Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, SH a Year. 10 Cts. a Copt. 
Six Months, $2. 
( 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 1894. 
VOL XLHL— No. 5. 
No. 318 Broadway, New York. 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page viii. 
CONTENTS. 
Editorial. 
Sheep Herders and National 
Parks. 
The Canadian Fishing Tax. 
Snap Shots. 
The Sportsman Tourist. 
Forest and Stream Yellowstone 
Park Game Exploration. 
The Prescription. 
Natural History. 
Nesting of the Wild Pigeon. 
Sierra Nevada Foothill Birds. 
Woodcock at Home and Abroad. 
Game Bag and Gun. 
Massachusetts Summer Wood- 
cock Shooting. 
South Dakota Prairie Chickens. 
Poetry, Verse and Bhmye. 
Chicago and the West. 
Parks and Forest Preserves. 
Sea and River Fishing. 
On the North Shore of Lake 
Superior. 
Angling Notes. 
New Hampshire Trout Waters. 
Boston Bods. 
FIshculture. 
Protection in Ohio. 
The Kennel. 
The Bell-Martin Case. 
Manitoba F. T Clubs Entries. • 
Show Beagles as Field Dogs. 
English Setter Blood Lines. 
Points and Flushes. 
Dog Chat. 
Kennel Answers. 
Yachting. 
Vigilant's Races. 
Beverly Y. C. 
Hempstead Y. 0. Annual. 
Hull Y. C. Regatta. 
Yachting News Notes. 
Canoeing. 
A. C. A. Meet. 
Prudish Purity from Purl tan villa 
Canoeing Notes. 
Rifle Range and Gallery. 
Zettler Rifle Club. 
Rifle at the Golden Gate. 
Rifle Notes. 
Trap Shooting. 
Pennsylvania State Tournament 
Eureka vs. Garfield. 
Pigeon Shooting at Saratoga. 
Drivers and Twisters. 
Answers to Queries. 
Forest and Stream^Water Colors 
We have prepared as premiums a series of four artistic 
and beautiful reproductions of original water colors, 
painted expressly for the Forest and Stream. The 
subjects are outdoor scenes: 
Jacksnipe Coming In. "He's Got Them" (Quail Snooting). 
Vigilant and Valkyrie. Bass Fishing at Block Island. 
SEE REDUCED HALF-TONES IN OUR ADVT. COLUMNS. 
The plates are for frames 14 x 19 in. They are done in 
twelve colors, and are rich in effect. They are furnished 
to old 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 j $5 for the set. 
Remit by express money order or postal money order 
Make orders payable to 
FOREST AND STREAM PUB. CO., New York. 
SHEEP HERDERS AND NATIONAL PARKS. 
The story told on another page of the destruction of the 
forests in the national parks and forest reservations of 
the Pacific Slope is a melancholy one. Residents of the 
sheep raising districts of California and adjacent States 
and Territories regard these tracts of mountain forest 
as the natural summer pasturage for their sheep, and, 
as they belong to the Government, every man who 
owns a band of sheep feels that he is entitled to a certain 
tract of mountain country for his "summer range." This 
"right" he is prepared to maintain by force of arms, and 
many a man has been killed by those who were infringing 
on, or defending such "rights." 
It is a fact well known to those who have given the 
subject of forestry any attention that except fire, nothing 
is so destructive to a forest as to turn sheep into it. They 
eat every green thing, gnawing down grass, weeds and 
shrubs alike to the very surface of the ground. Young 
saplings, too large to be eaten, are denuded of their bark 
and so destroyed. Nothing is spared, save the great trees 
on whose tough bark the teeth of the ever hungry sheep 
can make no impression. Besides this, the trees which 
for ages have been dying, falling and decaying are in the 
sheep herder's way, and he wishes to clear them out; 
therefore, he sets fire to these dry trees and very likely 
burns over square miles of forest, or if not, at least 
calcines the soil so that it remains unproductive for years. 
The harm done to a forest by these agents, sheep and fire, 
is well set forth in that charming little book by M. Rousset, 
entitled "The Forest Waters the Farm." 
