Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Tkrms, f4 A Year. 10 Ors. a Copy. 
Sis Months, |3. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1896. 
VOL. XLVn.— No. 18. 
No. 346 Broadway, Niw Yoke. 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page x. 
The Forest and Stream is put to press 
on Tuesdays Correspondence intended for 
publication sliould reach us by Mondays and 
as much earlier as may be practicable. 
THE FORESTRY AMENDMENT. 
If the people of the State of New York shall vote away 
the integrity and security of the Adirondack Forest Preserve 
now guaranteed by the Constitution, it will be because the 
voters fail to realize what they are doing. Important as are 
the other issues at stake in the election, let us not be blinded 
as to this one, nor be deceived into the thought that it is not 
of momentous concern. 
Section 7 of Article Vll. of the new Constitution reads: 
"FoHEST Preserve.— Sec. V. Thelandgof the State, now owDed or 
hereafter acquired, constituting the Forest Preserve as now fixed by 
law, shall be forever kept as wild forest lands. They shall not be 
leased, sold or exchanged, or be taken by any corporation, public or 
private; nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed or destroyed." 
That declaration of the sentiment of the State was adopted 
with an unanimity which broke into applause in the Consti- 
tutional Convention; the measure was accorded a reception 
such as for warmth and enthusiasm and unqualified indorse- 
ment was given to none other of the thirty-three amendments 
adopted. It was the deliberate, definitive, determined de- 
cision of the citizens of the State — who had seen their trusts 
betrayed, their birthright sold for a mess of pottage, their 
woodlands given over to vandals, robbers and despoilers, to 
be felled by the axe, drowned out by back-waters, scourged 
by fire, inclosed in vast areas in wire fences and shut off by 
trespass signs — that from that time forth the betrayal and 
robbery should cease; and that as for the Legislature, it should 
no longer have the power to yield to the demands and per- 
suasions of private and corporate greed. The act of rescue 
came fifty years late; but when the people did adopt it they 
meant it; and they meant it for just what it says and for all 
it says, that "the lands of the Forest Preserve shall be kept 
forever as wild forest lands They shall not be leased, sold 
or exchanged " 
That declaration embodies public opinion and represents 
the public interest. But, needless to say, it does not suit the 
scheming individuals who are hungering for their old-time 
license to use public property for their own personal advan- 
tage; and these intriguers have now come forward with a 
cool proposition that the people of the State shall retract 
their will, as expressed in the forestry section of the Consti- 
tution", by amending that section to read as follows; 
"Sec. 1. The lands of the State, now o ^ned or hereafter acquired 
constituting the Forest Preserve as now fixed by law, shall be forever 
kept as wild forest lands. Except as authorized by this section, they 
shall not be leased, soli or exchanged, to be taken by any corpora, 
tion, public or private ; nor shall the timber thereon be sold, removed 
or destroyed. The Legislature may authorize the leasing for such 
term as it may by law fix of a parcel of not more than five acres of 
land in ihe Forest Preserve to any one person for camp and cottage 
purposes. The Legislature may also authorize the exchange of lands 
owned by the State situate outside the Forest Preserve, for Jands not 
ewned by the State situate wiohin the Forest Preserve The Legisla- 
ture may also authorize the sale of lands belonging to the State 
situate outside the forest preserve: but the money so obtained shall 
not be used except for the purchase of lands situate within the Forest 
Preserve, and which, when so purchased, shall become a part of the 
Porest Freserve." 
The end sought to be gained by this amendment is wholly 
and purely private, personal and selfish in character, and 
contrary to the rights of the public in the public's own 
possessions. The intention is to open the way to hand over ■ 
the choice locations of the Adirondacks for camp and cot- 
tage purposes. It contemplates a free and unrestricted leas- 
ing of lands in a ratio of 5 to 1 — five acres to one person. 
The number of leases is unlimited; in practice it will be re- 
stricted only by the number of choice locations to be picked 
out and the number of people who are willing to take some- 
thing for nothing and pick them out. There is no limit as 
to the duration of the leases ; they are to run for such terms 
as the Legislature may fix; and there being nothing in this 
proposed amendment to forbid, the Legislature may fix 
them for one hundred years. The whole intent and effect 
of the amendment is and its practical effect would be again 
to place the conservancy of our forest lands in the hands of 
the Legislature, where again and again experience has shown 
such interests to be unsafe. The teaching of the past, as 
exemplified in repeated instances, is that if left to itself the 
Legislature cannot be depended upon to preserve to the 
people their right in the public lands when such rights are 
invaded by individuals or corporations for their own per 
ponal aggrandizement. 
