thing to get half a 

 dozen before breakfast any good autumn morning. But 

 the advent of the railroads in New Hampshire has 

 stripped the hills of those trees, and gray squirrels are 

 usually scarce, though "Von W." reported an unusual 

 invasion of them last year. This was the favorite game 

 of his early years and gave him skill with the rifle as 

 well as with the shotgun. Ruffed grouse were always 

 more accessible in the old woods than in the present 

 sprout lands which have taken their place, though there • 

 are possibly more birds now than then. But as yet 

 sporting dogs were almost unknown in the country towns; 

 wing shooting was a hidden art, and "Von W." says he 

 never claimed to be anything more than a fair shot on the 

 wing, though he often took a squirrel on the jump. 



His especial weakness was trout fishing, and he had the 

 reputation among his townsmen of being able "to catch 

 trout out of a stone wall," and in fact, some of the moun- 

 tain brooks were little else in late summer. 



During the first half-dozen years of his mill life his 

 annual "fortnight's vacation" was always obtained in June 

 and spent on the trout brooks of New Hampshire and 

 Vermont, and in later Life, when more deeply engaged in 

 business, he always found time to slip off once in a while, 

 for a day or even a half day, to some neighboring stream 

 or old nook known as a haunt of ruffed grouse or gray 

 squirrels, or perhaps to a woodcock cover, and by the 

 active exercise in the open air keep himself in good fight- 

 ing physical condition. Always very fond also of eques- 

 trian exercise, he spent many hours every year in the 

 saddle, until he met an injury received from a fall due to 

 the breaking of the transom bolt of a wagon in 1861 while 

 driving in the rain to inspect a camp ground for use by 

 the battery of artillery, which he had raised, as well as 

 two of the New Hampshire regiments. This mishap dis- 

 qualified him for service in the field, as weU as for future 

 saddle exercise. It, however, in no way interfered with 

 his pedestrian powers, and since 1871 when he gave up 

 "miU life" and devoted himself to the practice of his pro- 

 fession as a hydrauUc engineer, he has been able to devote 

 many odd days to the trout, as well as some to the birds 

 and squirrels, and when in 1876 he was appointed chair- 

 man of the New Hampshire Fish and Game Commission, 

 he visited many of the waters of the State with the view 

 of stocking them. 



In coimection with Ms colleague, the late A. H. Powers, 

 Col. Webber introduced the "winninish," or landlocked 

 salmon, into New Hampshire, and built the first State 

 hatching house at Livermore Falls, in 1877. He also 

 planned and superintended the erection of the fishway 

 over the Amoskeag FaUa, at Manchester, N. H,, one of 

 the most successful ones ever built, 

 A year in '50-51 was spent in Europe, where he served 



