Forest AND Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Tbbms, f4 A Tkak. 10 Cts. a COPt. 1 
8ix Months, ^2. \ 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 1896. 
I VOL, XLVn.— No. 5. 
I No. 846 Broadwat, New Yoke. 
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CITIES AND VAGRANT DOGS. 
Dogs and cats experience the unfortunate vicissitudes 
of city life to a pitiful degree. The permanent vagrant 
class constantly receives accessions to its numbers from 
the semi- vagrant and from the better class of dogs, or 
those accustomed to good homes, which from misfortune 
have become homeless and maeterless. Man, if homeless 
from any cause, has powers of prompt readjustment; the 
dog, once he loses his home and master, perforce drifts into 
vagrancy and outlawry, for in law the vagrant dog is an 
outlaw, and, except that he be claimed, is doomed to de- 
struction under certain legal restrictions as to the manner 
in which he shall be destroyed. 
At the best, tbe dog's claim to a home is precarious, as 
it depends on the caprice, affection or tolerance of his 
master. Not infrequently his master's financial resources 
may directly result in the loss of home to the dog, for in 
the life of laboring men, whose earnings of to-day buy 
the food and pay the rent of to-morrow, a very slight 
break in financial returns may seriously disrupt the home 
life; and the wage-earners are by far the most numerous 
class of people and owners of countless thousands of dogs, 
mostly curs of low degree. Thus it comes that in the 
great cities, where there are so many dogs and cats associ- 
ated all their lives with poverty, many trivial circum- 
stances will detach them from all claims to home and 
owner, and launch them into vagrancy. 
There is an incessant overflow of such vagrant animal 
life in the great cities, ever silently coming to the surface, 
and imperatively requiring constant and organized effort 
to keep it in check both by the destruction of vagrant 
dogs and the placing of such restrictions on ownership as 
shall largely check the source of the vagrant supply and 
discourage the perpetuation of worthless curs. The neces- 
sity of destroying so much animal life on the score of 
public policy, from a sentimental point may be a deplor- 
able feature of civilization, but the health, peace and well 
being of the public being of paramount importance and 
consideration, no argument is necessary to justify the 
measures founded on necessity. 
The destruction of dogs and cats being a necessity, it 
should be as painlessly and decently done as the best 
available means at hand will permit. Nothing can be 
said to justify the infliction of unnecessary suffering on 
the poor animals; first, because such suffering would be 
an act of inhumanity in itself; and second, because in- 
humanity tends to debase the minds of a certain part of 
the community and disturbs profoundly the larger and 
sympathetic part of it. Any spectacular method or such 
as suggests intense suffering should never be adopted. 
Baltimore is now seriously considering, though not 
entirely of her own volition, the adoption of the more 
improved method of disposing of vagrant dogs — that is, 
by the use of gas, as practiced in New York, Philadel- 
phia, etc. The old system of drowning a lot of dogs at 
ppce in an iron cage, still adhered to in Baltimore, is 
actively opposed by the Maryland Society for the Preven- 
tion of Cruely to Animals. The Society's Secretary, Mr. 
John R. Duval, has recently proposed taking legal action 
against the keeper of the dog pound, Mr. Philip Kimmel, 
on the charge of cruelty to animals. This would in effect 
be an arraignment of the methods in use by the city and 
a test of their legality. As there is no doubt that fright 
and suffering are inflicted by immersion in water, and 
that neither is inflicted by the use of gas, the Maryland 
Society should win its case easily. It should have the 
support and approval of all who are for the progress of 
greater humanity. 
The Maryland Society is endeavoring to widen its mis- 
sion on the lines of the American Society for the Preven- 
tion of Cruelty to Animals, of New York; that is, to have 
charge of the licensing of dogs and the capturing of stray 
and vagrant dogs and oats, and the destruction in the 
most humane manner of such as are worthless or un- 
claimed. For the greater progress of the humanities, 
their success is heartily to be desired if they will be as 
efficient as their admirable fellow Society in New York. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Many years ago there was printed in the Forest and 
Stream a story of a Danish fisherman who had tamed a 
herring and made a pet of it, the fish following its mas- 
ter about on dry land like a dog, ■until one unlucky day it 
fell from a bridge into the water and was drowned. The 
story was extensively copied, and soon thereafter it began 
to appear in our exchanges as localized in various places 
in America. Now it was told of a Maine guide, with a 
trout in place of a herring; again of a Michigan farmer, 
with a whitefish in place of the trout, and again of a 
Missouri man and a sucker; and so it has traveled over 
the land with a vitality as remarkable as that of the 
original herring. It is still passing along. The Cleve- 
land Plain Dealer gave a new version the other day 
in a letter from Marietta, dated July 20, 1896. This 
report comes from one Henry Wilson, from up near the 
head of Middle Island Creek, in West Virginia, where 
Squire Speneer some months ago caught a large catfish, 
which he incarcerated in a water hole in the back yard; 
then by abstracting some of the water from fime to time 
he reduced the supply until in the end the catfish learned 
to worry along with nothing but air. The creature did 
very well until on one occasion it attempted to cross a 
creek on a log, fell into the water, and having forgotten 
how to swim was drowned. Herring, trout, white- 
fish, sucker, catfish, they always drovpii, but the story 
never dies. There is always found for it a new fish 
tamer and a new fish. It is one of those tales which, if 
told impersonally in a crowd, always evokes from some 
one of the hearers the indorsement of "Yes, I knew the 
man." 
