Forest and Stream. 



A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 



NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 1894. \ 



For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page vii. 



POLITICS AND GAME PROTECTION. 



In his recent address before the American Medico- 

 Psychological Association, on the treatment of the insane, 

 Dr. S. Weir Mitchell declared that the management of 

 insane hospitals in this country is clogged and fettered by 

 the intrusion of politics. 



"When a work of such vast importance as the care of 

 the insane is cursed by politics, it would be asking too 

 much to insist that the relatively unimportant interests of 

 game protection should not suffer in the same way. The 

 fact is notorious that game protection in most of our 

 States which have any would be more efficient if the sys- 

 tem could be divorced absolutely from political control. 



The Duluth, Minn., Commonwealth reports that the 

 vast game preserve, of which Duluth is the center, is at 

 present without a warden, because the man best suited to 

 fill the place, and whose appointment to it had once been 

 approved by the Governor, has had the appointment 

 withheld because of his politics. The selection of a 

 Board of Fish Commissioners for New Jersey, this year, 

 was long delayed because of partisan considerations. In 

 New York, Gov. Flower's recent appointment of a game 

 warden for the Thirteenth District, called out a long 

 article in the Rochester Post-Express, headed, "Was it a 

 Dra$? Rural Politicians Guessing about O'Lahey's Ap- 

 pointment." This was followed by a statement intended 

 to show that the protector owed his place to pulls and 

 counter pulls of local political factions. 



The practical effect of making game protection sub- 

 ordinate to politics is to defeat the purposes of the system 

 by putting hetlers into office instead of protectors, to in- 

 sure inefficiency in the place of ability, to excite disgust 

 instead of respect among the law-abiding, and to give 

 license, comfort and protection to the wolfish poachers 

 who defy the laws with impunity. 



What we need in game protection is less politics and 

 more conscience. 



THE LAKE MILTON A W HUE FISH. 



The name whitefish, as used by us, is applied to all the 

 species of the genus Coregonus, and fifteen are now 

 recorded in North American waters. In every-day lan- 

 guage these are known as the common whitefish, whiting 

 or Musquaw River whitefish, Nelson's whitefish, Rocky 

 Mountain whitefish, Coulter's whitefish, Menominee white- 

 fish, Richardson's whitefish, tullibee, Lauretta's whitefish, 

 blackfin or bluefin, lake mooneye, little whitefish, smelt, 

 longjaw, and lake herring or cisco. 



The whitefishes are naturally divided into two principal 

 groups, one having the lower jaw not reaching as far 

 forward as the tip 'of the snout, and the other with the 

 lower jaw projecting forward beyond the snout. In the 

 first group the mouth is generally small; in the second it 

 is usually large. It might be supposed that the second 

 group, to which belong the lake herring, the Miltona 

 whitefish, the longjaw and several others, would take 

 the hook rather than the common whitefish, if any of 

 them could be captured in that way; but, singularly 

 enough, most of the reports of taking whitefish on a hook 

 relate to the small-mouthed form — the common lake 

 whitefish. We published an interesting account of ice 

 fishing in Lake Erie by "Fly-fisher" several years ago, in 

 which was described the capture of lake herring by a pearl 

 button lure; the fish, however, did not bite, but were 

 speared when they came within suitable distance. 



Mr. J. R. B. Van Cleave of Chicago has written to 

 Forest and Stream about the blackfin or bluefin of 

 Miltona Lake, Minn , and our illustration is made from 

 a photograph which he made for the U. S. Fish Com- 

 mission. Mr. Van Cleave stated that the fish "has been 

 known in lakes Miltona, Ida, Mary, L'Homme Dieu and 

 Geneva, and the lakes of Douglas and adjoining eounties 

 in Minnesota that empty into the headwaters of the 

 Mississippi River, through what is known as the Long 

 Prairie River, for the last thirty years [written in 1891], 

 and is indigenous to these waters. It is not the kind 

 of fish that would naturally be introduced, inasmuch as 

 it can not be taken with hook and line. It is certainly 

 a native fish." 



