Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, S4 a Year. 10 Ots. a copy. ; 
Six Moxths, $2. 1 
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 2, 1895 
) No. 
VOL. SLIVi — NO. 5. 
318 Broadway, New York. 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page iii. 
PELAGIC SEALING. 
Complying with the request of the House of Representa- 
tives, Secretary Carlisle has recently furnished informa- 
tion as to the result of the articles of the Behring Sea 
Tribunal, in saving the fur seal herds from destruction, the 
condition of the seals on the Prybilov Islands, and the re- 
lation of the revenues derived from the herds to the ex- 
pense of enforcing the regulations of the Paris award. 
The Secretary stated that 121,143 seals were landed by 
pelagic sealers from the North Pacific Ocean during the 
last season, and of that number 55,686 were taken from 
the so-called Alaska seal herd in that ocean and in Behring 
Sea, 58,621 from the coasts of Japan and Russia and 6,836 
from undetermined sources. The fleet which obtained 
these skins contained 60 vessels belonging to Great 
Britain and 35 to the United States. The whole number 
of seals killed in 1894 was about 142,000, which includes 
20,000 probably shipped to London from the Asiatic coast 
via the Suez Canal. 
The Secretary emphasizes the unprecedented increase 
in the number of seals taken by pelagic sealers with a 
consequent alarming decrease in the seals on the Prybilov 
Islands, and an enormous number of pups which presum- 
ably died of starvation, their mothers having been killed 
at sea. The Treasury agent counted 12,000 dead pups on 
the accessible parts of the rookeries and estimated the 
total loss at nearly 20,000. 
In four or five weeks the vessels in Behring Sea, only 
about one-third of the fleet, killed more seals than were 
obtained in four months' sealing on the American side of 
the North Pacific, and Secretary Carlisle reiterates the 
conclusion expressed in his annual report to Congress 
that long before the expiration of the five years, when 
the regulations of the Behring Sea Tribunal are to be re- 
examined, the fur seal will have been practically ex- 
terminated. 
Of the American catch of 26,095 seals, 3,099 were males, 
15,976 females and the remainder pups and seals whose 
sex was not determined. The British Columbia schoon- 
ers reported 26,425 from Behring Sea, of which 14,702 were 
said to have been females. The present condition of the 
fur seal herds on the islands is reported to show a danger- 
ous decrease, the number having fallen off at least one- 
half during the "past four seasons. 
The amount to be paid to the United Sates by the lessees 
of the islands for the year ending April 1, 1895, will be 
8214,298.37, representing rent and tax and bonus on the 
skins taken. It costs nearly $200,000 per annum to police 
the sea, not including the salaries and expenses of agents 
at the Seal Islands, or the pay and rations of officers and 
men in the patrol service. Thus the efforts to save the 
herds have involved enormous expense without prevent- 
ing the destruction of the seal. 
From Collector A. R. Milne's customs report at Victoria 
we learn that in Behring Sea the catch was made outside 
the 60-mile protected zone in latitude 55, 56 and 58 de- 
grees, and longitude 171 to 175 degrees from August 1 to 
the middle of September. On the Japanese coast sealing 
commenced about latitude 36 degrees, and continued 
north. In waters adjacent to Russian territory the fleet 
kept well outside of the 30-mile zone, operating chiefly 
about 10 miies southeast of Copper Island. On the British 
Columbia coast sealing began about latitude 37 degrees 
and extended northward. The vessels returned to port 
during the close season and at the end of July those 
equipped with spearsmen put out for Behring Sea. 
The white hunters soon learned to rival the Indians in 
the deadly accuracy of their work with spears. A single 
little schooner, the "Triumph," took 3,240 seals in 
Behring Sea, and 1,720 on the coast of British Columbia, 
so easy is it to paddle upon a lseeping seal and capture it. 
A naturalist on the "Albatross" has often been within 
easy striking distance for a spear and has phostographed 
the sleeping seals. Everything seems to conspire to aid in 
the senseless butchery of fur seals on the high seas and 
the speedy exterminations of the race is threatened. 
