Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1897. 
TEE»fs, $i A Year 10 Cts. A Copy / 
Six Months, $2. f 
( VOL. 2LVIII.— No. 5. 
1 No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
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ON A FISHERMAN. 
A fisher, while he angled in a brook, 
A dead man's skull by chance hungf on his hook ; 
The pious man m pity did it take 
To bury it, a grave with ^s hand did make ; 
And as he digged, found gold ; thus to good men. 
Good turns with good turns are repay'd again. 
Alexander Brome, J 664* 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Among tlie interesfcmg game protective and. game exploit- 
ing Bcbemes of the day is the one just entered upon by the 
Province of Quebec. The system hitherto in force has been 
to exact a license fee from resident sportsmen, a permit to 
kill birds and animals costing $30; one to trap fur -bearing 
animals $!i5, and one to kill only birds $20 Uodcr the new- 
order, the entire unoccupied territory of the Province suit- 
able for fishing or hunting -will be divided into tracts of ter- 
ritory varying from 30 to 400 square miles each, and 
these individual tracts will be leased to sportsmen at certain 
fixed annual rentals. The leases will cany with them the 
exclusive right to hunting and fishing, and to trapping the 
fur-bearing animals. One who leases a tract of land for 
hunting purposes will control it absolutely, Laving the right 
to fence it, to employ wardens for keeping othtr people off, 
and in every way to maintain his exclusive privilege upon 
it. The non-resident license being abolished, the lessee of a 
tract will have the privilege of inviting all his friends to 
share in his privileges without cost to him or to themselves. 
The Government will give such protection as its newly 
organized service will secure to protect the lessee in his 
exclusive rights. A Government survey is now in progress 
marking out the boundaries of the territory which is to be 
leased, and the several lots will be sold a'; auction in March 
or April of this year. The territory comprises all of Labra- 
dor, apart of Gaspe and a portion of Ottawa Superior. 
So far as the Quebec authorities shall be successful in 
renting their wild lands they will convert their territory into 
one vast game preserve made up of individual tracts, upon 
which, as each club or individual shall protect his own 
grounds, better protection will be secured for the entire 
ar^a than could ever be attained if the wild country were 
to be controlled by the Provincial authorities alone. 
noraena going to do about this? Obviously only two courses 
are open lo them to choose from: Either the} must demon- 
strate that the learned psychologist is in error and that fishes 
have no memory, or they must acknowledge that they are 
wrong in their conclusions and that the seat of the memory 
is not in the coating of the brain, but is somewhere else, 
Until they have done one or the other of these two things 
scientific circles will continue to be shaken. Mean- 
tim3 we think that many of our angling readers will 
agree with the coi elusions of tbe karned ppychologiit. 
ties almost unrestrained power to hedge about the killing of 
the game with rules and regulations as strict as those whirh 
a private individual may exercise for the protection of his 
own live stock. 
Oue of the most successful fish stocking enterprises lately 
entered upon is the transferring of fish from tbe Chesapeake 
and Ohio Canal to the waters of the Potomac River. This, 
as n e have already recorded, is under the direction of Dr, 
Geo Massaraore, of Baltimore, the Chief Deputy Game 
Warden of Maryland; and the work has been well done. 
Thousands of fish, comprising white perch and black bass, 
have been taken from the canal, whereas otherwise they 
would have been seined unlawfully for market or would 
have perished as the canal dried, up in the spring, The work 
is receiving high commendation, particularly from the 
angleia of Wathinglon, who are warm in their praises of 
Or, Massamore's management of it. 
Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Chas. W. Dahney, Jr , 
has prepared a plan for the consolidation into one great de- 
partment of science of all the existing several Government 
bureaus which are maintained at public expense for the pro- 
motion of science and the development of the country's re- 
sources. These include the Department of Agriculture, with 
its Bureau of Economic Mammalogy and Ornithology, and 
the Fish Commission. Mr. Dabney's argument for the pro- 
posed change is that such a reorganization and placing of 
the different bureaus under one head would add to their 
individual and collective efficiency. 
One of the first, bills introduced into the Utah Lfgislature 
by a female representative was a measure to forbid the wear- 
ing of high hats in theaters; the Governor of Utah or some 
other Western State was importuned by a woman to intro- 
duce into his message a recommendation to forbid the wear- 
ing of corsets; New York has a bill to punish by imprison- 
ment or fine anyone who publicly mutilates, tramples upon, 
or otherwise defaces or defiles the flag of the United States 
or the flag of the State; and Maine has a bill proposing the 
license of sportsmen's guides. One may readily appreciate 
and sympathize with the motive which probably is at the 
foundation of the proposed guide license law. The com- 
missioners of Maine are quite well aware of the systematic 
and prevailing lawlessness of guides and sportsmen in the 
woods in the close season. The guide license system would 
involve on the part of the guide returning from an excursion 
to the woods a detailed statement of the happenings of the 
trip with respect to time, locality and game killed; and 
under the system the guide would be made respon- 
sible for any violation of the law committed with 
his connivance and consent. It is readily to be understood 
tbat if this rule were in operation it would go far toward put- 
ting an end to such unlawful game destruction. The average 
guide would not be so ready to kill a moose before the season 
opened, that he might preserve its head for the sportsman 
who came in after the law was off; nor would he be so will- 
ing to conduct a visitor into the woods in close time, that the 
employer might himself do the unlawful deed, if he knew 
that upon his return ont of the wilderness he would be com- 
pelled under oath to make returns of what had been done. 
