June 22, 1895.] 
FOREST AND STREAM, 
505 
it would be possible to destroy in any collecting that could be carried 
out, even if eggs were worth $1 a dozen at the breeding grounds. 
Wildfowl, while gregarious in migration, are by no means so in 
breeding, and are not, as when tamed, polygamous. I have seen 
miles of country (barren) in the Northwest that to a superficial ob- 
server might seem to be a vast breeding ground, but would really hold 
but few birds in comparison to its apparent capabilities, and even 
those which were to be seen flying about were by no means all breed- 
ers; not "every drake has a duck" there. 
With sea fowl it might be different, but my experience on the Pacific 
has been that with few exceptions there are no such breeding grounds 
accessible to anyone commercially disposed as there have been on the 
Atlantic, such as the Funks Bird Rock, etc., in Gulf of St. Lawrence 
and Labrador coast. I thought at the time that the matter of com- 
mercial egg destruction was opened up that it was simply a weak in- 
vention of those who are butchering spring birds to throw dust and 
endeavor to blind people as to the real cause of decrease, viz., spring 
Bhooting— else why did they not claim that the decrease in snipe, 
plover and shore birds was the result of some (to them) nefarious " 
business? A marketed female snipe, plover or duck in the spring 
means and stands for from four to ten fall birds, whether they be 
killed in bayous or tanks in Texas, sloughs in Nebraska, or meadows 
in New Jersey. The Legislatures may clog up the statutes of their 
States as much as they please with half baked, half digested game 
laws; so long as it is permissible to have in possession any game in 
close season, just so long will the slaughter continue. It gives a 
sportsman cold chills down the spine to pass through Quincy market 
and see grouse, quail, snipe and venison exposed for sale at this time 
of the year, kut what can be done about it no one seems to know or 
care. 
By the way, I was amused to see in a recent Forest and Stream an 
article from some one in the West who confesses that he used to shoe t 
for the market to an extent of over 1,000 quail to two guns a day, 200 
rabbits to one gun, etc., winding up with a plea to protect the few re- 
maining. What for, pray ? so he may keep up his market shooting ? 
Wiu-Iam W. Castle. 
VL 
Concerning the commercial features of the albumen 
trade and the source of the supply, Mr. Klipstein, of the 
firm of A, Klipstein & Co., 122 Pearl street, New York, 
gives us the following information: Almost the whole 
of the albumen product used in this country is obtained 
in Russia, Germany and France, where eggs are very 
cheap. In warm weather, when eggs are cheap and 
abundant, the eggs are broken and the albumen is sepa- 
rated from the yolks. A little salt is mixed with it to pre- 
serve it, and it is then dried and otherwise prepared as a 
commercial article. • The yolks are used in the manufac- 
ture of certain kinds of leather, and also as a food pro- 
duct. The albumen is used chiefly for food purpose?, 
bakers and confectioners consuming the greater part of 
the product in the making of cakes and candies. One 
pound of albumen is worth from forty-eight to fifty cents 
and represents the product of 150 eggs so that, rnakirg 
no allowance for cost of shipment, the eggs would be 
approximately about four cents a dozen — a figure at 
which the American hen cannot compete. The pro- 
duct manufactured in this country is of no import- 
ance whatever from a commercial standpoint. But 
a few pounds have been made here in the past ten 
years. About 95 per cent, of the albumen of commerce 
ii manufactured from the eggs of the hens of Russia 
Germany and France. A small quantity of the product 
is made from the eggs of wildfowl in Syria and Tut- 
cany. 
"If there was any albumen made in this country," said 
Mr. Klipstein, "we would most certainly know of it. It 
seems to us that eggs taken in Alaska or on the American 
coast would be too valuable as a food product, greater in 
value than when made into albumen. The cheapness of 
the foreign article, which is imported free of duty, pro- 
hibits American competition. We are the largest import- 
ers of albumen in America, if not in the world , and if 
there was any American product we would know of it. 
