Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4 a Tear. 10 Cts. a Copt. , 
Six Months, $2. ! 
NEW YORK, APRIL 27, 1895. 
1 NO. 
VOL. XLIV.-NO. 17. .., 
318 Broadway, New York. 
For Subscription and Advertising Rates see Page ix. 
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Vigilant and Valkyrie. Bass Fishing at Block Island. 
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streams and the fields, the plains and the mountain 
peaks, have in them the freshness of the upper air, the 
clear, clean brightness of the sunshine, the stimulating, 
uplifting, exalting fragrance of the forest. 
5: 
BUCK FEVER, 
Our valued, esteemed, and usually deferred to corre- 
spondent "Kingfisher," took occasion a week or two ago 
to carp at the use of the term "buck fever,*' to signify 
the perturbation, excitement, agitation and helplessness 
which on occasion overcome a hunter. The proper desig- 
nation of the malady, says he, is not "buck fe^er," but 
"buck ague,*' and he adds that our fathers called, it 
"buck ague." 
Did they? We have not that intimate knowledge of 
the ways of speech of past generations to determine 
whether "Kingfisher" is correct here or mistaken. A 
reference to Bartlett's "Dictionary of Americanisms," 
and that should be good authority, gives "buck fever," 
defined as "the agitation of inexperienced hunters.caused 
by seeing a deer or other large game.". He quotes one of 
'the fathers," too, Hammond, who in "Wild Northern 
Scenes." wrote "Smitli acknowledged to a severe attack 
of the buck fever." 
Under the reference "Buck Fever," Bartlett says, 
"The sensation is also called the Buck-ague, the term 
used by Mr. Kendall, who was so agitated that he missed 
-several '-fine .shots at deer." And he quotes Kendall's 
"Santa Fe expedition:" "There is a very common disease 
prevalent among young and inexperienced hunters in 
Texas, which is known as the Buck-ague." 
As for the fathers, then, there is apparently authority 
for both terms. May it not be that one term was em- 
ployed in those regions where ague prevailed, and that 
fever was the expression in other parts of the country ? 
We would be glad to receive any further notes on the 
subject, and if "Kingfisher" has any fathers in reserve 
he is invited to produce them. 
We have for years held a theory — which, for years too, 
has been put so successfully to the test of observation and 
record that it may be accepted as an established prin- 
ciple rather than a theory— that the spirit which finds 
pleasure in the sports of the field forbids and precludes a 
support of the decadent literature of tlie day. Participa- 
tion in the innocent pleasures of forest and stream, river, 
lake, bay and ocean, the rod and gun, oar and sail, works 
for the upbuilding of manliness, and for the purity of 
thought and speech, which is a part of manhood. Read- 
ers of a sportsmen's journal are not as a class supporters 
of unhealthy, decadent and filthy fiction. 
If you are among those who believe that the world is 
all the time growing better, you must share the Forest 
and Stream's faith in a coming correction of the literary 
conditions of which students of morals complain. The 
ink-wells of the filth purveyors will go dry, and their 
pens will corrode; but so long as the trout shall lure the 
angler to the sparkling waters and the brown feathers 
hurtling through the cover shall cause the gunner's 
heart to bound, the journalism of the field will flourish, 
for the pure entertainment of clean-minded men. 
THE BRIGHTER SIDE. 
Filth and fiction— those are two things that ought not 
to go together; yet the moralists are now very busy tell- 
ing us that the fiction whirm crowds the news stands and 
book stalls has largely to do with uncleanness. It is 
filthy, right out and openly, or by veiled suggestion, and 
not so thickly veiled either that it is not decidedly sug- 
gestive. The most discouraging feature of the situation, 
the complaints affirm, is that the worse the book the 
more certain and speedy and extensive is its success. 
Give a dog a bad name and hang him; but give a book a 
bad name and its sale is assured. This, they aver, is an 
indication of the moral decay of the age. 
Perhaps it is and perhaps it is not. There has never 
been an age of whose literary phases anything is known, 
when morally rotten books did not "go," and until 
human nature shall be supplanted on this globe by some- 
thing better, such a time will never come in the future.. 
But there is another and brighter side of the literary 
phenomena of the day. Crowding the news stands aud 
book counters, shoulder to shoulder with these unworthy 
products of the pen, and now more sturdy, numerous and 
popular than everbefore.is the literature of outdoor life and 
the open air. It is a literature which is of the open and 
of the woodland, pure and healthful, wholesome to body 
and spirit. The books and the papers which relate to the 
THE NEW YORK ZOO. 
The bill incorporating the New York Zoological So- 
ciety and providing for the establishment of a Zoological 
Garden in onu of the public parts of this city has passed 
both houses of the Legislature, been submitted to Mayor 
Strong* approved by him and returned to Albany. It 
now requires only Governor Morton's signature to be- 
come a law. 
Any one who doubts the desirability of establishing a 
suitable Zoological Garden in New York, or wno ques- 
tions the interest felt in such a garden by the public, may 
satisfy himself on these points by visiting the collection 
of animals in the Central Park on Sunday. There he will 
see people of every age, sex and social condition gathered 
by tens of thousands inspecting the wild animals to be 
seen there, and taking the greatest interest in them. A 
good collection of wild beasts, well cared for and suitably 
labelled, would not only be a constant source of enjoy- 
ment to a very large class of our population but would 
also have an educational influence on them, the value of 
which can hardly be overestimated. 
