Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and ^Gun. 
Terms, ji^A^YB^^iogrs. A COPY, i NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER l9, 1896. 
I VOL. ZLVn.— No. 25. 
1 No. 846 Bboadwat, Nrw \okk. 
For Prospectus and Advertising Rates see Page it'. 
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and beautiful reproductions of original water colors, 
painted expressly for the Forest and Stream. The 
subjects are outdoor scenes: 
Jacksaipe Coming: In. "He's Got Them" (Qnail Shootine: ). 
Vigilant and Valkyrie. Bass Fishing' at Block Island. 
The plates are for frames 14 x 19 in. They are done in 
twelve colors, and are rich in effect. They are furnished 
to olu or new subscribers on the following terms: 
Forest and Stream one year and the set of four pictures. $5. 
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NEW YORK LIFE BUILDING 
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on Tuesdays Correspjndence intended for 
publication should reach us by Mondays and 
as much earlier as may be practicable. 
AUDUBON'S WILLOW PTARMIGAN. 
We give to-day in the sf ries of Audubon reproductions the 
ip^rtrait of the WiUow Ptarmigan, with the chapter from the 
iBiography descriptive of the bird. 
This ptarmigan is hardly known as a game bird outside of 
Newfoundland, where it is commonly pursued with dog and 
igun and is known as "partridge." It occurs in one form or 
[another in Labrador, northern Maine and in the British Pos- 
Isessions generally, hut as a bird for the sportsman is but lit- 
tle hunted except in the island mentioned. The Nova Scotia 
Game Society members are contemplating an attempt to in- 
troduce the willow ptarmigan into their country. 
Beautiful as is the plate of the willow ptarmigan, it of 
course can give no idea of the rich and vivid coloring of 
the birds and the surroundings of their summer home. 
The enlarged comb of the male in the breeding season is 
'bright crimson; the feathers on the side of his neck are rich 
1 reddish brown or rufous, the back feathers are dark orange 
i.biown barred with black and tipped with gray. The colors 
I of the female are more modest, as becomes her sex, being 
j tawny barred with black. The hen and her chicks are 
resting on a rock covered with gray green lichen, and the 
gieen barren sweeps away toward the sky. Near the birds 
grows the plant known as Labrador tea, and in the lower 
left hand corn r of the foreground areaome wild peas. Among 
the many beautiful plates of this great work this is one of 
i the most charming— a picture of bird life at hnme. 
The Forest akd Stream's reproductions of Audubon 
bird portraits in half-tone from the lare first edition are as 
follows, with dites of those already printed: 
Black Duck, Sept. 26, 1896. 
Prairie Chicken, Oct. 24. 
Oanvasback Dock, Nov. 21. 
WrDiiOw Ptarmigan, Dec. 19 
American Golden Plover, Jan, 38. 1897 
Shoveller Duok. 
Redhead Duck, 
Purple Sandpiper, 
condition that it is doubtful whether they can ever be 
used." 
Of these Miss Audubon writes: "They were sold by my 
grandmother, Mrs. J. J. Audubon, many years later. Two, 
the Snow Goose and the Great White Heron, are in my pos- 
session, having been given me by an utter stranger, who most 
liberally sent them to me, hearing I regretted owning none. 
This gentleman (whose name I withhold at his request) has 
a number set in the walls of his dining room. He wrote to 
me that his father bought them at a sale of old copper some 
years ago. Besides these and those owned by the museums 
there are a number of odd ones owned by different persons, 
of which I hear from time to time." 
THE HAZARD OF THE FIELD. 
With each recurring season, when shooters go afield and 
afloat in pursuit of game, accidents happen from the use of 
shotgun and rifle, and then betimes there come to the public 
reports of maiming or death accidentally inflicted by the 
use of such firearms. These accidents may be such as 
neither forethought nor prudence could guard against, yet 
they are almost invariably accredited to the criminal care- 
lessness of the offending individual, or to his stupidity. 
As the public sees such misfortunes, there is nothing to 
palliate, nothing to condone, nothing to excuse them. Let 
an accident happen as it may, if done with a gun, nearly 
everyone will consider that the man causing it is an unpar- 
donable offender, and the prejudgments of it are tenaciously 
held against him. The man who caused the accident may 
be grief -stricken and overwhelmed at the injury or death of 
his friend or h's victim, and would gladly take all the mis- 
fortune on himself could he do so. The accident might be 
buch as would have happened to anyone else under the 
same circumstances, nevertheless many of the men who can 
write exhaust their stock of invectives in publicly denounc- 
ing him; others declaim with self-righteous vehemence 
against him ; and all these self-constituttd censors may be 
many miles from the scene of the misfortune and know 
nothing of its circumstances except what they gather from 
rumor. As an accident with the gun or rifle is more or less 
sensational, many men consider it a fit subject for venting 
iheir splenetic utterances, though unconscious of the Phar- 
isaical implication which pervades their words, and Indiffer 
ent to the fact that their information is seldom full enough 
to warrant even a just opinion in private. 
Accidents in other vocations and avocations may happen 
and do happen every day. They are inseparable from life. 
The public, by observing that they are beyond the power of 
man to prevent, have come to accept them as a mournful 
matter of course. 
Society guards against the accidents of life as much as 
possible, and, failing betimes, exercises its sympathy and 
care for the unfortunates; and he who caused the injury, if 
blameless, is sympathized with as one suffering from a griev- 
ous misfortune himself. He who would take it upon him- 
self furiously and indignantly to inveigh against the ordi- 
nary accidents of life would draw but little attention to his 
own excellence by such means. 