In our opinion, the report of the importation of eggs 
from Alaska and the Pacific coast, for the manufacture of 
albumen, has no foundation in fact. Eggs imported from 
Alaska would be likely to spoil or lose their f reshnef s 
before arriving here, and would then be unfit for the 
manufacture of albumen." 
Concerning the use of albumen in photography, an ex- 
pert connected with the large house of G. Generet, No. 26 
East Thirteenth street, dealer in photographic supplier, 
informs us that very little albumen is now used in pho- 
tography compared with what was used fivo or six years 
ago, gelatine and other materials having almost entirely 
supplanted it, not one case of albumen paper to sixty of 
other kinds being sold. The bulk of the paper comes 
from Germany all prepared except sensitizing, which is 
done in this country. Some of the albumen comes from 
Canada. For photographic purposes albumen of hen*s 
eggs is superior to that of duck eggs. The commerciEl 
supply of hen's eggs is so abundant that it is not necessary 
to go to the wildfowl for a supply. 
m 
This then is the result of our inquiry: 
1. The duck egg alarmists who have raised tnis calamif y 
cry show themselves unable to substantiate their tales of 
millions of wildfowl eggs gathered and shipped for the 
manufacture of albumen. 
2. The transportation companies who would carry the 
thousands of barrels of duck eggs, if there were any 
barrels for carrying, have not carried them — not a barrel. 
8. At the ports of entry where the eggs would have 
come in, none have come. 
4. The albumen trade, said to consume the millions cf 
eggs, knows nothing about them. 
5. In the light of these facts, the duck egg story appears 
to be an unmitigated fake — the greatest fake ever per- 
petrated in this line. 
VIII. 
The invention and spreading abroad of this story has in 
the very nature of things accomplished no good what- 
ever. In getting the sportsmen of the country worked 
up over imaginary nest robbing by imaginary Indians 
for imaginary purposes, the National Game, Bird and Fish 
Protective Association has actually not saved a single 
duck nor a single egg: nor could it ever. Its resolutions 
on the subject might quite as well have been directed 
against the dead Indian's pursuit of phantom fowl in the 
Red Man's Happy Hunting Grounds. The enlistment of 
United States Senators might as well be in behalf of 
national legislation against the robbing of mares' nest?. 
Meanwhile, let no one dream that because the Indians 
of the Northwest are not gathering millions of wild duck 
eggs, there is nothing to be done in the cause of game 
protection. There is a plenty, and it is nearer home 
than Alaska. 
SOME "FOREST AND STREAM" 
CONTRIBUTORS. 
" Jacobstaff." 
You ask me for a few salient points in " Jacobstaff "s" 
life, or how I came to be such a lover of the gun and be- 
came a crank as it were in the shooting field. Well, I 
hardly know how to commence or what to give you 
unless I dash away in my usual hasty pudding style and 
it may be not "as you like it," but here goes. 
I am a Corncracker by birth, having seen the light, I 
am told, in Georgetown, Scott county, Ky., in the year 
1832 (cholera year); but my father having been called to 
a professorship in the Hamilton Literary and Theological 
Institution (afterward, Madison University), settled in the 
village of Hamilton, Madison county, N. Y., in 1833-34 
"jACOBSTAM'., 
when I was about a year old; and there, among the then 
rugged and wooded hills of the Empire State, I spent 
twenty years of the happiest days of my life. 
I must have been probably some seven or eight year 
of age, and my brother James (now professor in William 
Jewell College, Liberty, Mo.) some two years younger, 
when our father essayed to give us our first lessons in the 
shooting line. Having tacked a sheet of paper on a 
stump some twenty yards distant and placed the gun 
upon another stump, we were instructed how to aim and 
pull the trigger. I remember how my brother beat me 
badly at first, putting a number of shot in the paper near 
the center, while mine were but a few and away to one 
side of the mark. If I remember correctly, I must have 
shut the wrong eye. That was remedied afterwards and 
I passed my brother in marksmanship rapidly. 