"A sample of this variety was taken in Lake Geneva, 

 near Alexandria, Minn., last month (November, 1891), 

 that weighed before being dressed 6lbs. * * * The 

 average size of those caught (and they are taken by the 

 wagon load in October and November) is about 2ilbs," 



Mr. Van Cleave had the following to say about the rela- 

 tion of the Miltona whitefish to the cisco of Lake Geneva, 

 Wis.: "Mr. G. B. Ward, a prominent banker of Alexan- 

 dria, in the center of this lake park region of Minnesota, 

 advises me that he lived for many years upon Lake 

 Geneva, Wis., and during the time he resided there 

 became very well acquainted with what is known as the 

 Lake Geneva cisco. He says the fish taken from the lakes 

 around Alexandria, and known as the whitefish, are not 

 the cisco, and that as a food fish there is no comparison 

 between them." 



"The whitefish of the lake region referred to are taken 

 altogether in nets and run from lflbs. to as high as 61bs. 

 in weight. A wagonload of the fish caught will present 

 the appearance of mackerel, inasmuch as they run so 

 nearly the same size, being about 2ilbs." 



In a paper recently published by the U. S. Fish Com- 

 mission, Dr. Hugh M. Smith has described the longjaw 

 whitefish, until then not known except to fishermen in 

 lakes Ontario, Michigan and Superior in deep water. If 

 this fish could have been taken with hook and line, 

 doubtless it would have been described many years ago, 

 but it is caught only in nets. 



SPORTSMAN AND FARMER AGAIN. 

 We hear and read much about the "true sportsman," 

 why never anything of the "true farmer?" The "true 

 sportsman" is commonly defined as embodying all of the 

 cardinal virtues and a few extra ones peculiar to the class. 

 Would the ideal of the "true farmer" comprise any of the 

 approved attributes of manhood in a less degree? It is 

 very clear that if all gunners and fishermen were "true 

 sportsmen" and all land owners "true farmers," we 

 should have an end of the quarrelings and collisions 

 which every once in a while now fall out between plain 

 every-day sportsmen and farmers. There have been such 

 contentions from the beginning, and they will renew 

 themselves probably to the millennium. This is because 

 as now constituted both sportsman and farmer are intensely 

 human. 



The conflict between the two classes has, as a question 

 by itself, no certain right and wrong. In any given 

 case either side may prove to be in the fight. The 

 sportsman may be a very decent and well intentioned 

 fellow, and the farmer a brute; or the farmer may be 

 shown to be a long-suffering man of peace, and the 

 sportsman a rowdy. Again, and by no means in- 

 frequently, the whole disagreement may be due to a 

 want of tact in one or both. Tact means conciliation. 

 An ounce of conciliation is worth a ton of fight. 



As a rule, the sportsman is in the position of asking 

 a favor or a privilege, and the farmer has it to grant 

 or refuse. A recognition of these relative positions is 

 demanded of the sportsman. His own individual inter- 

 est and his obligations to other sportsmen require him 

 to adopt the policy of conciliation. It is the policy that 

 pays; like honesty it is best. 



For as we have said again and again, broadly consid- 

 ered, the real interests of farmers as a class and of sports- 

 men as a class are identical; and instead of pulling against 

 one another both should be united in one common cause. 

 Take a case, which has just come to our notice, in Co- 

 lumbia county, New York. The Philmont Rod and Gun 

 Club was organized in 1889. Every spring since then 

 it has stocked the streams of the vicinity with brook trout, 

 procuring the fry from the State hatchery, but paying 

 out of the pockets of its own members the expenses of 

 teams and labor of putting out the fish. The trout were 

 planted in streams which were open to the public. But 

 this year, after the waters have become well stocked and 

 ready to yield fair fishing as a result of the enterprise of 

 the Philmont members, the lands bordering some thirty 

 miles of stream have been posted, and the public, includ- 

 ing the club men, have been shut out and prohibited from 

 fishing. This has aroused the indignation of the Phil- 

 mont trout planters; very naturally they resent the injus- 

 tice and ingratitude involved in the course adopted by the 

 land owners, and they contend with a show of reason that 

 it was the part of double dealing by the owners of the 

 lands to permit them to do the stocking for all these years 

 and then to turn on them in such an ungracious way. 

