Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terjif, $4 a Year. , 10 Crs. A Copt. 
Six MoxtHs, S2. 
NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 9, 1895. 
[ VOL. XLIV.— NO. 6. 
' No. 318 Broadway, New Yor£. 
for Subscription and Advertising Rates see Page iii. 
A SHOT AT A DUCK: 
Was ever shot at a wild duck so fateful to men and 
emspires as this? 
A father and his son were limiting wild fowl on a 
northern marsh. The young -man shot at a duck, 
dropped it, and hurried to gather it. Beaching the spot 
where it had fallen, he found himself in an oozy, treach- 
erous slime, into which he began rapidly to sink. In re- 
sponse to his son's cries of alarm, the father hastened to 
the rescue, and being a man of prodigious strength suc- 
ceeded in extricating him, but not before he himself had 
become thorough^ wet through. 
The two duck hunters hastened home. That home was 
the palace of Spala. The father was Alexander III., 
Cza,r of Russia; the son was the Grand Duke George. 
From the chill that resulted from the exposure under- 
gone in saving his son from the duck bog was developed 
that malady which ended in the death of the Czar. 
Thus the fortunes of a dynasty were changed by a 
chance shot at a wild duck on the marsh. Was ever such 
a shot at a duck before or since? 
PERHAPS THE MISSING LINK. 
Many years ago when the evolution theory first began 
to attract general attention, and still more when it began 
to find general acceptance, there was much inquiry for 
the missing link, and the phrase became then a cant term 
much in use. If it was true, as most naturalists main- 
tained, that man was merely a more highly developed 
form of the brute, there should be some way of narrow- 
ing the gap which confessedly existed between the lowest 
human and the highest brute — between the Australian, let 
us say, on the one hand, and the orahg utan, on the 
other. To this objection the men of science could only 
reply: "The record is not complete. We believe that 
some time, somewliere, remains will be found to bridge 
over this gap. There will be found the bones of an ani- 
mal higher in development than the highest of the an- 
thropoid apes (orang, chimpanzee, and gorilla), yet lower 
than the lowest man; but as yet we have not a particle 
of evidence that such a creature ever existed. ' ' 
When they had said this the men of science went about 
their business, and worked on such material as they had. 
For example, Huxley proved that the birds were descend- 
ed from the reptiles; Marsh made out the family tree of 
the horses, tracing them back to a little four-toed animal 
as large as a fox, which lived in early tertiary time, and 
which he showed to be the ancestor of the horse of to- 
day; while other men did much good work in similar 
lines. Still the people who did not believe in evolution, 
and who thought the distance which separated man 
and the higher apes, greater than that between the birds 
and the reptiles, cried out for the missing link, but it was 
not to be had. 
It is true that not a few ancient bones of men had been 
discovered in caverns of Europe, mingled with skeletons 
of animals, such as the hairy rhinoceros, cave bear, ele- 
phant, cave lion, and other long extinct species; but in 
most cases the human bones so found did not belong to 
men of low type — were not, in fact, markedly different 
from the men of to-day. There was one skeleton, that of 
Neanderthal, and one jaw-bone, that of Naulette, which 
were distinctly of low type — but while the Neanderthal 
skull had a low forehead and prominent brow ridges, 
somewhat ape-like, yet its cranial capacity was about 
seventy-five inches, or about the average human capa- 
city, while the bones of the arm and thigh, though very 
stout, were proportioned about as in man. Huxley said 
of the skeleton; "In no sense can the Neanderthal bones 
be regarded as the remains of a human being intermedi- 
ate between man and the apes. ' ' 
Within a short time, however, remains have been dis- 
covered in the Island of Java, by Dr. Dubois, a surgeon 
in the Dutch-Indian Army, which seem to indicate that 
at last the much sought for "link" has been discovered. 
