Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1894. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. | 
Six Months, 88. ) 
I VOL XLHL— No. 18 
( No. 318 Broad-way, New York. 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page iii. 
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4 FOREST AND STREAM PUB. CO., New York, 
AN IMPERILLED PALLADIUM. 
A palladium is something often heard of, but seldom 
seen, and most folks have a hazy notion of what it looks 
like; but just now the campaign orators are exhorting us 
to preserve the palladium of our liberties; and everybody 
understands that the protection of this useful article is 
quite as important at least as the protection of game. 
This being so, we are doing a public service in warning 
those citizens of New Jersey who are inclined to field 
sports that their palladium is in great peril and that they 
had better look to defending it. 
Fish and Game Commissioner Frothingham wrote the 
other day that he had been annoyed by folks who claimed 
to have had advice from this office that there was no law 
on gray squirrels in New Jersey. As authority for his 
notion that there is such a law, he sends us a letter, 
which is in the nature of a legal opinion given by the 
counsel to the Commission, to the effect that while the 
law does not mention gray squirrels, nevertheless in the 
opinion of counsel it was clearly the intention of the 
author of the statute to protect them. 
Under ordinary circumstances it would probably be 
quite sufficient to point out that the law itself must be 
accepted as it is, not as it might have been if its author 
had put his unexpressed intention into effect. But the 
New Jersey Commissioners — and this is what has caused 
the palladium to rock on its foundation — have as much as 
declared their acceptance of this view of counsel, and 
have given out that gray squirrels, not named in the 
law but assumed by counsel to have been in the mind of 
the author of the statute, may not be killed between cer- 
tain dates not designated in the statute but likewise con- 
jectured by counsel to have been in the author's mind. 
This surely is to bind new burdens and grievous to be 
borne upon the honest and long-suffering Jersey gunner. 
His task has been as exacting as could be required of the 
average sportsman, to keep posted on the ever-changing 
game laws and to conform to them, as enacted at 
Trenton. Now the Commissioners propose to require of 
him compliance not only with a law as actually adopted 
by the Legislature, engrossed and published, but with it 
as it might have been if it had been enacted, engrossed 
and published in some different shape. The well-meaning 
citizen must know both the letter of law and the original 
but unfulfilled intent of its author. Moreover, as this 
original intent is now known only to the author himself, 
if indeed he has not forgotten it, to arrive at it correctly 
is purely a triumph of guesswork, and in this the average 
individual, unversed in the tortuous ways of legal logic, 
is at a distinct disadvantage. The chances are as ten to - 
one that he will conjure up an intention which will prove 
to be wholly at variance with the intention guessed by 
official counsel to the Commission, For instance, if the 
statute protects only "black or fox squirrels," the gunner 
may assume that the author intended to protect gray 
squirrels as well, while the counsel to the Commission 
may exclude the gray squirrel and include the chipmunk. 
When mind readers differ, the official guesser will have the 
support of Commissioners and wardens; and for acting on 
his honest but mistaken guess the gunner will go to jail. 
"With such a substitution of game law conjecture for 
game law text, the sportsman who ventures to do any 
shooting at all will be in constant peril of landing himself 
in the lock-up or of being required to give bonds for hav- 
ing obeyed the letter of the statute, but violated the 
unexpressed intent of some last year's legislator, as con- 
jectured and communicated in opinion of counsel to the 
Commission. Under these circumstances a palladium is 
hardly worth having as an appurtenance of field sports in 
New Jersey. Those who care to go shooting and to keep 
their palladiums too, might do well to convey them to the 
sure protection of the aegis of Greater New York. For on 
the confines of that city of the future — in particular on 
the borders of Brooklyn — one may bang away at every- 
thing that wears fur or feathers, season or no season, law 
or no law, with never a thought of interference from the 
worthless Long Island game protector. 
SNAP SHOTS, 
Dr. A. Chalmette, of Paris, is experimenting with ven- 
omous serpents, to discover an antidote for the poison; 
and although his work is by no means completed, he has 
gone so far as to announce favorable results with the 
hypochlorites of sodium and lime, and choride of gold and 
chloride of lime, for neutralizing the poison by chemical 
action. In an interview in McClure's Magazine he ex- 
presses a conviction that in the chloride of lime we have 
an adequate remedy for rattlesnake poison. He gives 
these directions for its use: "The chloride should be free 
from absorbed water, and, when used, should in all cases 
be freshly taken from a hermetically sealed bottle. One 
part of it by weight should be dissolved in eleven parts of 
boiling water, and the solution should never be made 
until ib is about to be used, as I have found that 
the therapeutic power diminishes by keeping. ' This 
should be injected subcutaneously with a trephine 
all about the wound, and also under the skin 
of the abdomen, that it may enter the circulation as 
quickly as possible. No ligature about the part bitten is 
necessary. I have not yet determined the amount neces- 
sary to be used upon a human being, because I have had 
no opportunity of making tests. I estimate, from all the 
conditions, that from twenty to thirty cubic centimeters 
of the solution will suffice to save the life of a man bitten, 
it being administered in doses of five cubic centimeters 
each." Naturally Dr. Chalmette has not found volunteers 
to test his theory ; and we shall not be certain that the chlo- 
ride of lime will effect a cure until it shall have been 
demonstrated. If an opportunity to make trial on a 
snake-bitten victim shall come to any reader of this para- 
graph we trust that the remedy may be tested and re- 
ported to us. , 
By the way, speaking of rattlesnakes, how large do 
they grow? We have in this office a skin or part of a 
skin, which measures in length 7ft. 6in. ; and Mr. L, F. 