 They complain of the inequitable application of the tres- 

 pass law and denounce the law itself. 



The farmers' side, as given by the sympathetic local 

 paper, is this: That the State game protector has enforced 

 against them the law forbidding fishing for suckers in trout 

 streams; that "it is the farmers who own and pay taxes 

 upon the land through which these streams run, and these 

 same farmers have been annoyed year alter year by the 

 indifferent way in which their crops have been trodden 

 down, and by many other petty annoyances. They have 

 borne it all until the sportsmen compel them to pay a 

 round fine for catching their own fish in their own streams, 

 simply because these self -same fishermen want the streams 

 kept inviolate for their special benefit. Now the farmers 

 assert their rights and the fishermen are out." 



What this amounts to is that the fishermen have been 

 trying to supplant suckers with trout, and the farmers 

 prefer the suckers. The farmers hold the fishermen re- 

 sponsible for the enforcement of the law, and have had 

 recourse to the trespass sign, not to protect the trout, but 

 to spite the trout fishermen. There is just enough plaus- 

 ibility in their reasoning to appeal strongly to men who 

 are smarting under the application of the game protec- 

 tor's activity; but to cool-headed and unprejudiced folks 

 at a distance the pleading is illogical and fallacious. If 

 in Columbia county or anywhere else there are farmers 

 controlling waters suited to trout, and fishermen ready to 

 stock these waters with trout, it would be the part of 

 common sense for alt hands to unite that the fish might 

 multiply and grow in stature for the common good of all. 

 But the settlement of the difficulty, if it is to be arranged 

 to the satisfaction of those concerned, is not to be secured 

 without the exercise of considerable tact by the club 

 members — tact which brings conciliation. 



SNAP SHOTS. 

 ExAirpr.ES of the naturally^bloodthirsty and destructive 

 tendencies in civilized man are seen in one or two cases 

 recently noticed in Forest and Stream. In one of these 

 a deer appeared near a Connecticut village where none 

 had been seen for many years before, and pretty near the 

 whole populace turned out to destroy it. In another case 

 a beaver was killed by a farm laborer near Washington. 

 When it discovered the man, instead of manifesting fear 

 and trying to escape, the beaver walked up to him and 

 was promptly clubbed to death. And now it appears 

 from Dr. Baker's note published elsewhere that this 

 beaver was probably a tame one which had escaped eight 

 months before from the National Zoological Park at 

 Washington. We constantly meet with occurrences like 

 these which show how thin is the varnish with which a 

 few thousand years of civilization has covered the natural 

 bloodthirsty animal that stands at the head of creation. 

 The process of educating man to consider other living 

 beings will necessarily be slow, but a beginning has been 

 made. 



What is the old saying about making the wolf a sheep 

 herder? They have been doing that very thing in Rock- 

 land county, New York, where one Emil Klein holds the 

 office of game constable of Clarkstown. Last week State 

 Game and Fish Protector Willett Kidd went out there and 

 secured the conviction of Klein and the imposition of a 

 fine of $175 upon him for his game law violations. Pro- 

 tector Kidd's suit against the restaurant man, Byrnes of 

 this city, for serving woodcock and quail out of season, 

 has gone over for trial to June 18. 



Our correspondent "Culpepper" reports from Los An- 

 geles, Cal., that one dealer in that town claims to have 

 handled 162,000 dozen quail in a season; and "Culpepper" 

 thinks that the sale of game should be forbidden. He 

 is right. Secretary J. C. Clark of the Kansas State 

 Sportsmen's Association, in his declaration of principles 

 printed in another column, delares that the law forbid- 

 ding the sale of game in Kansas must be retained. He 

 is right. The sale of game should be prohibited in every 

 State in the Union. 



Col. Frederick G. Skinner died at Charlottesville, Va., 

 on Tuesday of last week, aged eighty years. Col. Skinner 

 was at one time field editor of Forest and Stream. 



Because of Decoration Day the Forest and Stream of 

 this week was put to presa on Monday, May 28, 