We have often urged the enactment by Congress of a 
general law which should provide adequate protection for 
those forest reservations and national parks. After years 
of effort such a law has been passed for the Yellowstone 
National Park, but the forest reservations of the Pacific 
Slope and of the Rocky Mountains, which, while not so 
spectacular in their attractions as the Yellowstone, are 
scarcely less important from an economic point of view, 
still remain without protection. It is satisfactory to see 
that the Secretary of the Interior appreciates the import- 
ance of guarding the forest reservations, and is doing all 
in his power to preserve them for the uses for which they 
were set aside. Until Congress shall provide Secretary 
Smith with what may be termed the machinery for pro- 
tecting the reservations, he can do but little, and until 
proper laws are passed Government timber will be stolen, 
Government game killed, and Government forests de- 
stroyed. 
It might be imagined that the Senators and Represen- 
tatives from the districts in which such reservations lie 
would be especially interested in their preservation and 
would initiate the necessary legislation. The very reverse 
of this is true. The constituents of such members of Con- 
gress are the ones who violate the law and who do more 
than any other class of people to destroy the forests, and 
these constituents care nothing for the future. So long 
as their sheep have summer pasturage this season they do 
not care what happens the next. 
It is inevitable that the destruction of the forests, not 
only in the Sierra Nevadas, but in the Rocky Mountains as 
well, should before long make itself felt by all those who 
cultivate the soil in the arid regions of the West. When 
the water on which such farmers depend for irrigation 
shall have failed them for two or three years in succession, 
we shall hear a tremendous outcry, but fair warning of 
what may be expected has been given, though this warn- 
ing remains year after year unheeded, and when disaster 
comes to the farmer and fruit grower of the Southwest, 
he will have only himself to blame. 
dent hunters and trappers was never put into effect except 
once; and on that occasion it was declared to be unconsti- 
tutional. There is no question that other non-resident 
shooting and fishing discriminations made by one State 
against the citizens of others, or of one county against all 
others, would meet the same fate if put to the test. These 
laws are altogether wrong in principle. It may be defen- 
sible, even though unneighborly, for Canada to make 
Americans buy a license before they may hunt or fish, 
but there can be no good defense of such action by some 
citizens of the United States against other citizens of the 
same common country. 
THE CANADIAN FISHING TAX. 
The Dominion authorities have been studying anew the 
art of squeezing a lemon, and as a result we have a set of 
fishery regulations, published in our angling columns, 
fixing a tax of five dollars upon non-resident anglers. 
Any other than a British subject, visiting the Dominion 
for angling, must stand and deliver, before he may wet 
his line. This new rule has excited much resentment 
among those Americans who have been accustomed to go 
to Canada for their vacation fishing. Indignation meet- 
ings have been held at Alexandria Bay; and a joint com- 
mittee of Americans and Canadians has been chosen to 
visit the authorities and endeavor to have the obnoxious 
law revoked. 
The regulations exempt from payment of the tax such 
foreigners as may be temporarily domiciled in the Domin- 
ion and employ Canadian boats and boatmen. This pos- 
sibly affords an insight into the motives and the source of 
the discrimination, which appears to be directed against 
the anglers of Lake Erie and other international waters, 
who visit Canadian territory in American boats, and are 
therefore neither temporarily domiciled in Canadian 
hotels nor putting money into hire of Canadian boatmen. 
This gives the regulations the look of a device hit upon 
by people who have been at their wits' end to bleed the 
Yankees. If the authorities have been prompted by any 
such narrow motives, they might well take a more liberal 
view of the situation. Making no account of boundary 
waters, the Provinces reap a rich revenue from American 
anglers. Not a year passes that fishermen from the States 
do not leave there many thousands of dollars' for steam- 
boat, railroad, stage and boat, guide, hotel and camp 
keeper. This American money is often the only money 
some of these people in the backwoods ever see from one 
year's end to another. In view of this immense annual 
expenditure by foreign fishermen in Canada, the Dominion 
Government shows itself to be extraordinarily over-reach- 
ing and grasping. 