President Amsden, of the New York Association for the 
Protection of Fish and Game, in his protest against the 
adoption of this amendment, likens the proposed invasion of 
the Adirondacks by individuals to a giving over of the city 
of New York's Central Park to private squatters. The his- 
tory of the Central Park shows what is to be expected from 
the Albany Legislature when it comes to a question of pro- 
tecting park for the people. On more than one occasion 
the citizens of New York have had to take the Legislature 
by the throat to prevent its giving over jCentral Park to uses 
other than public; the last occasion was only last year, when 
if left to themselves the Senate and Assembly woiad have 
given permission to a company of showmen to cover the 
lower end of the park with exposition buildings. 
It was precisely because the Legislature had connived at 
legalized despoiling of the North Woods that the citizens of 
the Commonwealth determined once and for ever to 
take from it by this constitutional enactment the power 
for further mischief. Security of the people's heritage in the 
Adirondack forests is to be preserved only by keeping intact 
the constitutional prohibition of selling, exchanging or leas- 
ing the public lands. The amendment proposed to nullify 
the section should be overwhelmingly defeated next Tuesday. 
Every vote will count; it will n^t be enough to avoid casting 
a ballot; a negative vote should be registered. Mark the 
"No" of the forestry amendment space on the ballot. Save 
the forests. Preserve them to the people, to whom they 
belong. Repeat again and with the emphasis of a full vote 
the former declaration that the wild lands of the Forest Pre- 
serve "shall not be leased, sold or exchanged." 
It is not in the least an occasion of surprise that the Presi- 
dent of the Fisheries, Game and Forest Commission should 
favor the proposed amendment. The same official signalized 
his coming into office by -advocating the pernicious bill, 
which became a law, to permit the sale of game the year 
around. His advocacy of the measure, he tells us, is 
prompted by a belief that "the forestry interests of the State 
require the adoption of the amendment," but the only "for- 
estry interests" set forth in his special pleading are the private 
interests of individuals who are already intrenched in occu- 
pancy of the pubhc domain, and for whom he urges that, 
having already been granted special privileges in the past, 
they should continue to enjoy them in the future. The 
counsel of President Davis in this instance is not a whit less 
unsafe than was his counsel as to the all- the-year- around 
sale of game amendment ; and his opinion should be given no 
weight in an intelligent consideration of either one subject 
or the other. 
That part of the proposed amendment which relates to the 
sale and exchange of lands "within the Forest Preserve" and 
lands "outside the Forest Preserve" is a hocus-pocus. There 
is nothing now in the Constitution to forbid the sale of lands 
"outside the Forest Preserve," nor anything to forbid the 
acquiring of lands "within the Porest Preserve." There is 
therefore no necessity of any amendment in this respect. 
The only effect of the amendment if it should be adopted 
would be to throw the public lands into the possession of in- 
dividuals, and to multiply the trespass signs which already 
confront the Adirondack visitor at almost every turn. The 
provision might well be entitled "An Act to Shut Out the 
People from their Own Lands. " If the voters understand 
this job for what it is, they will defeat it next Tuesday for 
all time. 
THE HEATH HEN AGAIN. 
In response to an inquiry by Mr. C. H. Ames for informa- 
tion respecting the heath hen of Martha's Vineyard, a Bos- 
ton correspondent gives us as the fruit of his own observa- 
tion some particulars respecting the present condition of 
those birds. In connection with his very interesting com- 
munication we print also an account sent to the naturalist 
Audubon in the year 1833, describing the heath hen as then 
found in the same haunts. In these letters, written thus 
with an interval of more than sixty years, a noteworthy 
parallel is found in the fact that each writer records that 
within the term covered by his own observation the supply 
of the game was lessening. 
ginning, with an at least periodically recurring reduction of 
the supply by over-shooting; and yet they have maintained 
themselves, and are found to-day in a stock which gives 
promise of surviving indefinitely if it shall be given fair op- 
portunity. 