Warned by he letter of Secretary Carlisle, Mr. Dingley 
introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives 
(H. R. Bill 8633) entitled: "An act to prevent the exter- 
mination of fur-bearing animals in Alaska," This is a 
proposition to repeal the acts preventing the killing of 
female seals on the islands, to take each and every fur 
seal found on the Prybilovs and to provide the means for 
doing so unless Great Britain will immediately co-operate 
whh the United States in preventing the extermination 
of the seals by pelagic sealing in Behring Sea. 
This measure, harsh and improvident as it may at first 
appear, is more than likely to become law because of the 
absolute and disastrous failure of arbitration and other 
temporizing expedients to prevent the object for which 
they were ostensibly instituted. 
FISH, FORESTS AND POLITICS. 
The New- York Senate Committee on Fish and Game, to 
whom was entrusted the responsible duty of investigating 
the need of the State as to fish and game protection and 
fish-culture, and of recommending legislation to meet the 
need, have failed to perform that duty. Their failure 
is embodied in a bill introduced by them last Monday 
evening, which provides for a reconstruction of the Fish 
Commission on political fines. 
^The terms of the measure are that the Fish Commission 
and the Forestry Commission shall be combined in a board 
of five commissioners of fish, game and forests. The pres- 
ident shall have a salary of $5,000, the others of $1,000 
each. Their duties shall be the propagation and distribu- 
tion of fish, the enforcement of the fish and game laws, 
and the protection and preservation of the State forests, 
including the Adirondack Park They shall appoint thirty 
fish and game protectors, one of AVhom shall be designated 
as chief protector, and two others as assistants to the 
chief, The protectors shall hold office during the pleasure 
of the board, who may summarily remove any one of 
them and appoint another in his place. 
This plan of reorganization of the Fish Commission 
does not meet the need of the State; nor shall we be so 
simple as to credit the Senate Committee with being so 
simple as to suppose that it does. 
One drawback to efficient administration of the fish- 
cultural interests and of protection is the entanglement 
of politics. The reform most urgently demanded by intel- 
ligent public opinion is the absolute divorce of politics 
from the work proper of commissioners and protectors 
The demand is not based on theory. It is the teaching 
of experience — an experience so costly that it might well 
enough be profited by. 
If, after all the months they had to study the subject 
and learn the facts, the Senate Committee failed to ac- 
quaint themselves with the true nature of .these condi- 
tions, they were incompetent and stupid. If* they dil 
understand the matter as it is, their recommendations 
show them to be something worse than stupid. Their re- 
port declares that they "came squarely" to their conclu- 
sions. The coming may have been square enough, but 
the conclusions are crooked. 
The simplest way to rid the Fish Commission of the 
curse of politics would be as suggested in these columns 
to separate entirely the two branches of fish-culture 
and protection. There is no good reason why the Board of 
Commissioners should be concerned with the appointment 
and direction of the protectors . There is one good and 
sufficient reason for relieving them of these duties. It 
is that they cannot attend to fish-culture and politics, too. 
Under the system proposed by the Senate Committee 
we shall not have more efficient service in either branch. 
What we shall have will be a new piece of political 
machinery. Five commissioners, with their clerical force 
and thirty protectors, whose heads may be chopped off at 
will. That is an arrangement perfectly adapted to the 
schemes and purposes of political bosses. It gives every 
evidence of having been planned and dictated by a politi- 
cal boss. Its evident intention is not to increase the fish 
supply nor to render more efficient the protection of fish 
and game, but to strengthen the machinery of partisan- 
ship. Under the pretense of public economy it will pro- 
vide a system, which, by reason of incompetency and de- 
moralization inseparable from it, will prove not economic- 
al but tremendously expensive. There can be no economy 
in putting the public interests of fish and game and forest 
into the control of a machine. 
We have heard an intimation that this scheme of con- 
solidating the two commissions has been devised with a 
special purpose to make a $5,000 berth for Mr. Barnet H. 
Davis, of Wayne County. We have never heard of Mr. 