We have called attention to the fact that in times past 
the Legislature of New York has given other charters for 
the establishment of such a garden, and that such 
charters have beerj allowed to lapse, presumably because 
they had no money value. It is believed that the purpose 
of the incorporators named in the present bill is some- 
what higher than this, and that they are looking not so 
much for an immediate return on the money to be in- 
vested, as toward putting on foot a Zoological Society 
which shall be a credit to the city. 
. . . Ani there was no day like that before it or after 
it." 
This astronomical e< r ent of 5,000 years ago has beeri 
without parallel through all the ages, only to be eclipsed 
at last in our own day, and by a woman at that. In the 
chapters of her "Florida Days," devoted to St. Augds- 
tine, Mrs. Margaret Deland, describes the orb of day at 
sunset as sinking majestically into the sea. The geo- 
graphical situation of St. Augustine is such, upon the 
east coast of the continent, that if Mrs. Deland did then 
and there actually behold the sun disappear into the 
Atlantic ocean, not only must the luminary have halted 
in its course, as it did for the Israelites, but it must have 
turned completely about and taken the back track from 
west to east. There is nothing in Mrs Deland's further, 
pages to hint that on the next morning the sun failed to 
rise, as by immemorial custom, out of the east and the 
ocean. 
The New York City Hall, upon whose fine architecture 
the Forest and Stream offices once looked forth, faces the 
south. Not long ago the Century Magazine pictured the 
City Hall, a front view, with the sun smiling serenely in 
the northwest distance beyond. 
It is quite permissible, perhaps, for a gifted writer of 
books or an artist whose pencil finds acceptance with 
magazine publishers thus to trifle with the celestial bod- 
ies. But when an ordinary everyday man sets out to tell a 
fishing story, he must walk a straight chalk line of geo- 
graphical and astronomical accuracy, or swerving from 
it he is on the instant tumbled into the abyss of ridicule 
and disbelief. • 
THE SUN IN THE HEAVENS. 
The interesting fact was recorded in these columns 
recently, that in Asia Minor Professor Sayce had discov- 
ered some cuneiform records of Nimrod, son of Cush and 
grandson of Noah, the most renowned hunter of all his- 
tory. Now comes an announcement from W. M. Flin- 
ders Petrie, that some thirty miles north of Thebes he 
has discovered what h°. believes to be remains of the 
Amorites. The mummified bodies show that they were a 
large and powerful people, with a leg development which 
would indicate that they were mountain dwellers, as the 
Amorites are recorded to have been. 
We are told in the Book of Joshua that when these 
mountain men came against the Gibeonites, Joshua was 
appealea to for help, and straightway gathering: his 
forces hastened to oppose the Amorites. The Israelitish 
"people of war and all the mighty men of valor," made 
a great slaughter of the Amorites, chasing them along 
the way to Beth-horon, and smiting them to Azekah and 
Makkedah. Then, the day sufficing not for the woik of 
destruction, Joshua commanded the sun to stand still 
upon Gibeon, and the moon in the valley of Ajalon. 
"And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the 
people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. 
THE OLD MUZZLE-LOADER. 
There are still in use many muzzle-loading shot guns, 
chiefly among the negroes in the South, and the farmers 
in the far West. The weapons are so ridiculously cheap 
that they go into the hands of impecunious shooters who 
could nevpr dream of raising funds for a breech-loader, 
inexpensive as some may be. 
Here and -there, too, an old fogy is found, who still 
clings to the muzzle-loader for no other reason than that 
it w as the arm he started out with in youth, and what 
was good enough for him then he thinks is good enough 
for him now. Quite likely he will stand up for the merits 
of the antiquated weapon, arguing most stubbornly and 
perversely bu'o believing quite as firmly that it will shoot 
harder than any new-fangled gun ever invented. 
When you meet such a champion of the arm of 
antiquity, you find in him a shooting character well 
worth studying; and you must take him, not indeed 
critically and without feeling, but sympathetically and 
with an appreciation of his foibles. Touched on subjects 
other than guns and shooting, he will perhaps be found 
quite as old-fashioned in thoughts and ways. 
We wish well to every champion of the old time arm. 
May they all live yet many days to show us what the 
queer relics can do. Who knows but that some of the 
youngest of us may yet live to see the time when another 
generation, equipped with hand artillery not now imag- 
ined, shall deride tue breech-loader, in our day so es- 
teemed as the final triumph of the gunsmith's art? 
DOES A FISH FEEL PAIN? 
The subject of the sensitiveness of a fish to pain is one 
which must often have had the sober thought of an 
angler loosing the prize from the hook; and now that the 
problem has been broached anew by our correspondent 
F. S. J. C, it will be likely to have again that earnest 
discussion which has been given it from time to time in 
the past. 
We take it, that the average fisherman does not accept 
the theory that he is inflicting any degree of suffering 
npon the fish when caiight. Certainly the average angler 
would not view with complacency the struggles and 
floppings and writhings of his victim, if they were sug- 
gestive to him of pain. The most tender hearted people 
in the world will catch fish, and for them feel never a 
qualm of remorse or pity. This conduct may not be 
based on the fact that a fish does not feel pain; but it 
certainly is founded upon the fact that on the part of the 
fisherman there is no recognition of any possible pain. 
Doubtless most experienced anglers have made numer- 
ous observations like those related by our correspondent, 
tending to show an absence of sensibility in fish. 
