Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



^'^C^r ^^ i NEW. YORK, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1894. { No . £<%J^-§£ YoBM . 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page v. 



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. 



SNAKES. 



"Coahomo's" plea for snakes comes from the pen of 

 one who has been much in the field and as a thoughtful 

 observer of wild creatures has studied the ways of animal 

 life and grown into sympathy with those humble mem- 

 bers of creation which are commonly dispised and mal- 

 treated by man. What he writes of these will find 

 hearty seconding among the few whose hearts are not 

 through prejudice or ignorance hardened against the 

 race of snakes. The one criticism which might perhaps 

 be made is that he fails to recognize the distinction 

 which should be drawn between the common impulse 

 to kill a snake and the wanton taking of other animal 

 life. 



This enmity to the serpent has its spring very deep in 

 the heart of the race; it is as old as human history; it 

 dates from the Beginning, when the Divine declaration 

 was uttered: "And I will put enmity between thee and 

 the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; and it 

 shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." 

 The enmity has been there ever since; it is there now; 

 and it will continue. We are told of a blessed time to 

 come, when the sucking child shall play on the hole of 

 the asp, but the day is yet afar off; and we have now to 

 do with man and snake as we find them, still dwelling in 

 enmity, bruising the head and bruising the heel. And 

 because this antipathy to the serpent is thus ingrained in 

 very human nature and the expression of it in "overt 

 acts" of violence is involuntary, he who would preach 

 tolerance for snakes has taken upon himself an exceed- 

 ingly difficult task. 



A person so intelligent as the reader of Forest and 

 Stream — or let us say, as one must be after having read 

 Forest and Stream, if only for a brief period — recognizes 

 that, as "Coahoma" points out, there are snakes and 

 snakes, some harmful and some harmless. But to the 

 average man, and certainly to the average woman, a 

 snake is a snake, a venomous deadly creature, a thing 

 to be dreaded, to flee from, to cast stones at, to cut a 

 club for, to kill, to stamp out on the instant. This sudden 

 impulse is of a nature entirely different from the feeling 

 which prompts the boy to shy stones at birds; not an 

 abnormal prompting by the way, but one in extenuation 

 of which much might be said — think you not that the 

 youthful David had practiced his art on a multitude of 

 the fowl of the air. while he was tending the flocks of 

 Jesse in the wilderness, before he let fly the pebble into the 

 forehead of Goliath. By and by the boy learns that birds are 

 not to be bombarded ; his stone-throwing propensities are 

 outgrown; he looks upon the songsters as friends, and if 

 blessed with more than average good sense he may even 

 recognize the usefulness of hawks and owls. But his 

 stone-compelling animosity to snakes is never outgrown; 

 boy, youth and man, he goes through life's seven ages, 

 bruising the serpent's head, making no distinction and 

 for the most part knowing none between the innocent 

 garter and the deadly rattler. In a word, it is human 

 nature to kill a snake; and it is human nature to kill 

 every snake. He then who deprecates snake killing 

 deprecates human nature; and he who pleads for a 

 changed attitude toward snakes is pleading for what may 

 be achieved only as the result of special instruction and 

 information not yet nor for a long time to be widely 

 popularized. 



Mankind has cheerfully committed itself to the doctrine 

 of the total depravity of the entire ophidian race; the 

 whole tribe is under the curse. When a "Coahoma" 

 rises up as a prophet of snakes, proclaiming their right 

 to life, liberty and the pursuit of field mice, he finds him- 

 self addressing a froward and untoward generation nmch 

 more prone to read the snake stories in the New York 

 Sun than to be instructed • in the economies of 

 animal life. The fact is that the average person 

 does not care a button to know the truth about 

 snakes in general. He much prefers a whopping big 

 lie about some snake in particular. Tell him that 

 snakes are useful as destroyers of creatures which 

 injure the farmer's crops, and he is incredulous. Tell him 



of a scaly monster that swallowed a man and an ox and a 

 cart, and he gulps it down with avidity, boots, wheels, 

 horns and all; and when he tells it to the next man adds 

 another ox. Fed on this highly spiced fiction, the public 

 has no appetite for plain truths of natural history. The 

 result is that what people think they know about snakes, 

 having learned it from the papers, is actually what they 

 do not know, though the papers have told them. They 

 cherish a fund of preposterous misinformation, and this 

 misinformation determines their attitude toward the 

 snake tribe. 