It has already been told that there are some of the original 
Audubon copper plates still preserved in museums and else- 
where. Miss M. R. Audubon sends us this interesting note 
of some others, from her father's journal: "On July 19. 1845, 
the copper plates were greatly injured in a fire in Beaver 
street, though not destroyed. They are, however, in such a 
But accidents from the use of guns have come to be con- 
sidered a lawful subject for the disposal of such ill-tempered 
sayings as are not available at other times. These accidents 
are seemingly considered as special accidents, differing from 
other accidents. There are thousands of mechanisms in the 
industrial world which day by day swell the numbers of 
tbose who have passed away, and of those who go through 
life maimed in body, broken in spirit and incapacitated for 
life's struggles, yet, as these mechanisms are not made for 
the special purpose of killing, any accident caused by their 
ute is disassociated from such idea. 
But guns are made specially for killing purposes, and 
though they may be used ever eo legitimately in gport, an 
accident from their use nearly always is considered as the 
outcome of carelessness or negligence. The public is slow 
to learn that there will always be a certain percentage of 
accidents in the use of guns as there will be in the use of all 
mechanisms which have to deal with high powers, whether 
of horECS in harness, steam in boilers or other steam appli- 
ances, electricity in wires and motors, etc. Each peculiar 
force has its list of victims, ever increasing. What is true 
of the forces employed in the industrial world will be 
equally true of the forces used in the pursuit of game. 
There will be accidents which no care and forethought 
can- prevent. In the industrial occupations of life men are 
taught carefully, yet with all the knowledge and skill de- 
rived from teaching and experience serious accidents hap- 
pen. In sport with the gun many men have but a day or 
two each year, or but a few days at mo it; therefore it is not 
at all strange that they are awkward and at times thought- 
less in the handling of firearms 
The self-taught individual rarely thinks of his gun as being 
a dangerous weapon till he prepares to fire. He carries it 
full-cock on his shoulder, bearing with deadly menace on 
whoever may be walking behind him; or resting it on his 
forearm and pointing it forward, to bear on whatever may 
be before him, whether the same be man or dog. He is the 
man who pulls, muzzle first, his gun from the rear end of the 
wagon, or through a fence after he has crossed it, and some- 
thing catching the trigger the gun is discharged and he is 
shot. Such a,.man as he rests on the muzzle of his cocked 
gun, hand on muzzle and both under armpit— a dog jumps 
up on him and touches the trigger and again the same old 
accident occurs Or he carries the loaded gun in the wagon, 
takes it in hand to alight, slips and again there is a tragedy. 
And nearly all these occur from thoughtlessness or igno- 
rance, the result of a narrow personal experience, or neglect 
to learn from the writings of men of full knowledge, or from 
careless habit continued from careless beginnings. 
No man, be his experience great or small, can consider that 
he is handling his gun correctly if there is a possibility that 
from his imperfect manner of manipulating it he puts any 
of his fellows in danger. He should persist in carrying his 
gun muzzle upward or downward at angles which preclude 
all possibility of danger, and this till the discipline becomes 
so fixed that it becomes habit. He should never take a 
loadid gun into a wagon, nor leave it out of his hands with 
a load in it. If he sets down his gun it is often unexpi ctedly 
picked up by some meddlesome and perhaps ignorant inter- 
loper who is curious to understand its mechanism and to try 
its workings. As a general rule, when among strangers it is 
a safe presumption that if the owner of a gun wishes one to 
examine it he will ask him to do so; till he does so it will be 
a safe course to let it alone. 
From a standpoint of safety, the precautions necessary 
may be summe4 up in a few words: No shooter should 
place his gun with the muzzle pointing toward himself or 
anyone else. He should never carry a loaded gun in a 
wagon ; never cross a fence, or other obstruction where a 
fall is possible, without first putting his gun at half cock or 
at safety, or, if need be, removing the cartridges; and he 
should never put his gun out of his hands without first re- 
moving the cartridges when people are about. 
When he hears of an accident he should forbear saying "I 
told you so," and as for his opinion thereon he should con- 
sider that it is all had enough without adding his disap- 
proving opinion to it. He may look back in his own experi- 
ence and find a time when such an accident was possible to 
himself, a time when he was ignorant of proper methods, 
but when fortunately no accident happened to him, and in- 
stead of vituperating the offenders he should consider that 
there may be those deserving of sympathy as well as much 
0 deplore. 
OUB CHRISTMAS NUMBER. 
A rich treat is in store for those whose good fortune it 
shall be to sit down in a cozy corner with the Christmas 
Number of the Forest and Stream, which will be that of 
next week, dated Dec. 26 Here are some of the titles: 
A Camp Ghost Story By G W- M 
The Baron and the Wolves By Ernest Seton Thomp- 
son. With illustrations by the author. 
Stories of an Heroic Age- Charley Reynolds. By 
George Bird Grinnell. ,, 
Holland— Conclusion. By S. T. Hammond. 
A Letter from Uncle Lisha. By Rowland E. Robin- 
son. 
A Christmas AT Port Tyler's. By Fretfi, Mather. 
RuFFBD Gbouse SHOOTiNGf, FuU-page drawing byEdm. 
Osthaus, : ' 
The announcement with respect to Mr; Robinson's contri- 
bution is provisional; it may be deferred until the following 
issue. The only certain way to make sure of all the good 
things given in the Forest and Stream is to read the paper 
every week. 
With the new year will begin the foity-eighth volume. 
The prestige of the paper as the American sportsman's 
favorite journal will be maintained in 1897. The Forest 
AND Stream will be as inieresting, as instructive, as help- 
ful, as of old. It will contend not less sturdily for the pro- 
tection and advancement of the interests of field and stream, 
aad outdoor sport with rod and gun. 