Davis's qualifications as a fish-culturist; probably no one 
ever dreamed of them. He is known as a politician, 
however, and as such, if we have correctly estimated the 
purpose of the bill, he might be an admirable man to do 
the work it is intended to accomplish. 
If the citizens of the State of New- York would save 
their fishery, game and forestry interests, theymust defeat 
the measure submitted last Monday. 
SCOUTS FOR THE PARK. 
After twenty years delay Congress last spring passed a 
law for the protection of the Yellowstone Park, but seems 
still unwilling to provide the means by which the provi- 
sions of that law may be carried out. In the Sundry Civil 
Service Appropriation Bill, which recently passed the 
House of Representatives, and is now in the hands of the 
Senate,there is no appropriation to pay for the extra scouts 
asked for by the Superintendent of the Park. The 
amount called for was trifling— only $1,800— and the 
scouts are absolutely needed to enforce the law and to 
preserve from extermination the few buffalo remaining 
in the Park. Practically it does not make so very much 
difference if a few elk are killed now and then; there are 
plenty of elk in the Park and elsewhere, but every buffalo 
slaughtered by the poachers who hover about the borders 
of the Park brings extermination a long way nearer for 
the greatest animal indigenous to this continent. 
The small sum required to pay these extra scouts is 
greatly needed, and the item in the bill which relates to 
the Yellowstone Park ought to be so amended in the Sen- 
ate that funds will be available for this purpose. The 
Senate has always shown itself more interested than the 
House in the protection of the Park, and it can now give 
practical expression to this interest by insisting that 
means to enforce the law shall be provided for the Super- 
intendent. 
There is now only a single scout employed there to look 
after a territory as large as the State of Connecticut, 
which in winter can only be traversed on foot and with 
much hardship and even danger. The Superintendent has 
asked -for authority to employ four .more scouts for six 
months of the year at $75 each per month, and even this 
force would be miserably inadequate to the needs of the 
reservation. Five men, however, could do five times as 
much as one, and the knowledge that the force had been 
increased would do much to keep the butchers and skin- 
hunters away from the reservation. 
Notwithstanding all that has been said and done within 
the past few years, the fact remains that the buffalo in 
the Park are rapidly growing fewer in number, and unless 
they are energetically protected now, the day of extinc- 
tion is close at hand. 
We took occasion the other day to point out the mag- 
nificent showing of Minnesota in enforcing its game and 
fish laws under the direction of Executive Agent An- 
drus; and to-day we devote a generous share of space to 
the report of State Warden Hampton, of Michigan, who 
is deserving of unstinted credit for the efficient conduct 
of his office. We trust that his report may have appre- 
ciative reading. The record of law enforcement in Michi- 
gan for 1894 shows a total of 492 cases of charged viola- 
tions investigated, with conviction in 324 cases, and a 
collection of $3,320 in fines. History is making so rapidly 
nowadays in fish and game protection that at the best one 
cannot more than keep pace with the accomplishments 
and results of the present; but as to Michigan we ought 
not to forget the men— Holmes, Mershon and others— 
who, by unselfish and persistent effort, prepared the way 
for the system now in force. 
Our fish culture columns contain a summaiy of the 
good work accomplished by the Calif ornia Commission in 
1893 and 1894. With a grant of only $17,500 for protection, 
propagating and distribution, the State planted nearly 
four and one half millions of trout and black bass in 1894 
besides hatching upward of seven millions of salmon 
eggs furnished by the United States and the prosecution 
of offenses against the laws was so vigorous as to make 
fish cultural operations very successful. 
The State now has our eastern brook trout, black bass, 
muskelunge, shad and striped bass and all of them 
promise to remain permanently thrifty. We cannot fore- 
tell the result of introducing black bass into trout waters, 
but hope it will cause no harm. The brook trout may or 
may not hold their own with the rainbow, which grows 
much larger. 
The New-York Fish Commissioners have made Mr. 
James Annin, Jr., general superintendent of hatcheries. 
It is an admirable appointment. Mr. Annin is a fish- 
culturist of wide, varied and successful experience, and in 
every way well fitted to assume the duties and do the 
work of the new place. 