As a lemon-squeezing expedient this non-resident license 
regulation is not likely to prove much of a success. It . 
will provoke indignation, and will deter from visiting 
Canada a host of fishermen outnumbering those willing 
to submit to the extortion. More than that, it should 
prompt American anglers to a consideration of why it is 
that they are now obliged to go from the United States 
into Canada for their bass. On Lake Erie, for example, 
if the fish were properly protected in the American por- 
tion of the lake, would the supply not suffice and be so 
bountiful as to make the Ohio fishermen independent of 
Canadian fishery officers? 
SNAP SHOTS, 
Our ever entertaining contributor "Ransacker" makes 
an excellent plea for the poetry of field sports, and for a 
more adequate expression of that poetry in verse. He is 
right; the domain of the forest and of the stream is full 
of poetry; and there is abundant evidence every week 
going to show that the writers for our columns have 
poetic insight to recognize it. But they express it in 
prose. That is the natural, the less artificial form; and 
for most people, too, it is the form most acceptable. We 
have always held that if one is capable of writing good 
prose, he should adhere to it, and not lapse into verse, 
which may be good but is more likely to be common- 
place. For the practical purposes of sportsmen's journal- 
ism an ounce of prose is worth a pound of poetry. We 
have given "Ransacker" his hearing with some trepida- 
tion, lest it should precipitate upon us an avalanche of 
verse; and we improve the occasion to remark that we 
have already in hand more poetry than we can make room 
for this summer. 
Ladies and Gentlemen : It, affords us undisguised sat- 
isfaction, on this occasion, to depart somewhat from the 
wonted groove of our field chronicles, to record a bit of 
news pertaining to the United States Navy, and in par- 
ticular to one whom you have so well known for these 
twenty years and more by his familiar pen-name ' 'Piseco." 
Commodore L. A. Beardslee has just taken an upward 
and outward step — upward into a higher rank in the ser- 
vice, and outward into a field of wider opportunities and 
broader responsibilities, having been ordered to the com- 
mand of the Pacific Station. Upon his arrival there, he 
will hoist his flag as Rear- Admiral Beardslee. The flag- 
ship will for the present be stationed at San Francisco, 
and to "Podgers" (who thinks San Francisco the only fit- 
ting place to five, and so lives there) we shall intrust the 
pleasant duty of going aboard to convey to "Piseco" the 
felicitations of his Fobest and Stream friends. 
Trap-shooting and game protection are two forces 
which will pull well together if given opportunity. But 
each must have its own time and place and activity unob- 
structed by the other. The problem of securing these has 
been solved in New York by devising an association of 
sportsmen which has a dual purpose, and makes provision 
for two separate and distinct gatherings of its members 
for putting these purposes into effect. A summer tour- 
nament and a winter convention constitute the plan of 
organization, which has given satisfaction; and which 
would prove equally advantageous elsewhere. We have 
urged the adoption of the New York Association's form of 
organization by Illinois and Pennsylvania. Now they 
are talking of it in New Jersey; the material is there, the 
need is pressing, there should be a New Jersey State union 
of forces on New York lines. 
The steamship Miranda, which sailed from New York 
on June 7, with Dr. Cook's excursion party for the North, 
collided with an iceberg last week, and had to put back 
to St. Johns, N. F. No serious damage was done, but the 
accident appears to have dampened the ardor of the excur- 
sionists; and before leaving St. Johns, last Saturday, there 
waB prolonged discussion as to whether the expedition 
should adhere to the original route. There is an unusual 
amount of ice this season, and the dispatches report that 
the Miranda's voyage will probably be shortened. 
Mr. J. M. Rose, of Little Rock, Ark., tella us that the 
Arkansas law requiring a license fee of $10 from non-resi- 
The prolonged and widespread drought has put field 
and cover into the condition of inflammable tinder, which 
requires only a burning gun wad or a heedlessly thrown 
match to kindle destruction. Under such circumstances 
every man who goes afield or into camp is bound to ob- 
serve stringent precautions against fire. 