One condition which unquestionably contributed to the 
security of the heath hen was found in its immunity from 
destruction by vermin. This favorable circumstance no 
longer exists ; for within recent years foxes have been intro- 
duced into Martha's Vineyard. They were liberated on the 
island out of revenge; and are likely to prove as mischievous 
as did the foxes of ancient time which that other avenger, 
Samson, let go with firebrands tied to their tails in the corn 
of the Philistines ; or as the pickerel which a malevolent 
Adirondack gi^ide planted in the trout waters of his 
enemy. 
As we have remarked before, the persistence of the heath ' 
hen on Martha's Vineyard is one of the most interesting 
phenomena in the history of American game birds. The 
total number of these grouse on their circumscribed island 
home must always have been comparatively insignificant, 
and they appear to have been pursued by man from ijie bp- 
Nature is kinder than man to her children. By a merci- 
ful provision the birds adapt themselves to changed condi- 
tions; learn how to evade new agencies which menace their 
existence, and to maintain their race in the face of unaccus 
tomed perils. Thus ground -nesting species confronted by 
prowling vermin may learn in course of time to buUd their 
nests in trees, and there lay their eggs and rear their young 
in security. But against man— the pursuer who walks on 
the ground, digs into the earth, climbs into the trees, floats 
on the water, reaches with his missiles into the air — no 
creature, be it swift footed or winged, can maintain itself ; 
that is to say, if it be good to eat and will fetch a price in 
the market. When one comes to study the history of the 
heath hen in America no fact presents itself more distinctly 
and irrefutably than this, that the bird was exterminated 
from its old-time ranges by no other agency than market- 
hunting. There has been preserved for us very explicit tes 
timony concerning this fact in one particular section, the 
brush plains of Long Island. "From one learn all.'* 
A letter written by Dr. Samuel L. Mitchill, of New York, 
to Alexander Wilson in the year 1810 records than the heath 
hen of Long Island then inhabited chiefly a district of from 
forty to fifty miles in length and not more than six or sevea 
in width, in Queens and Suffolk counties, which country, 
being covered with a growth of pitch pines, dwarf oaks and 
shrubs, was commonly known as "the brushy plains." In 
Dr. Mtchill's time thousands of cords of firewood were 
brought annually from these barrens to New York city, and 
experience having proved that in a term of forty or fif 
years the new growth of timber would be fit for the axe 
Dr. Mitchill prognosticated that the city would ' 'probably 
for ages derive fuel from the grouse grounds," and that "the 
reproduction of trees, and the protection they afford to the 
heath hens, would be perpetual, or, in other words, not cir 
cumscribed by any calculable time, provided the persecutors 
of the latter would be quiet." 
To be quiet, however, was -the very last thing in the world, 
the persecutors of the birds proposed for themselves, as Dr. 
Mitchill himself appears to have realized. They had not tk 
slightest interest in "perpetual protection" for the hea 
hens; there was money for them in the birds dead; and they 
were influenced as little by sentimentality as by the law. 
For there was law enough to protect the birds even then, if 
the law had been of any avail. In 1795 the Legislature 
enacted a law which forbade the killing of heath hens in 
Suffolk or Queens counties between April 1 and Oct. 5 
under a penalty of $2.50. But by 1810 the market price had 
risen to from $3.75 to $5 per brace; and so eager was the 
pursuit, Dr. Mitchill records, "that a large proportion of 
those they kill are but a few months old, and have not at- 
tained their complete growth." He adds: 
Notwithstanding the protection of the law, it is very common to 
disregard it. The retired nature of the situation favors this. It is 
well understood that an arrangement can be made which will blind 
and silence informers, and that the gun is fired with impunity for 
weeks before the time prescribed In the act. To prevent this unfair 
and unlawful practice, an association was formed a few years ago, 
under the title of the Brush Club, with the express and avowed in- 
tention of enforcing the game law. Little benefit, however, had re- 
sultel from its laudable exertions; and under a conviction that it 
was Impossible to keep the poachers away, the society decltaed. At 
present the statute may be considered as operating very little 
toward their preservation. Grouse, especially full-grown ones, are 
becoming less frequent. Their numbers are gradually diminishing 
and, assailed as they are on all sides almost without cessation, their 
scarcity may be viewed as foreboding theii- eventual extermination. 
The Long Island Brush Club must have been one of the 
pioneer game protective societies of this country. When we 
consider how feeble in supply was the heath hen, how pre- 
carious its hold on existence, how unique its place among 
the game birds of the continent, we may well regret the lack 
of success which attended the club's efforts in its behalf. 
