Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Tekms, $4 A Year. 10 Ores, a Copy. 
See Months, $2. | 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MAY 16, 1896 
J VOL. XLVL— No. 20. 
I No. 346 Broadway, Nsw * ore. 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page viii. 
I Forest and Stream^Water Colors f 
|| ^ We have prepared as premiums a series of four artistic % 
% and beautiful reproductions of original water colors, H 
J| painted expressly for the Forest and Stream. The || 
Jfc subjects are outdoor scenes: 
Jacksnipe Coming: In. 
Vigilant and Valkyrie. 
•He's Got Them" (Quail Shooting). 
Bass Fishing at Block Island. 
The plates are for frames 14 x 19 in. They are done in 
twelve colors, and are rich in effect. They are furnished 
to olu or new subscribers on the following terms : 
Forest and Stream one year and the set of four pictures, $5. 
Forest and Stream 6 months and any two of the pictures, $3. 
Price of the pictures Alone, $1.50 each ; $5 for the set. 
Remit by express money order or postal money order. 
Make orders payable to 
FOREST AND STREAM PUB. CO., New York. I 
BUFFALO IN PARKS. 
It appears to be settled that the greater part of Mr. Gor- 
ton's herd of buffalo is to come to New York, and to be 
turned over to the Park Commissioners here for exhibition 
to the public. While the exact spot at which the herd is 
to be located has not yet been publicly announced, it is 
understood that Van Courtlandt Park has been chosen for 
its home, and that the number to be brought here is thirty- 
five. 
It seems fitting that this herd of buffalo should have its 
feeding ground in the largest of the New York parks, 
which is also one of the most beautiful. Van Courtlandt 
Park comprises within its boundaries an area of 1,069 
acres. It lies partly on hills and partly in the valley, near 
the center of which is the beautiful Van Courtlandt Lake. 
A large portion of the level ground in the valley has been 
set apart by law as a parade ground and rifle range for 
the militiamen of New York State, but besides this there 
are hundreds of acres of beautifully sloping hillsides 
which are as yet practically undisturbed. 
No doubt when these animals are shipped from New 
Hampshire they will be stalled separately in the cars, and 
not packed in together as range cattle and horses are 
shipped. The disastrous experience of shippers in the 
past has shown that if buffalo are packed in like cattle 
many of them will be killed or injured during the 
journey. At the present day risks of this sort should not 
be taken. 
The history of Mr. Corbin's herd of buffalo is pretty 
well known from the accounts published about it in our 
annual reports on the private game preserves of this 
country. It began with a few head purchased from C. J. 
Jones, of Kansas, and has been added to from time to 
time by purchase from Charles Allard and others, and by 
the natural yearly increase. Last season, we believe, this 
increase was fifteen calves, and this year twenty or twenty- 
five are expected. The herd at present numbers fifty-five 
or sixty, old and young. Unless some unexpected misfor- 
tune should happen to it, the autumn of 1897 should see 
it numbering 100 head, including calves. There are but 
two herds of buffalo in America which exceed Mr. 
Corbin's in number. One of these, belonging to Charles 
Allard and Michel Pablo, of the Flat Head Reservation in 
Montana, numbered last autumn, as we were told by Mr. 
Allard, over 200 head. The other is the property of Mr. 
Goodnight, of Texas, and by this time should contain 
more than 100 buffalo, if it is still cared for as it used to 
be. 
Mr. Corbin's buffalo have always been kept on his Blue 
Mountain Forest Preserve in New Hampshire, where they 
have done remarkably well. There is no reason to doubt 
that they may do quite as well in New York City, and 
should they increase here as rapidly as they seem to have 
done in their mountain home, the prospect for the herd 
is a grand one. 
Too much cannot be said in commendation of the lib- 
eral spirit which Mr. Corbin shows in consenting to per- 
mit this splendid possession to be brought to New York 
for the instruction and entertainment of his fellow citi- 
zens. The founding of the great game preserve in New 
Hampshire is something that might have been done by 
any wealthy man from selfish motives, but Mr. Corbin, 
while he no doubt established this preserve primarily for 
his own pleasure, rises superior to considerations of self 
when the opportunity offers to make his collection use 
ful in a broader field, and thinks of the good of the com- 
munity of which he is a member. Such an exhibition of 
public spirit is very unusual. 
