Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copt. I 
Six Months, $2. ( 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 1, 1895. 
j VOL. XLIV.— No. 22 
I No. 318 Broadway New York. 
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' AN EXTREMELY GREEDY CLASS. 
The Pennsylvania Legislature passed a measure this 
year forbidding the sale of ruffed grouse at any time. 
Gov. Hastings has vetoed the bill. For his action he gives 
two reasons: "First, that it was unconstitutional because 
it prohibited transmission companies from receiving for 
transportation; second, that it was unconstitutional be- 
cause it made two classes of citizens, the one class who 
were denied the privilege of eating game because they 
could not buy it or receive it from their friends by ex- 
press, and the class who could get all they wanted for 
themselves and families by going out and shooting it." 
Which is bosh. 
The constitutionality of the measure so far as it con- 
cerns transportation companies has been fought out in 
the courts; and if the Governor had been informed in 
these matters he would have known that no question of 
the constitutionality of such legislation any longer exists. 
There have been Illinois cases, for example, which turned 
upon this very point, and the result of these was to up- 
hold the law of that State forbidding the sale or trans- 
portation for sale of certain game killed in the State. 
The principle is so well established by repeated test cases 
that an executive who adduces unconstitutionality on this 
ground as a defense of his veto simply advertises his own 
want of information. 
The second objection also, that the law is unconstitu- 
tional because it is class legislation, has been refuted in 
the courts again and again. There is no shadow of class 
legislation in the proposed statute. 
But as matters now stand in Pennsylvania the Gov- 
ernor's veto is directly in favor of a class, and a very 
greedy class at that — the pot-hunters who are despoil- 
ing the game covers and reaping the game for them- 
selves at the expense of public policy. The present sit- 
uation there in respect to the game supply is this: 
The market hunters have plied their business so 
systematically and persistently and successfully, that 
the covers have not been able to stand the drain. The 
birds have been killed out for market. There is unques- 
tioned need of some measure to end the traffic or practical 
extermination — we do not believe utter destruction — 
is imminent. Wisdom dictates cutting off the agency 
which is most destructive. Common sense calls for the 
prohibition of market hunting. Why ? Because of 
the rule of securing the greatest good to the greatest 
number. In game matters that means so regulating the 
taking of birds as to afford the largest number of citizens 
the opportunities and benefits of their pursuit. It is the 
protection of the rights of a hundred amateur shooters 
against the claim of the market killer; the privileges of 
the thousand against the ten, of the community against a 
class and, as we have said, an extremely small and selfish 
class at that. 
This howl of "class legislation" against the game laws 
has been heard always, and we may expect to hear it 
for a long time to come. It is usually raised by those 
who demand something for themselves at the expense of 
the public. Game laws are in principle for the common 
good of the community. They are neither in theory nor 
in practice in the interest of a favored class. Loose think- 
ing or deliberate sophistry may on occasion befog the 
issue, but when the truth is revealed clearly and honestly 
our game protective system is recognized as beneficent in 
intent and effect. 
SNAP SHOTS, 
The Sportsman's Exposition was educational and in 
some instances the information there acquired was of a 
nature delightfully unexpected. For instance: There 
have been in this office for ten years or more two pairs of 
Virginia deer horns firmly interlocked. The correspondent 
who sent them wrote that in the fastnesses of a Mississippi 
swamp^he had found them so united, and the story which 
they seemed to tell was that two rival bucks had come 
together in battle, in the conflict had locked their antlers 
firmly together, and unable to separate themselves had 
perished. The story was accepted by us and was pub- 
lished at the time; it has been repeated to persons in- 
numerable. The antlers were shown in the Forest and 
Stream exhibit in the Exposition; and before them, on 
the first afternoon, halted a dignified and benevolent old 
gentleman and his sweet wife. "Impossible," was his 
verdict on the locked antlers. "It never could have hap- 
pened in nature." And the tone was as of one who says 
a tbing and it is. To contradict and controvert; to declare 
that the thing was possible in nature; to make affirmation, 
if need were, that oneself had been in the swamp and in 
person had found the antlers interlocked — this was the 
impetuous impulse of the moment; but one look at the 
dear old lady by his side dispelled the thought. What he 
said was law and gospel with her, that was clearly to be 
seen, and if he declared that this thing couldn't happen 
in nature, it couldn't and there was the end of it. Give 
over to the teeth of the porcupines all the locked horns of 
the wilderness; perish every buck solitary and alone; but 
let not this wifely faith in the dictum of her lord be shaken 
one jot or tittle. 
One thing not shown in the Sportsmen's Exposition, but 
deserving of a place there, was a buffalo chip. The plains 
traveler of to-day knows nothing of the chip save by tra- 
dition; and yet we saw in Madison Square Garden the 
other day more than one grizzled old-timer whose heart 
would have beaten more quickly at sight of the familiar 
object. In the exposition of 1896 there shall be a buffalo 
chip; the Forest and Stream has already commissioned 
a trusted agent to secure the relic. 
Massachusetts Game Laws Repealed! 
Everybody may shoot anything any time. 
