Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
( 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1896 
VOL. XLVI. — No. 17 
No. 346 Bboadvat, 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. 
AMERICAN AND FOREIGN STEAM YACHTS. 
The attempt to exclude from American waters all 
yachts built abroad, -which met with Buch a conspicuous 
failure iu the attempt of Collector J. Sloat Fassett to seize 
Mr. Vanderbilt's yacht Conqueror, and in the withdrawal 
of the bill championed t>y Senator Frye and Commissioner 
of Navigation Bates, has just been revived by Congress- 
man Payne, of New York, in a new bill introduced in 
Congress, nominally intended to secure certain privileges 
and courtesies to foreign yachtsmen, but actually designed 
to prevent the use of foreign-built yachts by American 
citizens. 
That such a bill would in the end result in any benefit 
to American designers and builders is a matter of serious 
doubt, and, as applied to steam yachting, it would work 
decided detriment to the sport for a long time to come. 
The yachtsman who contemplates the investment of 
several hundred thousand dollars in a steam yacht has 
only to look into the matter superficially to make sure of 
some very important facts. On the one hand, by going 
-abroad he can secure in a comparatively short time a 
steam yacht of the highest possible class, designed, for 
instance, by Mr. Watson, whose long list of successful 
boats— Maria, May, Rona, Sapphire, and others larger and 
finer — is a most satisfactory guarantee of the performance 
of a new vessel. The yacht will be built in a yard where 
such work is a specialty and by workmen familiar with 
all its details; and a thorough carrying out of all guaran 
tees as to time of delivery and quality of work may be 
confidently looked for. 
If, on the other hand, the order be placed at home with 
the recognized builders of steam yachts, there is no 
guarantee as to who will design the vessel, when she will 
be completed, or that she will be other than a fiat failure 
when nominally ready for delivery. If anyone is in- 
clined to dispute this there is ample evidence of its truth 
in two of the largest and most expensive of the recently 
built American yachts, one a failure in appearance, speed, 
accommodation and all the qualities that a steam yacht 
should have; the other even a worse example and only 
accepted by her owner after a long litigation. 
The passage of this bill will make a square issue for 
American yachtsmen to consider: either to have no 
steam yacht or to pay an excessive price for one that is 
practically useless. 
There are reasons which need not be quoted now for 
the unfortunate condition of steam yacht building in 
America to-day, a condition closely identical with that of 
the building of sailing yachts in 1880. That these latter 
conditions were so altered as to lead in a few years to the 
design and construction of such American yachts as 
Puritan, Mayflower, Volunteer, Gloriana, Defender and 
Niagara, is due almost entirely to the introduction into 
America of a few English yachts— Madge, Maggie, 
Stranger and Clara — and the visits of Genesta, Galatea 
and Thistle. 
The same thing was shown on a much smaller scale last 
year. The introduction of one little English boat, through 
the payment of a good round sum to the treasury of the 
United States by way of penalty, has brought work to the 
value of thousands of dollars to American builders this 
year, and will be the means of setting afloat probably 200 
boats of home design and construction. 
The mere presence of such British yachts as Sapphire, 
Zara and Hermione last year, and the contrast they made 
with the homely tubs of home construction, has already 
done good. It is only through the competition of such 
yachts as those now building by Messrs. Higgins, Goelet 
and Drexel that American yachtsmen can be aroused to 
the fact that such craft cannot be designed by some un- 
known foreign draftsman in a big American shipyard, or 
built by men familiar only with coasting steamers and 
mercantile work. 
There need be no fear that under existing conditions 
the evolution of the American steam yacht will not come 
quite as surely as it has in the case of the American sail- 
ing yacht, and all efforts to hasten it by the prohibition 
of open and legitimate competition can but retard it in 
the end 
PUBLIC FISH FOR PUBLIC WATERS. 
Ome common trait of human nature is to try to get 
something for nothing, and many people who take good 
care to give an honest equivalent for what they may 
acquire in their dealings with individuals show them- 
selves not a bit squeamish about getting from the public 
what they can without paying for it. They would scorn 
to steal a ham from a neighbor's smoke house, but will 
make away with the State's venison on the hoof and ex- 
perience never a qualm. They would not purloin so much 
as a smoked herring from the grocery store, but if they can 
bamboozle fish commissioners into granting them a half 
million trout fry for their private waters they have no 
thought of having accomplished anything but the most 
worthy and honorable acquisition. That is to say that, as 
the men who get fry from the public hatcheries for their 
private waters are many of them individuals who are 
engaged in business and are filling positions of trust and 
responsibility, we must assume that as the world goes 
tbey aro honest and honorable. 
In the past the methods of fish commissioners have 
been somewhat slipshod and irregular as to the disposition 
of fish fry produced at the expense of the taxpayers. It 
has been the practice in some States to turn over large 
numbers of the fry provided at public expense to individ- 
uals, by whom the fish have been devoted purely to in- 
dividual profit; but one by one State legislatures are enact- 
ing laws intending to remedy this gross abuse and perver- 
sion of public funds. These statutes, as in Massachusetts, 
provide that all waters stocked with State fish shall be 
open to the public. Last year a bill was introduced into 
the New York Legislature by Mr. Rogers, the enactment 
of which would have been to throw open to the public all 
waters which had been stocked with trout or other fish 
from the State hatcheries. This would have included 
club preserves, streams on farms which had been posted 
by the proprietors, and certain trout ponds maintained as 
adjuncts of country seats. There is one such pond within 
a few minutes' ride of New York city, where trout have 
been deposited year after year, and where the fishing by 
this time must be so excellent that the effect of the 
Rogers bill, if it had become a law, would have been 
to precipitate a perfect army of fishermen from 
the metropolis, and there would have been neither 
trout nor lawn left. Such a penalty imposed upon the 
owners of private waters which have been stocked with 
public fish would have been more severe than the offense 
deserved. The bill was defeated. It was introduced 
again this year in the same form, but exempting from its 
provisions any rights now existing of persons owning 
land or holding leases of private grounds, waters or 
parks prior to the passage of the act. The measure has 
become a law, and thus while it will put a stop to the mis- 
appropriation of public funds, it will bring no hardships 
upon those who have profited by the generosity or the mis- 
takes of fishery officials in the past. The precise wording 
of the new law is "that all waters heretofore stocked by 
the State or which hereafter may be stocked by the State 
from any of the hatcheries, hatching stations, or by fish 
furnished at the expense of the State shall be and remain 
open to the public to fish therein the same as though the 
private park law had never existed." 
