Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Tkbmb, ti A Ykar. 10 Cts. a Oopt. 
8ix Months, S2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 1896. 
I 
No, 
VOL. XLVn.— No. 17 
346 Broadway, Niew Tfoas. 
J^or Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page iv. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press 
on Tuesdays Correspandence intended for 
publication should reach us by iVIondaysand 
as much earlier as may be practicable. 
FOREST AND STREAM OFFICE 
346 Broadway 
NEW YORK LIFE BUILDING 
Present Entrance on Leonard! Street 
The reproductions are to me most satisfactory; they lack 
color, of course, hut in every other respect are the best we 
have ever seen, and I thinh I may say that those of the 
Audubon family still remaining are much gratified with 
the first of the series. M. R. Audubon. 
AUDUBON BIRD PLATES. 
The first subject of the series of half-tone copies of 
Audubon's famous bird portraits was that of the Black 
Duck, in the issue of Sept. 26. The second one, the 
Prairie Chicken (pinnated grouse), is given to-day. Others 
which will follow on dates to be announced are: 
Shoveller Duck. 
Eedhead Duck. 
Canvasback Duck. 
American White-fronted Goose. 
Purple Sandpiper. 
American Golden Plover. 
Willow Ptarmigan. 
The illustration pictures the combat of two rivals for 
the possession of a hen, as described in the text; it is one 
of those incidents in bird life which Audubon had noted 
in his close and patient study during the many years spent 
in the wilderness. In keeping with Audubon's practice 
in his bird plates, the illustration is more than a mere 
portrait of the birds depicted; it gives us a picture of 
the prairie chicken country "of our original Western 
meadows," and there is a drawing of the tiger lily. 
Audubon's great work is thus rich in delineations of 
natural scenery, trees, and shrubs and flowers, for it was 
always his aim to show not only the bird, but its sur- 
roundings. 
Hardly less interesting than the illustration is the nat- 
uralist's written account of the ways of the prairie 
chicken as he had observed them; and very suggestive 
too are his notes upon the disappearance of the bird 
from Kentucky. Even so early as his time the work of 
destruction had been begun, with a force and rapidity 
which were significant of the exterminatioB which was 
to be wrought within the century. 
Audubon writes of the prairie chicken and the heath 
hen as the same bird, although they have since been 
classed as distinct forms. The heath hen, which in his day 
was common in the Eastern States, has been obliterated 
save for that remnant on Martha's Vineyard of which re- 
cent numbers of the Forest and Stream have contained 
some notes. The spring and summer shooting "by per- 
sons such as in England are called poachers" has long 
since done its perfect work. No fact impresses itself 
more constantly and forcibly upon the reader of Audu- 
bon's volumes than his accounts of former abundance 
and reports of the diminution of the game bird supply, 
which was proceeding at such a startling rate 
even in his day, and he lived in a time which we are 
disposed to regard as the golden age of American game. 
The contrast between that time and this is brought out 
with startling distinctness, when these chapters which he 
has written and the facts recorded therein are compared 
with the conditions which exist in our experience at this 
day. The Audubon who wrote in the early decade of the 
nineteenth century would be an impossible personage in 
these closing years of the same century. An Audubon of 
to-day might possess equal enthusiasm and devotion and 
skill; but the rich abundance of material for his study has 
long since passed away, and with the meager supply re- 
maining he could neither draw the pictures nor write the 
chapters which should charm the world as have these. 
Audubon, the ornithologist and artist, was one of the rich 
gifts of his time to the generations which have followed. 
It should be to us an occasion of abiding gratitude that 
such a man was found, while the opportunities were yet 
afforded, to depict with pen and pencil the birds of the 
continent. 
YELLOWSTONE PARK ENLARGEMENT. 
The proposition to enlarge the Yellowstone National 
Park, brought forward by Mr. Cowan's letter, printed in 
another column, ought to receive the support of every one 
really interested in this National preserve. A good many 
years ago such enlargement was advocated by the Forest 
AND Stream— at a time indeed when very few people knew 
much about the Yellowstone Park, and long before its 
buffalo had been destroyed or its mountains burned over. 
At that time nothing was done, for the Park had but few 
friends in Congress, though those few were earnest and 
untiring. Only a few years ago the Park was practically 
enlarged on the east, and to some extent on the south, by 
the establishment of the Yellowstone Park Forest Reser- 
vation, which the Secretary of the Interior put in charge 
of the Superintendent of the Park. The upper part of 
the Jackson's Hole country so far south as to include 
the southernmost of the Tetons ought to be within the 
Park, and the same may be said of much of 
the country on the west as far as Henry' Lake. 
Much of this region contains surpassingly fine scen- 
ery, and it is aU of it a natural range for game. As 
Mr. Cowan suggests, the extension of the Park would pro- 
tect the few remaining buffalo ranging on the borders of 
the Park or in eastern Idaho. The matter, however, is 
one that ought to be taken up by the residents of the 
States adjoining the Park. No portion of our people have 
so real an interest in the Reservation as those who live 
about it. It is to their interest more than to that of the 
people of any other section to protect it and all that it 
contains. We have little doubt that the time will come 
before very long when such an enlargement will be made, 
and the sooner it comes the better for all of us. We urge 
Mr. Cowan to endeavor to interest the people of his own 
section in this subject, and assure him that there will be 
hearty and earnest support for such a project among 
those best qualified to express an opinion about the mat- 
ter. 