Sportsmen of the United States, hardly less than those 
of Canada, are to be congratulated upon the action of the 
Legislature of Quebec in setting aside for a forest, fish 
and game preserve the magnificent domain of the Lauren- 
tides National Park, It is a territory generous in extent 
and offering rare attractions to the hunter and the fisher- 
man, while the conditions prescribed for enjoyment of its 
privileges are by no means burdensome. In the great 
Laurentides reservation Quebec has made permanent pro- 
vision of an abundant game and fish supply; it is to the 
Province what the Adirondack Park is to New York, and 
to the Dominion what the Yellowstone is to the United 
States. 
While we in North America are thus making provision 
by the establishment of parks for the preservation of our 
game animals, similar projects are engaging attention 
in other parts of the world, notably in countries where 
game has in the past been so abundant th at th e stories 
now told of its dimunition are received with incredulity. 
Even in Southern Africa, where the first British hunters 
found such a game supply that their true accounts of it 
were not accepted as possible, the provision of a game 
park is now proposed as the only expedient for saving the 
remainder of the herds. A correspondent of the London 
Times makes a plea for the African elephant, which is 
declared to be in peril of extermination; and the way in 
which it is proposed that this shall be done is to consti- 
tute a portion of SomalUand a game preserve in which 
the elephant shall find safe refuge from pursuit. The 
necessity of a more rigid conservation of the game supply 
of the world is now recognized in the most remote 
quarters. With our own buffalo extinct, we may well be 
humbled by noting the greater wisdom of far-off Ceylon 
whose stock of buffalo is preserved by rigid laws. The 
game may be taken only by special permission of the 
Government, and no one person is licensed to take more 
than two buffalo. Under these restrictions the supply 
promises to be maintained indefinitely. 
Experience teaches the sportsman to keep to himself 
knowledge of a favored fishing stream or shooting ground, 
and yet one of the most pronounced satisfactions of field 
sports is to share with another one's own opportunities. 
He was made of the true material who said to the For- 
est AND Stream the other day, "I'd like to know of some 
fellow who loves shooting, and who has only two or 
three days or a week to get away, and cannot afford to 
buy a dog or to go far. I'd spend the time seeing to it 
that he should have just the best ' chance in the world, if 
he could shoot a bird when it was within range." Such 
a wish as that is an index of character; when.you happen 
on a man whose ambition is to help some less favored in- 
dividual to a day's shooting you may safely trust him 
with your all. Even one's conduct in the field is a search- 
ing test of character, for a man is true to hia nature in 
small things as well as in large. 
Men waste precious hours talking politics and then 
complain that they have no time to go fishing. The talk 
amounts to nothing after all, but the fishing might be 
worth while. The outlook is for political talk from now 
until November, steady, incessant and strident. To 
escape it one must take to the woods. It is always under- 
stood, or should be, that politics are barred in camp, Wg 
question whether even the Kingfishers could get through 
without disruption if they permitted political discussion 
around the camp-fire. If a man in camp wiU persist in 
talking politics, there are only two courses open to the 
rest of ithe company, either to put him out or to go home 
and leave him. 
Has not the time come for prohibiting altogether the 
taking of the Florida manatees? There are extremely few 
of those interesting creatures left; and while killing them 
is forbidden, they may be captured for supply to show- 
men as curiosities. We should think that seaside resorts 
like Asbury Park might better do without manatees in 
tanks than that the species should be exterminated, as it 
will be if the showmen hunters continue to enjoy their 
present license. Here is one harmless wild creature 
which should be permitted to survive the extinction 
which is overtaking everything that can be shot at in 
Florida, even to the alligator. 
It is a curious manifestation under existing conditions, 
but there are some fishermen who affect to look on 
angling as they usually do on poker playing for high 
stakes, something to keep mum about. And so we en- 
counter business and professional men who have been off 
fishing, but are mortally afraid lest the public shall find 
them out in it. They reason perhaps that to associates 
and clients who do not know the charm of angling their 
fishing trips may be accounted as lapses of virtue, un- 
worthy and unbusinesslike, and calculated to hurt them 
in their standing. 
Our observation is that there is more of this feeling in 
New York than in Boston, and perhaps more than in 
Chicago. Certainly we hear less of the fishing experiences 
of New York business men than of those of Boston, and 
this is altogether because of greater reticence on the 
part of the New York anglers. Is it perhaps true that 
New Yorkers are mistaken in their apprehension that it 
is prudent to cover up their angling proclivities? Would 
they be any the less esteemed were they to public on the 
exchanges and in business circles their fishing luck? We 
believe that the time has long gone by when anything of 
discredit was likely to be attached to a business man who 
went fishing. For twenty years and more this journal 
has been preaching the gospel of rational outdoor recrea- 
tion and woods life, and during that period there has 
been a decided change in the popular feeling toward 
angling. If it be true, as has been suggested, that fishing 
vacations are more favorably regarded in Boston than in 
some other cities, that fact must be accepted as one of th© 
manifestations of Boston culture, 
1.. 