SOME FIGURES OF SPEECH. 



I.— "A FISHING EXCURSION." 



Many familiar and expressive figures of speech are 

 derived from the language of field sports. One runs 

 across them constantly in the newspaper English of the 

 day. 



The New York Legislature has appointed a Senate 

 committee to investigate certain branches of the munici- 

 pal government of this city, and there has been some 

 public discussion of the probable scope and thorough- 

 ness of the investigation proposed. When the committee 

 came to town the other day the World reported (italics 

 ours): 



There was considerable speculation among Tammany men uptown 

 as to what the committee would do if Dr. Parkhurst fails to come 

 forward with any charges or evidence. The Chamber of Commerce 

 has announced that it has no formal charges prepared, and the 

 committee, it is claimed, is down only to investigate formal charges 

 and is not on a fishing excursion. 



This was saying, of course, and saying very effectively, 

 that the committee did not intend to make inquiries at 

 random, for the purpose of securing something by chance, 

 as a fisherman casts his hook into the water with the hope 

 that something may be found there and brought to 

 the surface. The expression is one which has been used 

 before in connection with legislative investigations into 

 the affairs of this city— angling in the troubled waters of 

 local politics. In the year 1888, when the commission 

 known as the Fassett Committee was here, an incident 

 took place which the Sun recorded the next day thus: 

 | Ex-Aqueduct Commissioner Edgar L. Ridgway, who has been down 

 on Long Island enjoying himself, was at the afternoon session. He 

 rode up in the elevator with Chairman Fassett, who accosted him: 

 "Ah, you here? Then it must be this is not a propitious day for blue- 

 fishing?" "No," Mr. Ridgway responded, "and I see by the papers 

 that yesterday was a blue fishing day for you." 



And in the course of the Fassett Committee hearings, 

 during the evidence by ex-Mayor Grace, the same figure 

 came in in a colloquy reported by the Times: 



Gen. Tracy objected to the question as irrelevant. He and Mr. 

 Nicoll indulged in an argument which was cut short by Mr. Grace, 

 who said there was litigation pending between him and the World 

 regarding the publication of alleged transactions between him and 

 Grant & Ward. He did not think it was proper that counsel for the 

 Wofld, Mr. Nicoll, should be allowed to go on a fishing expedition to 

 get testimony he could afterward use in the pending litigation. 



Lawyers know well enough what it is to go on a ' 'fish- 

 ing excursion" for some chance, bit of evidence that may 

 give them a lead to something for their side of the case; 

 and many an astute attorney plie3 the angler's art as 

 deftly and as successfully in the court room as on the 

 stream in vacation. In one of the hearings of the 

 Stewart will case in this city, the Times reported: 



Further inquiry about this deed elicited nothing further after 

 recess. The examination continued industriously on the line pursued 

 in the morning. An effort to show that Mrs. Stewart favored the 

 witness by giving him money at various times and paying his debts 

 tended to show that Mr. Choate was on a fishing expedition for luck. 



In another will case the Times said: 



It was not pretended that the contestants had any testimony to 

 invalidate the will. They contented themselves with fishing for testi- 

 mony by sharply cross-examining the subscribing witnesses to the 

 will, in hopes that some flaw or other would be discovered of which 

 they might take advantage. 



Surrogate Eansom, in rendering his opinion in the case, 

 declared: 



I am afforded the opportunity to give formal expression of my 

 views on the subject of contests forced upon the proponents of wills 

 by disappointed next of kin, who, in virtue of our very liberal statute, 

 may, without the shadow of just cause, compel the beneficiaries 

 under the will to suffer unavoidable delay N and expense, while a con- 

 testant indulges in a fishing expedition. 



These examples might be multiplied; we content our- 

 selves, however, with a reference to. but one other fishing 

 excursion for evidence, an expedition whose result was a 

 pretty pickle of fish and one that was to engage for more 

 than the proverbial nine days the attention of the civil- 

 ized world. The fishing and the fisherman's luck were 



told in the London correspondence of the New York 

 Tribune, in these words: 



It has long been known Mr. Houston was the man from whom 

 the Times got the letters which Mr. Houston got from Mr. Richard 

 Pigott. The interest of his testimony turned on Mr. Houston's 

 knowledge of the source from which Mr. Pigott got them. He 

 wanted evidence, he told us, to connect the Parnellites with crime. 

