Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Teems, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, fa. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 1896 
VOL. 3XVI.— No. 15 
No. 346 Broadway, New \orb. 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page viii. 
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, 
SPRING FEVER, 
As the sun grows stronger and the last lingering snow- 
drifts become gray dirty streaks, as the earliest spring 
birds return and the brown earth steams and swells be- 
neath the midday warmth, there comes to us a restless 
longing for something different from the ordinary life, 
which is perhaps the survival of a migratory instinct trans- 
mitted from some long forgotten ancestor, who changed 
his skies with the changing seasons. Call it by whatever 
name we may, "spring fever" or "bad blood," this state 
of mind exists and needs a cure. 
There is no better remedy for it than to yield to the 
feeling, just as the birds and the beasts do, to burst our 
bonds for a little while and to spend a day, a week or a 
month, if we can, "far from the madding crowd's ignoble 
strife." It matters little what the excuse may be that 
we make to ourselves and our business associates, whether 
it is to go fishing on the opening day, or to collect birds 
or wild flowers, or to take a long bicycle ride; any excuse 
is a good one which for a time frees man or woman from 
the restraints of every-day life and gives opportunity for 
communion with nature, now just stretching her arms 
after her long sleep. 
Although this restlessness comes to every one except 
the most hardened business man, it does not come to all 
at the same time nor by reason of the same causes. One 
man may recognize its first symptoms as he walks through 
the crowded streets and feels a warm soft air of spring 
blow upon his face; another may be stricken as he walks 
through a city park and sees the swelling buds of the soft 
maple or the elm; a third may sit at his desk dreaming 
for an hour over a letter containing some chance remark 
which sends his thoughts a thousand miles afield, or yet 
another may find the sweet poison in some spring odor or 
in the voice of a newly come bird. Whatever its cause, 
all know the symptoms of the disease and all know the 
remedy. 
Let him who dreams of brown foam-flecked streams, 
whose waters are kissed by the swollen catkins of bend- 
ing willows, and bordered by sprangling alders, make 
ready his rod and start for the trout stream. There he 
will perhaps catch some fish, but whether he does so or 
not, he will find what is of more worth to him than trout, 
though he may not know it. He will see the new come 
sandpiper wading along the shallows of the stream, and 
the water thrush and the redpoll warbler sedately march- 
ing by the water's edge; the little tortoises scrambling 
along the bottom, and the muskrats diving in the quiet 
places. He will hear the merry gurgle of the blackbirds, 
the clink of the jay, the tumultuous cawing of the mating 
crows, and the far-off scream of the soaring hawk. He 
will stretch his legs in a long day's tramp and will come 
to his resting place at night honestly tired out, and with 
an appetite such as he has not had for months. 
Or, if his dreams be of Florida, what more easy than to 
take train and find himself in a day at the long white 
beaches where the surf thunders unceasingly, where the 
sun is ever bright and warm, where the waters are bluer 
than the sky above them, where light- winged seabirds 
sail and dip, and where the man may turn back the pages 
of twenty years and at once become a boy again, running 
bare-legged over the sand, or wading in the surf to cap- 
ture shells or fish, winning at the same time the rest and 
the new strength which mean for him, in the months to 
come, better work and more of it than he could have 
done without this interval of transformation from man to 
boy. 
The mountain climber or the big-game hunter has his 
attack of the spring fever as other men do, but it does 
not send him away, for he knows that his time is not yet. 
But he plans, oh how he plans! He orders new guns or 
new ice axes and new climbing shoes; he studies maps 
and he corresponds with guides, and above all he talks 
over the contemplated trip with his chosen companion. 
They discuss elk countries and sheep countries and the 
best way to get a bear; or they figure on unclimbed 
mountain peaks and talk of glaciers and crevasses and 
bergschrunds and couloirs and cornices. And it may be 
that out of all this talk and planning and anticipation 
they get more pleasure than they do at last out of the trip. 