My first gun was a partnership affair with the son of 
our next neighbor, a Drother professor of my father's — 
Samuel Stillman Conant. Conant was a little older than 
I, a very bright and rugged boy, almost an athlete. He 
was afterwards for a time city editor of th« New York 
Times and later the able editor of Harper's Weekly. 
The weapon was a Queen Anne flintlock musket. I fail 
to recall how we got it. It was about four feet in length 
of barrel, iron hooped, and provided with iron ramrod. 
We could neither of us do any execution at arm's length , 
but we used to lug it around and take turns in shooting. 
It took both hands to draw back the hammer. We were 
often put to our wits' ends to get ammunition, for minis- 
ters and professors were not burdened with lucre in those 
days. 
There was a quarry near by, where stone was being 
blasted for building purposes, and by doing errands and 
odd favors for the men we would get now and then small 
quantities of blasting powder — great black chunks they 
were. I recollect we had to crush or pulverize some of it 
for the priming in the pan. We were troubled about 
good flints too. For shot we used the small dried peas 
from a farmer's bin or cut up lead pipe. The peas used to 
scatter a good deal and the lead slugs would tear or 
almost annihilate our squirrels or woodchucks when we 
hit them fairly. 
How we roamed the hills with that heavy old piece; 
and with what a fizz and roar it went off, often doing as 
much execution at the butt as at the muzzle; and the 
dense black smoke, whew! "Early impressions are last- 
ing," and after a half century I can smell it yet; but it 
was sweet incense in our nostrils then. And after the 
explosion we would often have to wait until the clouds 
rolled by before we could ascertain whether our shot had 
been successful. 
Our next gun Conant got — a single barrel with beech - 
wood stock and (I remember) no trigger guard. That 
gun did great execution with the robins and chipmunks. 
My first gun that was my very own was a smooth-bore 
rifle, long octagon barrel, curled maple stock the whole 
length of the barrel, brass mounted crotched butt, with 
a place in the stock for patches, grease, etc. It was a 
tremendous shooter. No tree was high enough for the 
safety of any squirrel. It was a percussion pill gun. We 
used to get those small black percussion pills by the gross, 
but only about half or two-thirds of them were of any 
good. Afterwards a gilded pill came into market, which 
was somewhat better, but a rainy or damp day had a very 
deleterious effect on their reliability. 
This smooth-bore became famous throughout the coun- 
ty. It would carry a round ball (having rifle sights) with 
considerable accuracy, and many a hawk from the top of 
a dead tree during the fall fogs fell a victim, and crows 
and woodchucks without number. It was finally ruled 
out of our chicken shoots at 12 rods (we used to measure 
by rods then instead of yards) as altogether too reliable. 
Then came the smooth thin copper cap — not much bet- 
ter than the gilded pill, but followed by the C D, then the 
ribbed GD cap; al forwards the thick Ely waterproof. 
Ah, how we used to cherish them, with a few in our vest- 
pocket handy for a hawk or a big gray squirrel, when we 
were anxious to have no failure in the go off. Let me 
see: powder, 9 cents per Jib.; shot, 21bs., generally No. 4, 
at 5 cents per lb. ; and caps, G D, 10 for a cent. That was 
equipment for a good day's shoot. 
Ah, those were great days around on old Madison 
county hills. There was considerable game there of the 
small kind — squirrels, gray, black and red; ruffed grouse 
(partridge), a few duck, woodchucks, muskrats, with now 
and then a mink or fox; hawks, owls and crows, of 
course, and thousands and tens of thousands of pigeons. 
Some years they would come in the spring in clouds that 
darkened the air, and many stayed in our woods until 
fall; for I have shot pigeons in my boyhood days from 
May until October. 