Scientific circles in Europe are shaken to their foundations, 
their centers and their peripheries, over the discovery of a 
learned psychologist. This psychologist has discovered that 
fishes possess the faculty of remembering, and this discovery 
brings grief and perplexity in its wake. The trouble lies 
here: It appears that all investigators of mental phenomona 
are unanimous in believing that the seat of the memory lies 
in the coating of the hrain; hence a brain without a coating 
cannot possess the power of remembering. Bat the brains 
of fishes have no coating, hence fish cannot have memory— 
and yet they do. The learned psychologist believes that his 
investigations demonstrate that a fish remembers the prick 
that he has received from the hook, and may remember an 
individual who has fed him, as well as the place and the 
time where he has been accustomed, to receive food. He 
implores the observations of other jiersons ioterested in fish 
to confirm or disprove his belief. What now are the other, 
presumably not less learned, investigators of mental phe- 
For instance, we have the names of several individuals who 
with their guides killed moo e in Maine in 1896 before the 
the law was off: we saw the other day a photograph of one 
man and his guide standing beside a moose they had killed 
in September. Now these m^n went into the woods and 
killed their game, and in defiance of the law, only because 
they were confident that the employer could escape 
from the State without detection. If the guide had 
been compelled to make a swornreturn of the circumstances, 
we are sure that in the ca«e of this particular individual who 
had himself photographed with his illicit booty the killing 
never would have taken place. As a game protective meas- 
ure the proposed license system has very much in its favor, 
and it is possible that if it were to be proposed and were to 
hi adopted purely as a game protective expedient it might 
be upheld by the courts as a constitutional measure. We 
have by no means yet determined fully in this country what 
may or may not be done for game proteciion. The decisions 
of the higher courts are all in favor of giving Stite authori- 
Aside from the purely protective aspect, however, the 
license system may have Utile said in its favor. The con- 
tention that a guide's occupation is one of skill and respon- 
sibility, in a degree calling for a license as a test of fitness, is 
idle talk The guide's is not a f killed cccupation demand- 
ing civil service examinations and merit systems, The work 
of paddling a canoe, packing duffle across a carry, building 
camp and cutfintr firewood, no more ranks with the skilled 
arts than do the guide's home farm work of raising potatoes, 
foddering stock, churning and chores, 
As for the reports which licensed guides^would be"re- 
quired to dve of their doings and the doings of their em- 
ployer-! in the woods, these would be hardly less distasteful 
to the law abiding sportsman. Such a system of rule, regula- 
tion, inspection and detail would rob an outing of its satis- 
faction. For what is the chief compensation of a plunge into 
the woods, a free holiday of wildness in tha wilderness, if it lies 
not in the throwing off of conventionalities and restraints? 
Theinvigoration of body and spirit comes not of the ozone 
and the sunlight alone, but of the abandon as well. It is 
this delicious fi-eedom— freedom, not lawlessness — which 
is menaced by a proposed system calling for oflBcial details 
of the trip There is danger that with our multitudinous 
statutes governing the minulise of sport, with our artificial 
and fantastic and often in a growing degree ridiculous code 
of what ]s and what is not truly sportsmanlike, we are 
likely to forget the fine old arts of shooting and fishing. If 
we must regulate our every coming and going by meddle- 
some rule, imp rtinent regulation and a wet-blanket code, 
the peculiar delight of the woods will have been lost to us 
forever. 
Things will have come to such a pass by and by that a 
man will have to show a civil service certificate before he 
can tell a fish story. 
There has recently been established in this town a society 
for the reviving of ancient mysteries, and it is giveii out that 
a temple will be built at an enormous cost as a fitting shrine 
for the oracles and priests of the new order. The most 
ancient mystery in the world probably is how that grouse 
got away. It is one which has puzzled and baffled succes. 
sive generations of mankind from the time of the cave 
dwellers down through the flint-spear, sling, arquebus and 
flmt-lock stages to our own hammerless and smokeless arms 
of to-day. 
Senator Sanger has introduced in the New York Senate a 
bill to repeal Section 249 of the game law, permitting the 
sale of game all tbe year around. This is the most impor- 
tant game measure of the entire list likely to come before the 
Legislature this session. It should have the support of 
sportsmen throughout the State; and one effective means of 
showing this support would be for each interested citizen to 
address hi-s Senator and Assemblyman urging the passage of 
the Sanger repeal bill. 
It will be recalled that the New York (city) Association 
for the Protection of Game has come to an understanding 
with the marketmen by which the two interests agree to a 
compromise as to game selling. The proposed seasons for pos- 
session and sale as assented to are: For venison, Aug. '61 to 
Oct. 81 for deer killed in the State, and Aug. 31 to March 1 
for venison from other States. Wildfowl, April 1 to Sept. 1 ; 
quail, Oct. 1 to March 1; woodcock and grouse, Aug. 16 to 
March 1. This involves an opening of the quail season one 
month earlier than now, and an extension of the selling sea- 
sons of all game named beyond what the statute would pro- 
vide if the laws were amended simply by the repeal of Sec- 
tion 249. The State Association at Syracuse the other day 
refused to unite with the city society in approving such a 
compromise. 
The tenth annual banquet of the xMegantic Club in Boston 
last week was, as always, a most enjoyable occasion. The 
banqueting hall was" elaborately and fittingly decorated with 
trophies of the hunt ; the attendance of members and guests 
was large, and the after-dinner speaking was most happy in 
its spirit. The Megantic membership is full, with many on 
the wailing list; the club's possessions are being improved 
every year, and the organization is in a prosperous and flour , 
shing c o JUiiion, 