There are many to whom these outings are their sole 
recreation, pleasures anticipated for one-half the year and 
looked back on for the other half, and the number of such 
is constantly increasing. It ought to increase, for they 
who really delight in such things do better work and 
make more useful citizens than those who pin themselves 
down to an unending round of narrow business life. 
The laying aside for a time of the daily routine, the 
mental rest, the delight of again seeing beautiful things, 
long known, yet ever fresh, and of seeing other things 
which are wholly new — all these combine to pour into a 
man's system a new vigor which will enable him when 
ho returns to his work to do that work with an increased 
interest, intelligence and earnestness. From the point of 
view of mere dollars and cents it is worth every man's 
while to take two vacations each year, one in the spring 
and one in the fall. Such play-spells pay for themselves 
in the better work a man by reason of them can do 
through the long months of cold and heat. 
BASS TRAPS IN LAKE ONTARIO BAYS. 
Our issue of. March 21 contained a letter from Dr. R. 
W. Amidon, of this city, describing the havoc wrought 
with the black bass supply of the bays at the east end of 
Lake Ontario by the trap-netters. The general State law 
applying to Lake Ontario forbids the use of nets within 
one mile of the shore, but exempts from this prohibition 
certain of the bays at the east end of the lake. This ex- 
emption was made some years ago at the instance of a 
few netters whose cause was espoused by Senator Mullin. 
From that day to this Mr. Mullin has looked out for his 
netting friends. He has done this and is doing it to-day 
at the expense of the public he should represent. No one 
wants or asks for the license to net, except the few in- 
dividuals who make their money by netting black bass 
and disposing of them by an illicit trade with dealers in 
New York and eleewhere. Dr. Amidon has discovered by 
personal investigation that barrels upon barrels of black 
bass from these waters are received in New York in May, 
and being unsalable here are sent on to Philadelphia. 
The traffic in out-of-season bass profits a few; it is an out- 
rage and robbery of the people at large. Senator Mullin's 
measure to shield it is a specimen of the rankest class 
legislation. It is for the advantage of a small class made 
up practically of outlaws, men who have been driven 
away from the interior waters of the State, compelled to 
remove themselves and their unlawful engines of destruc- 
tion to quarters where they find immunity because they 
can induce a State Senator to champion their demands. 
The bill proposed by the New York Association contains 
a provision repealing this Lake Ontario netting license. 
The measure should have the endorsement of the Legisla- 
ture. Senator Mullin, as usual, is on hand to look after 
the interests of his black bass trapping friends. He has 
put in a bill — Senate Bill No. 972 — which not only gives 
the bass trappers all they have had in the past but more 
too, for it extends the area of excepted waters and lets 
the trappers in where they have been kept out. The con- 
tinuance of netting in these waters means the exhaustion 
of the supply of bass. It is for the public interest that 
Senator Mullin's class measure should be killed. 
of game, Mr. Faye called a meeting before the law was 
off, at which it was determined by a number of owners 
of adjoining lands to prohibit entirely trespassing with- 
out permission. This was intended not as a restrictive 
measure, but for the purpose of saving the birds from the 
"game hogs" for the benefit of the farm owners them- 
selves and their friends, who would be satisfied with a 
half dozen birds or so as the result of a shoot. The agree- 
ment thus entered into having carried out, the result has 
proved all that was anticipated. The birds have been pro- 
tected successfully and have been found sufficient to repay 
moderately pursuit with the gun, and for one local terri- 
tory, at least in Massachusetts, there is likely to be good 
sport for years to come. We used to hear much from 
Massachusetts about the rights of the farmers' boys to 
snare grouse. As a matter of fact what right the boy had 
was not worthy of consideration, for it was not actually 
the maintenance of this right that the advocates of snar- 
ing were intent upon, but rather the interest of the pro- 
fessional market snarer. With the cheapening of fire- 
arms and the correspondingly increased popularity of the 
gun and its more common use among farmers' boys as 
well as others, the partridge snare is rapidly being rele- 
gated to oblivion by every one except the man who takes 
birdB for market. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
A notable characteristic of the reports of the game and 
fish protective commissions of Nova Scotia and of Massa- 
chusetts alike is the degree of attention given to the trap- 
pers of game. In Nova Scotia the complaint is general of 
traps set for moose. This is a favorite method employed 
in the backwoods, and the most persevering activity of 
the wardens appears to be insufficient to cope with the 
moose snares. In the Massachusetts report most of the 
duputy commissioners record the prevalence of ruffed 
grouse snares and dwell upon the difficulty they find in 
checking the evil. Snaring is the favorite method with 
the man who kills for market. It is well known that 
game dealers find a ready sale for birds which have been 
snared instead of shot, for such birds bring a higher price 
because of their freedom from the leaden pellets. The 
method is also surer and more profitable than shooting-. 
