Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Tekms, ¥4 A Tear. 10 Cts. a Copt. 
Six Months, f3. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 14, 1896 
i 
VOL. XLVI.— No. 11. 
No. 318 Broadway, New \ orb . 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page v. 
The Forest and Stream will shortly re- 
move to new offices in the New York Life 
Building, No. 346 Broadway, entrance on 
Leonard Street. 
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. 
A FORESTRY COMMISSION. 
The Secretary of the Interior has deserved well of his 
country for many reforms inaugurated under the present 
Administration. He has striven to manage the enormous 
business of the Interior Department on business princi- 
ples, and in many respects he has been most successful. 
Perhaps nothing that he has done promises so great an 
economic return as his last stroke for reform in forestry 
methods. He has asked the National Academy of Sciences 
to appoint a committee of experts to go into the field and 
study the existing forest conditions, and then report as to 
these conditions, and to recommend what the Govern- 
ment ought to do to conserve and to increase our forests 
and to make them of the greatest benefit to the country.. 
The wisdom of this action is obvious. Mr. Smith has 
.'been f arseeing enough to ask for light on this difficult 
subject from that body best able to give it, and the men 
chosen are so eminent in their various departments of 
science that their conclusions will carry the greatest 
weight with the country and with Congress. 
The chairman of the committee appointed will be Prof. 
Charles S. Sargent, well known as professor in Harvard 
University, and director there of the botanical garden 
and the Arnold Arboretum. He is the author of the 
volume published by the Tenth Census on "The Forest 
Trees of North America," and of "The Silva of North 
America" — two works either of which would be sufficient 
to establish any man's reputation. Prof. Oliver Wolcott 
Gibbs, President of the Academy and so ex-officio member 
of the committee, is one of the first of America's investi- 
gators in chemistry and physics. Prof. Alexander Agas- 
siz is conspicuous as an authority on natural history sub- 
jects, and was long Curator of the Natural History 
Museum at Harvard. He is a man of wide experience 
and of admirable judgment. Gen. Henry L. Abbot, of 
the TJ. S. Engineer Corps, retired, is perhaps the first ex- 
pert on rivers in the United States. Prof. William H. 
Brewer has been Professor of Agriculture at Yale for more 
than thirty years, and before that was Professor of Chem- 
istry in the University of California, and connected 
with the Geological Survey of that Stats'. He is the 
author of a part of "Walker's Statistical Atlas of the 
United States" and editor of the "Botany of California.' 
Mr. Arnold Hague, of the U. S. Geological Survey, was 
for years connected with Clarence King's Survey of the 
40th Parallel, was Government Geologist in Guatemala, 
and subsequently did Government work in the mines in 
China. Since 1883 he has been in charge of work in the 
Yellowstone Park and adjacent country, especially the* 
forest reserve. His experience of the Rocky Mountain 
region is wide, and no man is better equipped for the 
work of this committee than he. He is the author off 
many works. Mr. Gifford Pinchot is of all the members 
of the committee the youngest, and the man who ha& had 
the most recent and most careful schooling in modem 
forestry methods. He has been trained in foreign schools 
of forestry, and for some years has had charge of the 
forests of Mr. Geo. Vanderbilt's estate in NoBfch Carolina, 
desirable in those regions where most of the public 
domain is situated? 
What specific legislation is required to remedy the evils 
now existing? 
When this committee shall have made its report we 
shall have answers to these questions furnished by a 
body of investigators most qualified to give them. When 
these answers have been given the country will know the 
truth, and Congress may give us the needed legislation. 
For many years individuals and associations have been 
working with might and main to remedy the evils which 
all acknowledge exist in our forestry system. This 
desultory individual effort accomplished nothing adequate. 
Secretary Smith has had the genius to see what the 
country needed, and with a stroke of the pen he has 
moved us years onward in the direction of true reform. 
The list of names here presented is moat impressive, 
and will command universal respect, >These experts cover 
not merely the subject of forestry, but all the collateral 
subjects on which forestry bears and by which it is in- 
fluenced. The ground is fully covered, and for once in 
America the men chosen to do a certain piece of work for 
the Government are the very best that could have been 
selected. 
This committee will devote itself to inquiry and recom- 
mendation on the following questions: 
Is it desirable and practicable to preserve from fire and 
to maintain permanently as forested lands the wooded 
parts of the public domain, for the supply of timber? 
How far does the influence of forests upon climate, soil 
and water conditions make a policy of forest conservation. 
THE SPORTSMEN'S EXPOSITION. 
The second annual Sportsmen's Exposition in the 
Madison Square Garden, this city, will open on next 
Monday, March 16. Everything points to a collection of 
interesting exhibits superior to that of the initial exhibi- 
bition of last year, and the managers anticipate that the 
public support will be more generous this year than last. 
It was no uncommon thing after the initial exposition to 
hear expressions of regret on the part of those who did 
not realize the extent and importance of the affair and so 
had failed to visit the Garden. The chief value of the 
enterprise is educational, and if the aims of the managers 
shall be carried out, this annual exposition will consti- 
tute an invaluable and instructive display of the develop- 
ment of field sportsmanship in all its several branches. 
We urge every sportsman within reach of New York 
city to visit the Garden next week and study the exhibits 
he will find there. 
