Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
f NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 18 9 7. \ 
TiiRMs, $4 A YmlB. 10 Cts. a Copy, 
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VOL. XLVIII.— No. 2. 
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Fly-fishing; gives mote varied play and gft-eater 
fexercise to the mascles ; it bestows a keener excite- 
ment ; it intensifies the perceptive faculties ; it re- 
qtjires nicer judgment than bait-fishings quicker 
and more delicate manipulation, and greater 
promptness In emergencies ; it is more humanizing' 
in its influences ; it is beautiful in its associations, 
and poetic in the fancies it begets. 
— Chas. Hallock. 
TRBJ LION AND THE UNICORN IN FLORIDA. 
In the year 1563 John Hawkins, father of the British 
slave trade, set sail from Plymouth on a negro-selling expe- 
dition to the West Indies and the Spanish Main, "Serve 
Grod daily, love one anotber, preserve your victuals, beware 
of fire, and keep good company''— ^ that is, keep your ship in 
company with the others — were the sailing instructions lie 
gave his captains. If this were tbe place for its telling, the 
story would be interesting of bow the English seamen, mak- 
ingfirst forthe coast of A.fiica , inveigled their victims into the 
pens below decks and then sailed away with them to the 
Spanish settlements in America; and of how, arriving there, 
and orders having been promulgated by the royal governors 
to forbid trading with the Englishmen, Hawkins manned his 
guns, fired some shot, made a show of bombarding the settle- 
ments, and so persuaded the Spaniards that despite roya 
decrees they might buy his negroes if they wanted to, or at 
all events ]f he wanted them to. But it is not with Hawkins 
the slave trader, but with Hawkins the naturalist that we 
have to do here. 
The old voyagers recorded a vast store of quaint and 
curious lore respecting the phenomena of nature observed 
by them. The new wor^d was peopled by creatures strange 
and marvelous, and the accounts written of them by the 
explorers are for the most part simple and ingenuous, and 
marked by a graphic delineation not to be improved upon 
even now. Sometimes in the chronicles we find men- 
tion of creatures which it is difiicult for us to identify. Such 
was the Florida unicorn, of which record is made in the 
story of this voyage of Hawkins. 
On their way home in 1564 the fleet coasted along Florida 
and put into the Eiver May, now the St. John's, to visit the 
French Huguenots, who had established a fortification under 
Laudonneire. There in Florida John Sparke, the chronicler 
of the expedition, tells us, they found "deer marvelous 
store, with divers other beasts and fowl serviceable to man;" 
and among other species there were unicorns : 
'■The Floridians have pie 3es of unicorns' liorns, which they wear 
about their necks, whereof the Frenchmen obtained many pieces. 
Of those unicorns they have many ; for that they do afQrm it to be a 
beast with one horn, wbich, coming- to the river to drink, putteth the 
same into the water before he drinketh. Of this unicorn"s horn 
there are many of our company that, having gotten the same of the 
Frenchmen, trought home thereof to show." 
What was the Florida unicorn, this creature with one 
horn which it plunged into the water before drinking? 
Sparke gives no further particulars of it. To say that it 
was a unicorn and that a unicorn is a unicorn is not to give 
light, for we do not know what a unicorn is. They did not 
know in those days. The Hawkins sailors who took home 
fiheir specimens of the Florida umcorn to show as one of the 
wonders of the new world, with their hazy, hearsay de- 
scription of the beast, only added to the confusion already 
existing and due to the multiplicity of articles cherished in 
the old world as curiosities and reputed to Iw unicorns' 
horns. From the time of Pliny down to that of Hawkins, 
G-reek, Latin, German, French and English savants dis- 
cussed the identity of the unicorn and no two ever agreed as 
to what it was, Some said it divided the hoof and others 
that it did not; some described it as of the size of a sheep, 
others declared that it was as big as an elephant; it was 
identified as the ox, the wild ass, rhinoceroKS, oryx, a 
dozen other beasts. A recent caller at the Foeest and 
Stream gave it as his opinion that the unicorn of Csesar 
was the reindeer. 
Shortly before this Frobisher had carried home from his 
voyage to A.merica, in the search for the Northwest Pas- 
sage, a narwhal tusk, and this took its place with other 
objects in the world's collection of unicorn horns. But the 
narwhal belongs to the latitude north of 65° K, and we 
may not conjecture that the Florida unicorn was a nar- 
whal unless we assume that in the course of the extensive 
barter, which is known to have been carried on in those 
times, this product of the far north ' passed from hand to 
band toward the south in exchange for shells of the southern 
seas, until it came into the possession of the Floridians and 
was added to the . barbarous adornments hung about their 
necks. This theory cannot be entertained, for it does not 
account for the creature rejiorted by Hawkins as alive in 
Florida and coming down to the water to drink; the nar- 
whal lives in the sea; it does not come down to the river to 
drink, no more than a deer climbs trees to eat lilypads. 
The Florida Indians to day wear as an ornament the bill 
of the ivory-billed woodpecker. A study of the current 
fashions of adornment and those of the aborigines, as pic- 
tured by an artist who was with the Frenchmen visited by 
Hawkins, shows that there has been no change from that day 
to this in the general character of trinkets, and as the ivory 
bills are worn now, they probably were worn then. Per- 
haps Hawkins's unicorn horn was the woodpecker's bill. If 
any shall object that this is to make of the unicorn an un- 
duly insignificant creature, it may be said in retort that it were 
better to light on something, even the bill of a bird, than to 
consign the unicorn and his horn to the realm of fable. 