How distinctly I remember the bagging of my first 
woodcock. I had chased the fellow from place to place 
trying to get a shot "sit tin'," as we boys would say. It 
was not very wild, but would rise almost from under my 
feet, fly a few yards and alight — and I felt sure I knew 
exactly where; but I could not see it until it was up and 
away again. It did this some eight or ten times, when in 
sheer desperation, as it topped the bushes, I let drive and, 
to my amazement, dropped it. A fall woodcock and 
a-flyin'. Wasn't I a proud, boy. 
At the age of twenty, having finished my Sophomore 
year in the fall of '52, I turned West for a year or two. 
Stopping at a pawnbroker's in Cleveland, I purchased for 
$8 a second-hand double barrel shotgun that was destined 
to bring to bag a large quantity of small game. I settled 
on a prairie not a hundred miles from Chicago, then quite 
a new country. My uncle, the Rev. Isaac Eaton, with his 
large family of ten grown children, was still living in his 
log cabin in the midst of a fine farm of rolling prairie. 1 
He had engaged for me the district school of the neigh- 
borhood, and I found myself domiciled in another log 
house, but of ample dimensions, as it answered for school 
during the week and a house of worship on Sundays. I 
soon discovered that I had struck a great game country. 
There were prairie chickens by the hundred, quail by the 
thousand, and ducks and geese in the sloughs in the fall 
by the million. What a paradise! 
I had bargained with the trustees of the school that, in- 
stead of teaching a half day on Saturday, I would make 
that up at the end of the term. I wanted those days ex- 
clusively for my gun. 
On my second day's schooling I discovered that many 
of the larger boys brought their guns with them. Some 
of these, coming' six or eight miles across the prairie to 
school, of course bagged what they could coming and 
going. Good idea! I would do so too. I fixed up a place 
in the woodshed for their guns, out of the way of the 
smaller children and many a pinnated grouse, duck ancl 
quail did I take home to swell the pot of dear Aunt Phila. 
In the spring, wanting to kill a sandhill crane (and a 
mighty fine bird they are — equal to tne wild turkey in 
eating quality) and a white or arctic owl, I traded off my 
double barrel shotgun for a rifle. There were many of 
these handsome snow white owls shot that winter from 
the rail fences, but, like the sandhill cranes, they were 
wary birds, and only by a long shot could they be 
reached. 
After my second winter in this paradise I journeyed 
back to Madison University, of which my father, the Rev. 
Dr. Geo. W. Eaton, was the beloved president for a dozen 
years previous to his death. I finished my collegiate 
course in 1856, and, having another attack of the game 
fever, I again took my course westward, expecting to 
join Col. Noble in an exploring expedition across the 
plains; but, stopping to visit some friends on my old 
shooting grounds, I was too late to join the party. How 
inscrutable are the ways of providence. The entire party 
1 learned, were annihilated by the Yankton Indians 
Cottonwood a few days later. Then, through Biron Kil- 
boure, the railroad king of the west, I was placed on the 
roll with 21 others — a party to run the preliminary line of 
the northern division of the Milwaukee & La Crosse Rail- 
road. We drove our first stake one rainy morning just 
out of Portage City, and ran through the woods to Hud- 
son, opposite St. Paul, and here I had some genuine woods 
and camp experience; but I was more anxious with the 
company's gun (a double barrel) to explore on ahead with 
the chief than to run the level, or in lact to do any other 
part of the work; and it was during this trip that I was 
lost for two days in the wilderness, and scared out of a 
year's growth by laughing owls, as told long ago in 
Fob est and Stream. 
Late in the '50s I was appointed by Hon. Hiram Bar- 
ney one of the appraisers of the Fox and Wisconsin Land 
and Improvement Company. This company was organ- 
ized for the purpose of connecting the Mississippi River 
with the lakes through the Fox and Wisconsin rivers, 
and it had been donated some 7,000,000 acres of land situ- 