These remains consist of a part of a skull, a molar tooth 
and a femur, or thigh bone of a large anthropoid ape, 
which is believed to represent a new genus and family 
intermediate between the Simiidae or apes and the 
Hominidae or men. These remains were found near 
each other, though not actually together, imbedded in a 
volcanic tufa near Trinil, in the Madiun Province, in 
Central Java. 
The skull has a brain cavity absolutely larger and in 
proportion to its size much more capacious than in the 
apes, and its capacity is about two-thirds that of the 
average rdan. It is long in proportion to breadth— thug 
differing from that of the chimpanzee— 'and has none of 
the crests for the attachment of muscles which are found 
in the gorilla. The tooth is somewhat ape-like. The 
thigh bone is almost exactly like the same bone in man, 
the resemblance being so close that only a careful com- 
parison could distinguish them. 
This animal which Dr. Dubois calls Pithecanthropus 
erectus" walked erect like man and in size, brain power, 
and erect posture is much nearer man than any known 
animal living or extinct. 
Further researches will sooner or later throw much 
more light on this newly-discovered near relation of all 
of us. 
THE ILLINOIS SITUATION. 
A game bill has been pi-epared and sent to Springfield, 
which, if adopted, Will open the Chicago and Illinois 
markets for the sale of game all the year around, with- 
out let or hindrance. The section relating to sale, reads 
as follows: 
"It shall be law T ful to buy or sell any of the game birds 
or water fowl mentioned in this act commencing five 
days after the opening date and closing five days before 
the ending of the legally constituted open season. Any 
person, firm, or corporation offending shall be fined on 
conviction $10 for every game bird or fowl found in his 
or their possession coming from the State of Illinois, and 
said game shall be confiscated and turned over by the 
warden to the charitable institutions of the county in 
which seized," 
This contains not an iota of prohibition of game selling 
at" any time. We do not wonder that the Chicago com- 
mission merchants and their attorneys are solid in sup- 
port of the Blow bill. They themselves could not have 
drawn one to suit their demands more perfectly. If the 
bill shall go through in this shape, the markets will be 
open the year around. 
This is the situation; and it is one to demand the im- 
mediate, determined, and resolute action with which the 
Sportsmen's Association have met it, now that at this 
tardy hour they have had their eyes opened to the true 
nature of the section. In this fight against this impu- 
dent and iniquitous measure the Association officers and 
committees should have the support of every citizen of 
Illinois who would prevent the immediate destruction of 
its game supply. This is a time for Illinois sportsmen to 
rally for the fight under the Association's banner. The 
battle is- not for Illinois alone, but for every Stats whose 
game goes to the Chicago market. The fate of the Blow 
bill at Springfield will be watched all through the West; 
satisfaction at its defeat will be as genuine in the Da- 
kotas as in Illinois. 
Warden Blow's sneer at the State Association as a body 
neglectful of its protective work is under the circum- 
stances peculiarly ill-timed and foolish. He accuses it 
of sleeping on post; but the fact is that this man's right- 
eous indignation at the Association's somnolence has 
been excited because he has just now found it wide 
awake and on guard. It is precisely as if a fell rw bent 
on mischief were to blackguard as a sleepy sluggard the 
alert watchman who had taken him by the throat and 
turned him back. Warden Blow has run up against a 
body of men who are very wide awake. If he has not 
found this out yet, he will realize it before he gets 
through the Illinois Legislature any bill which permits 
the sale of game the year around. 
Mr. Blow complains that the Association wants game 
laws for the benefit of sportsmen. Now that is a queer 
complaint for a game warden to make, is it not? Of 
course they do. If sportsmen did not want game laws 
for sportsmen there would be no game laws, nor game, 
nor wardens to take care of the game at a salary of 
81,500. Take away from Illinois the game protective 
work of sportsmen for the last twenty-five years and 
what would be left? Certainly not Mr. Blow's game 
warden job. He would not be warding, for there would 
be nothing to ward. The revenue Mr. Blow has derived 
from his w r ork as an officer he owes to the sportsmen of 
Illinois. The slurs contained in his letter indicate a 
frame of mind quite unbecoming in a creature toward its 
creator. 