This is something which, if to be done at all, should be 
done quickly, for every year adds to the obstacles which 
stand in the way; more settlers are moving in, and with 
them antagonistic interests are growing; the game range 
is narrowing, a vast area has been ruined this year by the 
sheep men taking their herds over the new trail; and so 
in one way and another the park scheme is being ham- 
pered with new embarrassments. 
FLUCTUATIONS OF THE GAME SUPPLY. 
Reports from different sections of the United States 
and Canada indicate that quail, ruffed grouse, ducks and 
other birds dear to the sportsman's heart are in greater 
abundance this year than they have been in several years, 
though as a matter of course, owing to local advantages 
and disadvantages, some sections are more favored than 
are others in this abundance. 
And in this abundance the sportsman will find much 
cause for rejoicing; in it the alarmist, who, when bis 
forebodings are excited in the years of dearth and who is 
then impelled to foretell the quick extermination of all 
game, will find much in refutation of his teachings, since 
there seem to be years of abundance and years of dearth 
alternating at irregular periods, independently of the de- 
struction caused by man. 
The shooting in each year may be accepted as a constant 
factor in bird destruction. Yet the quantity of birds 
killed by sportsmen in any one year and the birds left to 
breed are very imperfect data from which to estimate the 
next year's game supply. Shooting of course lessens the 
birds' numbers, but the extent of the shooting does not 
explain the fluctuating abundance of one year and the 
dearth of another. 
There are laws governing the propagation of animal 
life of which we know but little. We may explain that 
the season was a good breeding season for birds because 
it was dry and that the eggs or birds thereby escaped de- 
struction from wet, but that does not explain the cause. 
because a dry season does not always produce an abun- 
dance of birds. A coincidence is often mistaken for a 
cause. In some wet seasons game birds are abundant, 
though if it be too wet in the nesting season many eggs 
and young birds may be destroyed. 
Above all conditions of weather, in the consideration 
of abundance and scarcity, is the astonishing fertility 
which a species may exhibit at the beginning of a season, 
regardless of weather conditions. In the whole length 
and breadth of the continent this fertility may be uniform 
while the weather and climatic conditions are distinctly 
different and variable. 
Why there should be this natural impulse toward a 
rapid multiplication of a species in one season, and extra- 
ordinary fertility and a loss or moderate gain in num- 
bers in other seasons, is a matter of speculation. 
This intermittent manner of reproduction is not con- 
fined to the animal world. No farmer counts on grow- 
ing n good crop of wheat, or cotton, or corn, etc., each 
year; yet in certain years, in sections widely distinct in 
climate, soil and weather conditions, there will be general 
abundance of a certain crop and a flooded market. The 
farmer explains that the season was wet or dry, accord- 
ing to which is coincident, but that in no wise explains 
why there should be the universal natural impulse, at the 
outset of a season, toward the unusual multiplication of 
a species, though it may coincidently affect multiplica- 
tion for better or worse. 
This of course is considering species in a general way. 
There may be local conditions in certain sections which 
affect the local game supply, as there may be too many 
persistent gunners in a locality who exterminate its 
game; or the ground in a certain locality may have so 
little watershed that a heavy rain will drown or drive out 
all small animal life, as it may man and beast if the over- 
flow becomes too great, but special local conditions do 
not affect the great whole. 
Many men, earnest in game protection, see but one 
cause for the scarcity of birds, and that is the gun and 
dog. That is a cause and should be governed by wise 
restrictions, as it legally is in most States, but it is but one 
cause of many, and of these there are some concerning 
which sportsmen can only speculate with such philosophy 
as they may have. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Among those who have been mentioned as possibly to 
succeed the late Dr. Goode as Assistant-Secretary of the 
Smithsonian Institution in charge of the National Museum 
are President Jordan, of the Leland Stanford University; 
Dr. C. Hart Merriam, ornithologist of the Agricultural 
Department, and F. W. True, curator of mammals, and 
now in temporary charge of the museum. The appoint- 
ment will probably be made in January. 
Given a camp site set amid scenery of inspiring loveli- 
ness, a camp equipped with all that heart could ask for, 
waters full of magnificent fish, camp equipment, fishing 
tackle— every material thing that an angler could ask for 
to make certain the success and pleasure of a woods va- 
cation — and could he enjoy it all if won at the cost of con- 
science? An useless by ppeculative question, you say. Not 
a bit of it. A direct and practical question it was for one 
angler in Massachusetts not long ago. This fisherman 
was a member of a school text-book committee; and there 
came to him an opportunity to win a fishing trip to Ver- 
mont, with all expenses paid, if he would give his vote in 
the board for the adoption of a particular text-book. He 
did not accept the proposition. If he had earned his va- 
cation in this manner, would he have f oimd any satisfac- 
tion whatever in it, even if he had caught more fish and 
bigger fish than ever in his whole life before? 
The constitution of New York forbids absolutely the 
disposal of any of the forest lands now owned by the 
State. For the purpose of exchanging certain pieces of 
State lands outside of the Adirondack Park limits for 
other pieces within the limits, but owned by private hold- 
ers, it is proposed to modify the constitution by an amend- 
ment authorizing such exchanges. The question will 
be voted upon at the coming election. The Genesee Val- 
ley Forestry Association, of Rochester, has given voice to 
its opinion in resolutions declaring that it regards the 
proposed amendment as inopportune and fraught with 
danger to the forests of the State; and that the existing 
provisions of the constitution relating to forestry should 
not be changed until the forests of the State can beplace4 
under expert forestry administratioil. 