The Forest and Stream has made preparation to do its 
share toward the entertainment of the week. Last year 
the most conspicuous feature of the Forest and Stream 
exhibit was the collection of Indian arms, implements 
and utensils illustrative of the Primitive American 
Hunter and of his evolution from the stone age to the 
latest phase of Indian hunting with the arms of the white 
man. Supplementing this display of last May, we have 
this year secured the attendance of Chief Bear, the coun- 
cil chief of the Blackfeet, and of Two Bear Woman, one 
of the oldest and most distinguished members of the tribe. 
With them comes William Jackson as interpreter, and 
the tribe has provided a pappoose. They have brought' 
with them a very complete outfit of clothing, arms and 
hunting implements, by means of which they will show 
very fully the actual plains life of the Primitive Ameri- 
can Hunter as it was followed in the days of the buf- 
falo. 
Unless we have misjudged the popular interest in the 
Forest and Stream's Indian exhibit, Chief Bear, Two 
Bear Woman and the stolid little^pappoose hung up on its 
board by the side of the lodge will hold a continuous 
levee. 
And do not fail to see the Forest and Stream's ex- 
hibition of outdoor and field scenes, shown with the 
electric light stereopticon at 4, 4:45, 8 and 8:45 P. M. daily. 
Both of these features will be distinct from and apart 
from the Forest and Stream exhibit in our spaces Nos. 
62 and 63, where old and new friends will be welcomed. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
It is somewhat of an anomaly that for the last two 
years New York has had no representative revolver club 
and no revolver range open to the public, and this in the 
face of the fact that probably no other city in the Union 
has more pistol and revolver shooters. While the need, 
of such a club has long been apparent, the efforts made to 
supply it heretofore have not met with success. The 
latest, that of a well-known athletic association, failed be- 
cause the revolver club was simply to be made subsidiary 
to the larger organization which the shooters were called, 
upon to support in addition to the heavy expenses in- 
volved in the conduct of the range itself. 
The newly organized Gotham Revolver Club has started 
on a radically different principle. Its object is to provide 
abundant facilities for practice and competition at the 
smallest possible expense to the individual member. As 
the sport itself is the sole reason for the existence of this 
club, there is no reason why it should not gain the success 
which it deserves. 
NON=EXPORT GAME LAWS. 
upheld by the supreme court of the united states. 
Last week we gave a special telegraphic summary of 
the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
rendered March 2, in the case of Geer vs. The State of 
Connecticut. To-day, in advance of its publication else- 
where, the full text of the decision is here printed as 
procured for us by our special representative in Wash- 
ington. 
The decision is one which merits and will have careful 
study. As was said last week in these columns, it is the 
most important and far-reaching decision in relation to 
the protection of game that we have ever had in this 
country. The points at issue were such as to involve in 
their determination a consideration of fundamental prin- 
ciples. The decision, then, is not simply a finding on the 
disputed constitutionality of the Connecticut non-export 
law; it is an elaborate exposition of the basic principles 
upon which rest the right of the State to control its game 
and the power of the State to extend that control even 
after game has been reduced to possession and has become 
the qualified property of its captor. 
The decision written by Mr. Justice White is admirable 
in its comprehensiveness, lucidity and convincing logic; 
it commends itself for its good reasoning and has the 
authority of the court of last resort. The principle is 
now set forth from the Supreme Court of the United 
States once for all that Connecticut, Massachusetts, New 
York, Arkansas, Illinois, California, any and every State 
in the Union, may restrict its game to its own limits by 
non-export statutes; nor is this control to be nullified or 
vitiated by any further questioning of the constitutional- 
ity of a non-export statute. 
The Constitution of the United States has had its day 
as a palladium of license for game commission men. 
From this time henceforth game protection may no 
longer be resisted by the market dealer with the old 
objection that a non-export law was counter to the interstate 
commerce clause of the Constitution. The Supreme 
Court has settled that. 
We have said that this decision points the way in 
which efficient game protective effort may be directed. 
If we have stringent non-export laws, and if we enforce 
them, the problem of keeping up a game supply will be 
near to solution. 
Objection has been made that the Forest and Stream's 
original Platform Plank— The sale of game should be for- 
bidden at all times — is too radical and is impossible of 
achievement. In view of all the circumstances it cer- 
tainly is not too radical, however difficult may appear 
the attainment of it. Some day it will be of ruling force. 
Meanwhile effort may be expended toward the attain- 
ment of the prohibition of the export of game for sale, 
with reasonable confidence in the speedy attainment of a 
non-export system. 
As a means then toward accomplishing the condition 
of things sought by the absolute prohibition of the sale of 
game, why should we not direct our efforts, as associ- 
ations, clubs and individuals, to put into effect the new 
Platform Plank — Forbid the taking of game for export 
to market? 
Edgar M. Geer, Plaintiff in Error, ) In error to the Supreme Court 
vs. 
The State of Connecticut. 
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. 
NO. 87— -OCTOBER TERM, 1895. 
) In error to the Supreme Court 
V of Errors of the State of Oonnec- 
) ticut. 
(March 2, 1896). 
The statutes of the State of Connecticut provide (Section 
2,530, revision of 1888): 
"Every person who shall buy, sell, expose for sale, or have in his 
possession for the purpose, or who shall hunt, pursue, kill, destroy or 
attempt to kill any woodcock, quail, ruffed grouse, called partridg 