That would be a startling headline for news from Mas- 
sachusetts; and we rejoice that it is not true. Yet the 
condition of things in that Commonwealth could hardly 
be more desperate in some sections were the game laws 
actually repealed and blotted out. Read the notes printed 
to-day from Shirley, with their story of May potting of 
game and song birds. That is a reign of deviltry that 
could not be outdone if the game laws were actually re. 
pealed. What is the particular advantage, we may ask, 
of the statutes if they are unenforced? And with spring 
shooting of nesting birds in New England, what need is 
there of our naturalists seeking in the cold winter of the 
South an agency to account for the scarcity of the song- 
sters? 
Up to the hour of our going to press Governor Morton 
had not signed the Donaldson game bill, which, among 
other provisions, would permit the sale of game the year 
around. The interests of game protection in New York 
and other States tributary to its markets would be best 
served if the bill should be vetoed. Whatever may be 
the event, there is reason to believe that we shall have 
another siege of game law tinkering next winter; for the 
Senate committee will go on another round of hearings 
this summer, One of the last resolutions of the late 
session was put in by Senator Childs, and provided that 
he and his fellow committeemen, Donaldson and Guy, 
should visit Canada and other sections "in order to secure 
unanimity in the game laws." That probably means 
nothing more harmless than junketing; but Chairman 
Donaldson has shown that he is capable of mischief; and 
it would be a good thing for the game interests of the 
State if he could be persuaded by his district to stay at 
home when the next Legislature meets. 
It is said that John Liberty, who has been for many 
years the clerk of the Chief State Game Protector's office 
in Albany, must how be "fired out" because he is a 
Democrat. Mr. Liberty is an efficient and honest man, 
in a position which his long experience and faithful dis- 
charge of duty should insure to him so long as he may be 
able to fill it. But he is not a Republican. The new* 
board of commissioners hold that an individual's politics 
are of more moment than his qualifications and record. 
The president of this board of fisheries and game and 
forests boasts that he does not know hardwood timber 
from soft, nor an eel from a sucker; but he does know 
politics, and when it comes to bouncing clerks and pro- 
tectors to make berths for men of his own party he is 
right at home. The removal of Hawn and the threatened 
removal of Northrup give some hint of the demoralization 
that is to come to^the force of protectors if the commission 
shall go on as it has begun. 
The story of Mithridates' duck has been retold by a 
Boston physician, who brings it out to show that anti" 
toxine is no new thing. Mithridates lived and reigned 
and went duck hunting two thousand years ago. Pliny 
tells us that the monarch rendered himself proof against 
poison by inoculating himself with the blood of a certain 
wild duck which was reputed to subsist wholly upon sub- 
stances fatal to mankind. This shows, says the Boston 
man, that the antitoxine idea antedates the Christian era. 
Our notion is that this physician has not read his Livy 
with an enlightened mind, for it is prudent sometimes 
not to interpret these old authors too literally. Trans- 
lated with the light of our own modern experience, what 
Livy meant to relate was this: That amid his wars and 
conquests and affairs of state the great monarch made 
time to go duck shooting, and in the pursuit of the wild- 
fowl he found such rest and recreation, and renewal of 
strength and refreshing of soul, that it was as if he had 
partaken of a magic elixir. That, we may be certain, is 
all there is in Livy's wild duck story and the Boston doc- 
tor's ancient antitoxine theory. 
What Mithridates did in Asia twenty centuries ago you 
may do in America to-day. Here and now are wild 
ducks of virtues as protent as there and then; and in the 
pursuit of them, on marsh and slough and river and bay, 
may be found renewal of strength and refreshment of 
spirit, and strength and courage, clearness of vision 
and joy of being. 
If only, when autumn shall have come, you will break 
that chain. 
It is naughty for little boys to rob birds' nests in May, 
but there is a youngster in Passaic, N. J., whose tree- 
climbing exploits have brought him such fame and for- 
tune that his example will go far toward stimulating anew 
the army of nest robbers. When this fortunate young 
gentleman had shinned up the tree after a strange nest, 
he found his prize to be a tin box containing a wad of 
bills amounting to $1,000. Is there any actual bird's nest 
one might find in these times worth a thousand dollars? 
The most valuable birds' eggs are those no longer to be 
found in nests. At an auction sale in London this year 
an egg of the extinct great auk sold for $900, a sum pretty 
near to the Passaic boys' find. Auk eggs are so rare that 
this $900 specimen would probably have brought a higher 
price if it had not been for the recent death of an auk 
egg collector, who had in his possession nine eggs; and 
these nine eggs, to be thrown on the market, were enough 
to depreciate values. In times past auk eggs sold for 
$1,000 and $1,500. The collector of the nine eggs, the 
late Mr. Champley, of Scarborough, Eng., was an enthus- 
iastic student of great auk lore and statistics. Mr. W. B. 
Tegetmeier tells us in the London Field that Mr. Champ- 
ley compiled a list of all the skins known and of their 
location, the number of skeletons known and also of the 
eggs and bones. In this list, which was published in 
1888, he recorded the total number of skins as being 
seventy-nine, of which the British Isles possess twenty- 
two, ten being in museums; the total number of skeletons 
ten, of which eight fortunately are preserved in museums; 
the total number of eggs sixty- eight, of which the British 
Isles possess forty-five, and of these twelve are in public 
collections. 