 Mr. Houston offered Mr. Pigott $5 a day and expenses to go fishing. 

 Mr. Pigott went. He fished in Dublin to no purpose; in London to 

 no purpose; got a nibble in Brussels; followed his fish to Lausanne; 

 perhaps hooked it; then to Paris; then, Mr. Houston still finding 

 funds, extended his excursion to New York; returned, revisited 

 Paris, and finally landed a whole basketful of letters— five from 

 Mr. Parnell and six from Mr. Eagan. These Mr. Houston took to 

 Mr. Buckle, editor of the Times, who referred him to Mr. Macdonald, 

 who finally accepted them subject to proof of their genuineness. 



CONFUSION WORSE CONFOUNDED. 

 Here is a disgraceful state of things. In 1892 the New 

 York Legislature adopted a code of game and fish laws, 

 the result of the protracted labors of a commission 

 charged with the task of considering all interests, and 

 drawing up a law which should stand. The following 

 year there were amendatory bills by the score. This year 

 again the pulling to pieces and patching and knocking 

 holes in the bottom and tinkering up goes merrily on* 

 We note to-day twenty-six separate bills to amend the 

 law, and this is the record only up to Feb. 15. In many 

 instances a section is sought to be amended in more 

 than one of these bills; there are in two cases five different 

 measures affecting a single section. Nothing but con- 

 fusion can come from, such a mess. The entire lot should 

 be referred to the Fish Commissioners, the Commission- 

 ers should confer with the State Association, and one bill 

 should be drafted embodying whatever is good in the 

 entire series. 



But whether this shall be done or not, some one should 

 give himself the pains to look out for Assembly Bill No* 

 279, introduced by Mr. Messiter, and designed to throw 

 open to the public any private waters which may have 

 been stocked with fry from State waters or State hatch- 

 eries. We have said again and again that the State should 

 not supply trout for private waters. In past years this 

 has been done to a large extent. Such men for instance, 

 as Mr. Henry B. Hyde, President of the Equitable Life, 

 men abundantly able to pay for trout to be had of private 

 culturists, have come again and again begging fish of the 

 Commission, and have had ladled out to them fry sup- 

 plied at public expense. . This has been stopped now; and 

 we cannot right what has been done by throwing Mr. 

 Hyde's fish-ponds open to the public. 



SNAP SHOTS. 



In Madison Square Garden this week more than a thous^ 

 and dogs have emulously been striving for the blue rib- 

 bon, which in these modern dog days is the particular 

 and coveted symbol of highest excellence, and lucky 

 dogs are they called that win and wear it. But history 

 records an occasion big with canine fate, when the ribbon 

 of blue was worn by luckless canine wights to their un- 

 doing. It was in the troublous times of Covenanter and 

 Royalist in Scotland, when the blue ribbon was the badge 

 of the Covenant, and every adherent wore it on his arm. 

 In 1639, when the army of Montrose went out from New 

 Aberdeen, the ladies of the town showed fine scorn for 

 their departed guests by decorating all the tykes and 

 street curs with the hated blue ribbon. Thereupon, the 

 troops returning, swift fate was meted out by the enraged 

 Covenanters, and death overtook the blue-badged mon- 

 grels. "The renegate soldiers" records John Sargent 

 "is abusing and plundering New Aberdeen pitifully, with- 

 out regard to God or man. No foul— cock or hen — left 

 unkilled. The haill house-dogs, messens, and whelps 

 within Aberdeen felled and slain upon the gate, so that 

 neither messen or other dog was left that they could see." 



We have suggested as a plank in the platform of game 

 protection that the sale of game should be forbidden at 

 all times. This is taking advanced ground; but it is a 

 position which is justified by the situation. We would 

 like an expression of opinion on the proposition and par- 

 ticularly a presentation of facts showing the relation of 

 markets to the game supply. 



Club, secretaries are invited to 3end us the constitutions 

 and rules of garue protective organizations, that in turn 

 we may pass them along to the organizers of new clubs. 