The next step for New York and Massachusetts and 
Minnesota and every other State in the Union is to enact 
a law providing that all private waters stocked with fish 
from the United States hatcheries "shall be and remain 
open to the public to fish therein." Such a law would put 
an end to the diversion of Government funds by Senators 
to raise fish for their constituents. 
ON THE KELP BEDS. 
Stretched along the shores of the West coast, some- 
times a mile or two from land, or again fringing the 
rocky bluffs and islets, lie great beds of the giant kelp. 
Anchored by tiny threads to the rocks or sand of the sea 
bottom, the stems, small at first, but slowly growing to 
great cables, reach the surface and lie spread out in thick, 
clustered masses which cover the water. These cables, 
three or four inches in diameter, terminate in globular 
swellings as large as an orange, and from the end of 
each of these grow ten or a dozen fleshy leaves six or 
eight feet long, which float upon the water's surface. 
Rising and falling with the long, slow swells of the rest- 
less Pacific, the great mass responds to each movement of 
the water, and swings to and fro with the changing tide. 
It is never quiet; but, except at the borders, storm or calm 
make little difference in its motions, yet when the breezes 
blow the kelp bed has a voice of its own. It is a voice 
that speaks only in melancholy cadences, for the passing 
airs, as they catch the upturned edges of the broad 
streamers which are the plant's leaves, turn them over 
one after another with a slow, slapping noise which is 
indescribably weird and mournful. Heard under a gray 
sky, on a dull sea, with the vast expanse of an empty 
ocean before one, and the black, threatening rocks of the 
coast behind, the sound is depressing — ominous. 
Yet on the kelp bed there is life and often bustle, for it 
is the resting place and the home of many curious crea- 
tures of the sea. Shells and crustaceans and fishes spend 
their lives among these restless stems, and birds of many 
sorts rest upon them and find subsistence there. Hurry- 
ing flocks of shore birds, on their migration flights north 
and south, pass over them on swift beating wings and 
whirl and twist and turn, and then perhaps alight in a 
close mass and at once spread out and scatter over the 
kelp to pursue the tiny creatures on which they feed. At 
midday the gulls flock hitherward to rest, and turning 
their white breasts toward the sun dose in the warm light 
until their feeding time has come again, when one by one 
they stretch their snowy pinions and winnow their way 
out over the broad ocean. Here too the great blue heron 
may stop for food and move with deliberate and cautious 
tread, and in attitude most ungraceful, until his keen eye 
has detected an unlucky fish, and he slowly draws back 
his long neck and with unerring thrust secures the victim. 
The great clumsy brown pelicans' slow flight often brings 
them here, and they stand in long lines on the kelp bed 
with necks drawn in and closed eyes, while about its bor- 
ders, or in the occasional spots of open water, ducks and 
sea pigeons and guillemots and auks, with now and then 
a loon, dabble and dive in undisturbed contentment. 
The abundance and the variety of the life which inhab- 
its these great beds, their changing aspects under differing 
conditions of sea and sky, and their permanence, are the 
things which make them most interesting to civilized 
man. To the savage the plant is useful, for from its slen- 
der stems, knotted together, the Indian of the Northwest 
coast makes the long deep-sea fishing lines with which he 
drags up from the depths the giant halibut, and in abo- 
riginal hands the kelp has other uses. 
The traveler by canoe who encounters one of these kelp 
beds will do well to circumnavigate it, if he can, rather 
than to force his way through it.' When pushed the 
stems yield a little and then swing back, and to work a 
canoe through them is a difficult and laborious task. Yet 
in the lee of such a bed his frail bark may float safely in 
the wildest storm, secure from any danger from the 
waves, and to its stems the voyager, weary of paddling 
against wind and current, may tie his vessel, feeling sure 
that his anchor will not yield, but that he may sleep here 
secure and await the turn of the tide. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
It is with extreme regret that we learn of the death of 
Judge D. D. Banta at his home in Bloomington, Ind., on 
Tuesday of last week. Judge Banta was numbered among 
our oldest contributors, and our columns have frequently 
been graced with admirable sketches of camp life and ex- 
ploration from his pen. Judge Banta was Dean of the 
Law School of Indiana University. He was a man of fine 
presence, of high culture, learning and a spirit which 
made him popular with young people. It is said of him 
that his students loved him; and that is to say all. 
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. 
The Western office of Forest and Stream Publishing 
Co. has this week been removed to 1206-1207 Boyce Build- 
ing, Dearborn street, Chicago, where new and handsomer 
quarters have been fitted up. 
Kill your fish when caught. That is just as much a 
rigid rule of good sportsmanship as any other obligation 
of the craft. It is a rule never to be forgotten nor 
neglected. 
The Senate Committee on Territories has again at this 
session reported adversely upon the proposition to admit 
railroads to the National Park, 