Just as New York has secured for exhibition a splendid 
herd of buffalo, Chicago has parted with a number of those 
which she owned, and which have long been on exhibi- 
tion in Lincoln Park. There were twelve of these, five 
of which, a bull and four cows, have passed into the 
hands of the Page Woven Wire Fence Co., and reached 
that company's game park at Adrian, Mich., in good con- 
dition the last of April. The same company have since 
purchased two more buffalo from the herd of Mr. John 
Bass, of Fort Wayne, Ind. The other seven Chicago buffalo 
were sold to Mr. E. C. Waters, the manager of the steam- 
boat line on the Yellowstone Lake. He announced his 
purpose of shipping the animals to the National Park? 
where they were to be put on an island in the lake, to be 
kept there as an attraction for tourists. This purchase 
was never completed. The buffalo were resold to some 
German animal dealers, who have taken five of them 
abroad. They go to the Leipsic Zoological Gardens and 
to the Royal Menagerie at Schoenbrunn. 
There was something fairly pathetic in the purchasing 
of the menagerie buffalo to be sent out to the Yellowstone 
Park, where still linger the pitiful remnants of the only 
wild herd in the United States; but it would have been 
far better to have them go there than to see them shipped 
out of the country. 
The Cincinnati Zoological Gardens have sold two of 
their yearling buffalo — a bull and a heifer — to Dr. W. A. 
Conklin, and they reached New York last Monday and 
were shipped to Germany by the steamer Lahn on Tues- 
day. They are destined for the Berlin Zoological Gar- 
dens. 
To one who twenty-five years ago traveled for weeks 
without ever being out of sight of buffalo, who saw the 
plains blackened by the innumerable multitudes which 
swept by in terror, and heard the dumb earth throb 
beneath the beating of their countless hoofs, it cannot but 
seem strange that we should now be keeping a record of 
the few survivors of this mighty race. The record should 
be kept, and sad to say, it grows easier to keep year by 
year, as the numbers of the buffalo grow less and less. 
SALMON, DUCES AND TERRAPIN. 
An old story widely current relates that once upon a 
time salmon were so plentiful that masters were restrained 
by articles of indenture from feeding apprentices on the 
fish more than so many days a week. The tale is told of 
the Connecticut River in this country, of the Merrimac, 
and of other streams where salmon are now a rarity. 
More anciently it had been related of rivers in Scotland. 
Whenever any one ventures to question the truth of the 
story he is referred to the old records, which somewhat 
vaguely are said still to exist. 
Not long ago a correspondent, who wrote of duck shoot- 
ing on the Chesapeake Bay as he had found it when the 
game was much more abundant than it is now, referred 
to an earlier time when the wildfowl were in such store 
that the slaves were fed upon them as a steady diet. 
When we flouted this story of the plenitude of wildfowl 
and ventured a suggestion that it was a variation of the 
salmon story, our correspondent promptly retorted that 
the condition of affairs as related by him was a historical 
fact and could be proved by documents in existence. He 
has sent us an excerpt from a diary of an aunt, which 
relates to the early years of the century between 1820 and 
1825, in which it is recorded that on "Carroll Island and 
all along Chesapeake canvasback ducks were so plentiful 
that the negroes were fed on them, and contracts were 
made in hiring slaves not to feed them over twice a week 
on them." The diary further chronicles, "GenT Cad- 
wallader and my grandfather, as well as many other 
large farmers and owners^ had long-barreled guns on 
carriages and often killed eight to ten dozen at one 
firing." 