SNAP SHOTS; 
William B. Moore, of Moscow, Me., seventy-seven 1 
years of age. Killed his first moose sixty-one years ago: 
Before nine out of ten of you who read this paragraph 
were born. Has killed a moose every year since. More, 
too; 276 all told, in newspaper report. A large number 
of moose for one man. But consider that he has been 
sixty-one years in doing it. Who can equal the record"? 
Does a Connecticut brook trout ever grow to the length 
of six inches? The editor of the Hartford Courant be- 
lieves not. The General Assembly is considering the 
adoption of a law prohibiting the killing of fish under 
that size, and the Courant man solemnly warns his read- 
ers that the law might "better prohibit trout fishing out- 
right than to relegate it to the regions of the unattaina- 
ble." With such a law, he urges, the underbrush would 
renew its youth and obliterate the familar tow-paths 
that now mark the margin of every brook in Hartford 
county. Unquestionably tow-paths and fingerhngs do 
go together; but there are fishermen even in Connecticut 
who would prefer the underbrush and the big fish. If 
Rev. Joseph H. Twitchell, or some other equally quali- 
fied angler of Hartford, would make it his business to 
open the eyes of the Courant writer by plunking down on 
his desk some of these fine days an adult, mature, full- 
orbed nutmeg trout from a Connecticut stream, it would 
wean the editor from his fingerling and tow-path non- 
sense and convert him to common sense and a six-inch 
trout law. 
Fish Commissioner R. E. Follett, of Connecticut, has 
been fined §800 and costs for having netted trout in Mass- 
achusetts waters. A man convicted of illegally netting 
fish is not fit to be a fish commissioner. Other peculiar 
conditions of this official's holding his place are that he 
is not a resident of Connecticut, but of Massachusetts; 
and that he is reputed to be interested in a private hatch- 
ery from which as a public official he is said to buy fish 
for the State. Under such circumstances if for one's 
official illegal netting one were often fined as a private 
individual, he would find it necessary as a private indi- 
vidual to sell himself a good many trout as a public 
official in order as a public official to recoup himself as a 
private individual. 
The Massachusetts Association banquet last week was 
the occasion of celebrating the society's coming of age. 
It has had twenty-one years of useful existence, and 
gives full promise of living as much longer and of doing 
quite as much in the future as it has in the past. We 
trust that we may chronicle for it a year of progress and 
achievement under the leadership of President Clark. 
E There ought to be a thorough overhauling and reorgani- 
zation of the New York Fish Commission. The way not 
to do it is to accept the resignation of the politician 
commissioners now in office, and to substitute others 
as has just been done in the case of Mr. Hamilton re- 
signed and Mr. B. H. Davis appointed to succeed him. 
Mr. Davis is known as, a politician, and that very fact is 
sufficient to raise grave doubts as to his fitness for the 
place. We understood that Messrs. C. W. Babcock, of 
Rochester; Edward Thompson, of Northport; D. Baudsr, 
of Rheims; James E. Richmond, of Canajoharie; Moses 
S. Parmelee, of Malone, and A. N. Cheney, of Glens 
Falls, are candidates for commissionerships. Of all of 
these, Mr. Cheney is the only one known to the public 
to be equipped with practical knowledge of fish and fish 
culture. His qualifications in this respect are so pre- 
eminent that the citizens of this State cannot well afford 
not to avail themselves of the services Mr. Cheney 
might render. 
To organize a fish commission with the sole view to the 
most efficient administration of the State's fishery inter- 
ests; to appoint men to the office having regard alone to 
their fitness for it, and requiring of some of them in office 
only I he legitimate duties of the position — this would be 
a novel state of affairs in New York. Unless the scheme 
proposed by the Senate Committee shall be thwarted, we 
shall have just the reverse — a political machine, manned 
by politicians for political purposes. Such an arrange- 
ment will mean public robbery. That is the plain, sim- 
ple, accurate definition of it. __ _ _ 