The snare will more certainly bring to hand the grouse; 
in practice snaring effectually cleans out the supply of 
birds. Deputy Commissioner Alon D. Faye reports an in- 
teresting experiment with which he has been successful 
in getting the best of the trappers and in preserving the 
game supply. Finding among the farmers of a certain 
section a general willingness to combine for the protection 
New York city is to have one of the largest and best 
equipped zoological gardens in America. During the 
winter months a committee of experts, consisting of Su- 
perintendent Arthur Erwin Brown, of the Philadelphia 
Zoological Garden; Dr. Frank Baker, superintendent of 
the Zoological Park of Washington, and Prof. Daniel G-. 
Elliott, curator of the Zoological Department of the Field 
Columbian Museum, have been studying sites available in 
the 4,000 acres of park lands in the northern part of this 
city, and it is understood that they have determined upon 
a site for the garden subject to the approval of the newly- 
appointed director, Mr. Wm, P. Hornaday, of Buffalo. 
Mr. Hornaday is known as a zoologist who has had much 
experience with wild animals both in their native state 
and in captivity. The New York park will give him an 
ample field for the exercise of his best talents; the oppor- 
tunity is one which might satisfy the most ambitious. 
The appointment of Col. H. H. Lyman to the Excise 
Commission caused a vacancy in the Fish Commission, 
which has been filled by the appointment of Mr. Hendrick 
S. Holden, of Syracuse. Mr. Holden is vice-president of 
the Commercial Bank of Syracuse, and is known as one 
of the successful business men of that city. He is a sports- 
man interested in shooting and fishing, in fishculture and 
fish and game preservation. It is said of him that he will 
fall in with the progressive ideas which have characterized 
the present Commission. 
We regret to learn of the death at the early age of 86 
years of our contributor, Mr. F. C. Gilchrist, of Fort Qu' 
Appelle, Northwest Territories. Mr. Gilchrist was the 
fishery inspector of the Northwest Territories, an office 
into the work of which he entered with enthusiasm. In 
the performance of his duty he had visited very many of 
the streams and lakes within the vast district under his 
jurisdiction, often under very severe personal exposure 
and hardship, to the severity of which is attributed the 
disease which resulted in his death. His contributions to 
the Forest and Stream had to do mostly with the life 
history of fishes as observed by him. His notes were 
marked by originality and had the value which always 
attaches to first hand records of the ways of nature. The 
father of Mr. Gilchrist was Charles Gilchrist, Overseer of 
Fisheries at Rice Lake, Ontario, who has done so much 
to renew old-time wildfowl grounds by the planting of 
wild rice. 
We print in our columns this week the full instructions 
given by Commissioner E. A. Brackett, of Massachusetts, 
for the rearing of Mongolian pheasants. Massachusetts 
has been successful in her pheasant enterprise, and Mr. 
Brackett's experience with the birds promises to induce a 
more general adoption of his methods. Pheasants are 
soon to be counted among the game birds of New 
England. 
The Forest and Stream is now domiciled in a hand- 
some suite of offices in the New York Life Building, No. 
346 Broadway, corner of Leonard street, two blocks north 
of the former location. The present entrance is on 
Leonard street. The offices are on the eighth floor, 
rooms 809 to 812, 