Another article of food rare and costly and esteemed as 
a luxury by the gourmets of our generation, but which in 
former times was so common as to pall on the appetit j , 
was the diamond-back terrapin found in this same fertile 
Chesapeake Bay; and the diamond-back has been given 
rank with the salmon and the canvasback duck as having 
been a subject of specification as to the dietary treatment 
of servants. Mr. A. T. La Vallette, of Crisfield, Md., who 
has for years controlled the supply of terrapin of the 
Chesapeake, relates that "in times gone by terrapin were 
so plentiful that they were fed to the negro slaves, being 
about the cheapest kind of food at that period. Some of 
the masters would overfeed their slaves to such an extent 
that they were compelled to sign articles of agreement 
that terrapin should be fed but once or twice a week. If 
anybody doubts this," he adds, "there are old documents 
still on file at some of the county seats of the Eastern 
Shore of Maryland that will confirm the truth of what I 
say." 
Here then we have three variations of the story, one 
of the waters fishy, one of the air flighty, and last of the 
mud amphibious, long-lived and likely to outlast the 
others. 
MORE JUGGLING AT ALBANY. 
There is good ground for believing that the game sell- 
ing provision of the New York game law, Section 249, 
permitting the sale of game the year around, was juggled 
into the statute by a hocus-pocus in the confusion and 
rush of the last hours of the session of 1895. The meas- 
ure was not incorporated into the law as a product of 
deliberation and consideration, but as an interjected piece 
of trickery, which astonished even some of the men who 
were watching the bill most carefully. It -was added as 
an amendment at the last moment, and probably was not 
passed by both branches of the Legislature. 
Something of like nature has been perpetrated again 
this year. Senator White's bill was the one in which were 
embodied the recommendations coming from the State 
Sportsmen's Association, as the fruit of its Syracuse con- 
vention in January. The measure had the approval of 
the Fish and Game Commission, and more than this, so 
far as possible all other amendments favored by the Com- 
mission had been incorporated in the White bill. The 
bill had passed the Senate and was brought up in the 
House on the last day of the session. There was every 
certainty that it would pass, when Mr. Husted offered an 
amendment to read that shad nets in the Hudson should 
be taken up for one day only instead of for two days, as 
the text read. The effect of adopting any amendment at 
this juncture would be to prevent the passage of the entire 
bill, for under the rules three days would be required for 
the bill to pass after amendment. The Assembly there- 
fore voted down the amendment by an overwhelming 
majority. In the face of this, however, Speaker Fish de- 
clared the amendment carried, and so defeated the entire 
bill. 
These facts speak for themselves, and show some of the 
obstacles annually encountered at Albany by those who 
seek to perfect the protective system. 
One provision of the White bill repealed Section 249, re- 
lating to the sale of game. It was quite fitting that a 
measure which originally found its way into the statute 
by questionable methods should be retained there by legis- 
lative ways not less devious, 
NEW YORK INDIANS AND THE GAME LAWS. 
By the courtesy of Judge Vreeland w e publish in full 
to-day the opinion rendered by him in the case of James 
Pierce, a Seneca Indian convicted of a misdemeanor in 
having dynamited fish in a stream on the reservation. It 
is a very clear and what may be accepted as conclusive 
exposition of the principles governing the case. The sole 
contention of the Indians was that their treaty provisions 
retained to them the right of hunting and fishing on the r 
reservations unrestricted by the game and fish laws. 
Judge Vreeland reports that he has been unable to dis- 
cover any such treaty provision, and in its absence the 
Senecas cannot maintain their claim. The most notable 
feature of the affair is that the question at issue should 
not have been determined years ago. 
THE THOUSAND ISLAND PARK. 
One of the acts of New York for 1896 sets apart the 
waters of the St. Lawrence River from Tibbet's Point 
Lighthouse to the city of Ogdensburg as a water park 
subject to special provisions with respect to fishing. The 
open season for St. Lawrence River black bass, pickerel, 
pike and maskinonge is fixed from June 10 to Dec. 31, 
both inclusive; the lawful limit of black bass is lOin. ; no 
person may take more than twelve bass in one day, nor 
any boat party more than twenty-four; and it is required 
of fishermen that on request by any fish and game pro- 
tector they shall permit inspection of their catch, with 
penalty for refusal to do so. The Fish Commission is 
directed to name a special protector for the district. 