When we applied the other day to Dr. DeWitt Webb, presi- 
dent of the St. Augustine Literary and Scientific Society, 
for information respecting the present existence in Florida of 
anything answering to Hawkins's unicorn, he frivolously ob- 
served that probably Hawkins had taken a horn himself; 
that is to say, that there was no unicorn, a conclusion in 
which we are reluctant' to concur, for it means the oblitera- 
tion also of the lions which once prowled through the piney 
woods and skulked in the hamaks. There were lions in 
Florida in the days of Hawkins and the unicorn. Says 
Sparke 
Of beasts in this country besides deer, foxes, hares, polecats, 
coueys, ounces and leopards, I am not able certainly to say; but it is 
thought that there are lions and tigers as well as unicorns -lions 
espscially, if it be true that is said of the enmity between them and 
the unicorns; for there is no beast but hath his enemy, as the coney 
the polecat, the sheep the wolf, the elephant the rhinoceros, and so of 
evei y heast the like, insomuch that whereas the one is the other can- 
not be missing:. 
That is a delicious bit of reasoning for you. There were 
unicorns, ergo lions. No lions of fancy these, but lions of 
logic; and how to overcome logical lions in one's pathway is 
something not laid down in the manuals of big-game hunting. 
SIB HENRY HALFORD. 
The announcement ot the death of Sir Henry Halford, 
who died in London on Monday last, will recall to many 
minds the days when long-range rifle shooting was as inter- 
esting to the general public in this country as yachting has 
been since. In those days— from 1875 to 1880— Sir Henry 
Halford was a prominent figure in all the international rifle 
contests that took place, and whether as host at home or as 
guest in this country, he was ever the same genial, cheery, 
fair-minded sportsman. Many an American who was inter, 
ested in rifle shooting twenty years ago will feel a sense 
of personal loss in reading the announcement of his death. 
Henry St. John Halford was born in 1888, and received 
his education at Eton and Oxford. On the death of his 
father in 1849 he succeeded to the baronetcy, and from this 
time on took a prominent part in the affairs of Leicester- 
shire. He was interested in all outdoor sports, but was best 
known to Ainericans in conaection -syith rifle shooting 
Upon his estate in Leicestershire he had a private rifle range, 
and he devoted much time to practicing there. 
For many years, beginning in 1872, he shot on the Eng- 
lish team which competed with teams from Ireland and 
Scotland for the Elcho shield, and often captained his team 
with judgment and success. In 1875 Sir Henry Halfori 
entertained the American rifle teams that visited England, 
and in 1877 he brought over a British team to compete for 
tiie Centennial trophy and the championship of the world. 
After two days' shooting, beginning Sept. 14, 1877, the 
American team defeated the British by a score of 3,334 to 
3,342. The best score made by the British team was Sir 
Henry's, 413. 
In July, 1880, a return match was shot at Wimbledon, 
when Sir Henry Halford's team defeated the Americaus by 
about 80 points. In 1883 he again visited this country 
as captain of a team to shoot a military rifle match at Creed- 
moor. The British were successful on this occasion also, 
winning by 176 points. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
In their report for 1895, just issued, the New York Com- 
missioners of Fisheries, Game and Forests recommend 
that "All bills relating to the fisheries, game and forest in- 
terests of the State should be referred to them for their con- 
sideration by the legislative committees in charge before ac- 
tion is taken upon them." That depends altogether upon the 
Commissioners. Sometimes their opinion of proposed legis* 
lation is worth having and' sometimes it is not. President 
Davis issued a pronunciamento of the Commission's endorse- 
ment of the foresty amendment job at the last election ; and 
the people repudiated the Commission's recommendation by 
an adverse'majority of over 300,000 votes. 
Commissioner Henry O. Stanley, of Maine, tells us that 
the Swedes in the vicinity where the black game from 
Sweden were put out last year report that they hear the birds 
calling occasionally in the morning. There appears to be 
no doubt that the black game bred last summer, and there is 
probability that the newcomers may become established as a 
permanent addition to the Maine game supply. Of the 
capercailzie nothing is known; they have not been seen; 
but this may be due to the fact of their more pronounced 
wildness and seclusion in the depth of the wilderness The' 
expected consignment of black game and capercailzie for 
Maine last fall was not received. 
A correspondent writes that he has been reading the For- 
est AND Stream for many years, and it was not until he 
happened upon one of Mr. Hammond's stories of the old 
days at Holland that he found in it anything to indicate that 
the flask was one of the necessary articles of an outfit for 
the field. If our correspondent had read the sportsmen's 
papers of forty years ago, he would have found the flask 
much more in evidence. From a perusal of the chronicles 
of those days one would with certainty draw the conclusion 
that though a man might gj fishing without hcoks, and 
hunting without a gun, no sporting excursion on land or 
water would be a success if by sad mischance the bottle 
were left at home. We set out very early in the history of 
the Forest and Stream to publish a journal which should 
differ from its predecessors in this respect. There is little 
wonder then that, as our Virginia correspondent avers, .one 
may have read the stories of shooting and fishing in these 
pages without learning from them that the flask was an es- 
sential equipment for the field. 
That is a very satisfactory report which comes to us from 
Secretary Kimball, of the Massachusetts Fish and Game 
Protective Association, teUing of the efficient and summary 
ways in which grouse snarers were brought to book by the 
officers of the State police. The case is all the more note- 
worthy because of the impudent aggressiveness of the trap- 
pers who appear by their truculent and menacing carriage 
to have terrorized the law-abiding citizens of the community. 
As is usually the way in such affairs, prompt and determined 
action demonstrated the emptiness of the bluster of these fel- 
lows, and showed that there was no difficulty in putting an 
end to their work, provided only the public officials who 
were paid to prosecute them would do their duty. The real 
confidence of the violators of the game laws lies not in any 
notion that they actually could frighten the community into 
letting them alone provided the community really t;ared to 
interfere with them. They put on a bold front only because 
htey think that the officials do not mean business. 