Meyers, of Texas, who sends it to us, avers that at least 
2ft. more of the skin is missing. It is a beauty. 
By the death of John N. Babcock, of Syracuse, N. Y., 
those who are engaged in the cause of fish protection in 
central New York have lost one of their most active 
workers and most valued and trusted counselors. Mr. 
Babcdck's was a high type of citizenship. He was a suc- 
cessful and honored business man, and he always made 
the time and improved the occasion to do public service 
in the protection of the fishing waters. He was one of 
the founders of the Anglers' Association of Onondaga; 
was its vice-president from the first, and always one of its 
most active members. Resolutions adopted by the Asso- 
ciation last week on the occasion of Mr. Babcock's death 
give expression to the fact that much of the success of 
the organization in its great work has been due to his un- 
remitting zeal, wise counsel and generous financial sup- 
port. The death of such a member of such a society is a 
public calamity. 
Judges Dixon and Inglis and the rest of the party 
charged with having unlawfully pursued ducks with a 
steam launch on Greenwood Lake, N. J., have appeared 
before a Paterson magistrate to plead not guilty ; and a 
hearing was set for yesterday. We see it reported that 
Judge Dixon, who is a Supreme Court Justice, may de- 
termine to carry the case to a higher court, with a view 
to showing the unconstitutionality of the game law; but 
we do not mind saying that we discredit the report, for if 
anything in law is well established it is the constitution - 
ality of the game statutes. If Judge Dixon and his com- 
panions shall be shown to have been guilty of the acts 
charged they will pay their fines in due time and the con- 
stitutionality of the game laws will remain unshaken just 
the same. 
There is less complaint now than formerly of the Eng- 
lish sparrow nuisance; but no one can visit Washington 
without having the subject emphatically and offensively 
brought to his attention. That city is overrun by the 
noisy, dirty birds. The approaches to the Capitol are 
kept in a positively filthy condition by them. The impu- 
dent little pests appear to have picked out the seat of the 
National Government as a fitting place to put in evidence 
their bad breeding and indecent ways. If ever there 
shall be in this country an anti-sparrow crusade it might 
well enough take its start in Washington. 
We hear much of sportsman's luck, good, bad and in- 
different; but rarely does there come to the Forest and 
Stream such a story of misadventure as befel a Boston cor- 
respondent who started for the Maine woods recently, on 
the way sprained a knee, and was crippled for the whole 
time of his vacation, although he did hobble on crutches 
into the woods and stayed in camp eight days, seeing the 
parties of hunters come and go and the antlers brought 
in. That was bad luck, but pluck too; and after all there 
is something in pluck. 
We had something to say the other day about a catch 
of 238 bass in one day in the Trout Lake waters of Wis- 
consin, reported to have been made by Eev. Dr. J. Mc 
Cluskey Blayney, of Frankfort, Ky, Dr. Blayney tells u 
that he did make, such a catch, but that of the 238 fish all 
but a half-dozen were returned in good condition to the 
water. This, we are bound to say, relieves the feat from 
the suspicion, usually attaching to such an extraordinary 
catch, that the fish were killed to waste; and we trust 
that no one who read our remarks will fail to turn to the 
Doctor's good-natured note in our angling columns. 
From a report in the San Antonio Express, which we re- 
print, it is learned that a Texas ranchman is bent on 
corralling the Val Verde buffalo. But the herd is said 
now to have crossed over into Mexico; and if the Mexi- 
cans were Yankees they would not hear to Dr. Taylor's 
proposition to drive the animals back into this country. 
Buffalo are worth money nowadays. This reminds us to 
say that Capt. Geo. S. Anderson has for sale, by order of 
the Secretary of the Interior, some of the buffalo heads 
taken by Howell in the Yellowstone Park last winter. 
"Jacobstaff" writes of his old shooting grounds in the 
Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, where he has had so 
much sport in past years, that this season the grouse have 
disappeared; and as a possible explanation to account for 
this condition of affairs, he cites a report that in the nest- 
ing season egg hunters collected and carried away from 
that region 10,000 ruffed grouse eggs. The story of 10,000 
eggs is too well rounded out to be believed, but if there 
was any egg hunting at all it would have gone far toward 
accounting for the dearth of birds in the autumn. The 
Pennsylvania law forbids taking the eggs of game birds; 
if there are organized gangs of nest robbers, the State 
Sportsmen's Association would do well to give the subject 
attention. 
The Maine correspondent, who has devised an ingen'ous 
scheme of a game exchange in Bangor for the con ven- 
ience of visiting sportsmen, has made no provision for the 
supply of appropiate stories to go with the. game bought 
there. No one cares to bring home a handsome deer or a 
mighty moose without a story to match. But this is an 
oversight easily remedied. No Maine hunter ever lived 
who could not supply hunting yarns to go with the big- 
gest buck or moose ever brought down in those woods. 
If the Maine Legislature shall make no oth er changes 
of the game law next winter, it should at least prohibit 
the killing of cow moose. Is there one single reasonable 
thing to be said in support of the present law on the 
subject? 
There is more poetry in "partridge" than in "ruffed 
grouse," and the fun of partridge shooting goes ahead of 
ruffed grouse shooting every time. 
