Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, 
M A Yeab. 10 Cts. a Copy. ^ 
Six Months, S2. : 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 8, 1897. 
J VOL. XLVni.— No. 23. 
■j No. 846 Broadway, New YoBK. 
NOTICE TO SUBSCRIBERS. 
Attention is directed to the new form of address labels on the 
wrappers of subscribers' copies. The label shows the date of the 
close of the term for which the subscription is paid. 
The receipt o£ the paper with such dated address label constitutes 
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may be avoided. 
For prospectus and advertising rates see page iii. 
Doubt not, therefore, sir, but that an^lingf is an 
art, and an art worth your learning'. The question 
is rather, whether you be capable of learning it ? 
For angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to 
be bom so ; I mean, with inclinations to it, though 
both may be heightened by discourse and practice ; 
but he that hopes to be a good angler, must not 
only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, 
but he must bring a large measure of hope and 
patience, and a love and propensity to the art 
itself ; but having once got and practiced it, then 
doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant 
that it will prove to be like virtue, a reward to 
itself. Izaak Walton. 
Cbe forest ana Stream's Platform PlanK, 
"T/ie sale of game should be prohibited at all seasons." 
NAILS DRIVEN IN 1897.— No. V. 
PENNSYLVANIA. 
Act of May 27, 1 897.— Section 5. That it shall 
be unlawful at any period or season of the year 
to kill, entrap, or pursue with intent to kill or en- 
trap, any elk, deer, fawn, wild turkey, pheasant, 
grouse, auall, partridge or woodcock, in any part 
of this Commonwealth for the purpose of selling 
the same. And it shall be unlawful for the pro- 
prietor, manager, clerk or agent of any market, or 
other person, firm or corporation, to purchase, 
sell or expose for sale any elk, deer, fawn, wild tur- 
key, pheasant, grouse, quail, partridge or wood- 
cock killed or entrapped within this Common- 
wealth. That It shall be unlawful for the propri- 
etor, manager, clerk or agent of any market or 
any other person, firm or corporation to purchase 
for the purpose of again selling the same any elk, 
deer, fawn, wild turkey, pheasant, grouse, quail, 
partridge or woodcock killed or entrapped within 
this Commonwealth. [Penalty, $100 for every 
elk or deer; $25 for every hind.] 
aOVERNMENT GAME PRESERVES. 
We print on another page the outline of a scheme of 
Government game preserves as thought out and submitted 
by Mr. W. G. Van Name. The proposal is that the Na 
tional Government shall set apart in certain States, out of 
its own possessions or out of territories to be secured for 
the purpose, certain reservations in localities frequented 
by migratory fotv'l, upon which shooting shall be forljid- 
den, to the end that the reserves so constituted shall be 
game refuges for the birds on their flights north and 
south.. 
This is not the first time that in despair of effectual 
action by individual States for the protection of migratory 
wildfowl, students of the problem have turned to the Gov- 
ernment to secure from it that which the States have 
refused to give. Congressional intervention for the enact- 
ment of a national game law has repeatedly been sug- 
gested; but the always sufiioient answer to the proposition 
is that such action is not within the province of Congress. 
Game protection belongs to the police power of the State, 
and is something that must be exercised for itself by the 
State, and matters belonging to it do not come within the 
jurisdiction of the National Government. Mr. Van Name, 
however, appears now for the first time to have suggested 
a plan which is free from such objection. His proposition 
is simply to extend in their application principles which 
are already in practical operation. In the National Park 
for example, which is a Government reservation lying 
within State boimdaries, the Government exercises the 
same unquestioned jurisdiction with respect to game as to 
other affairs, and hunting is forbidden absolutely at all 
times. It is within the province of the general Govern- 
ment to acquire lands for various purposes in the several 
States, and it could acquire tracts for game reserve pur- 
poses. Having come into possession of such territories, it 
could make such regulations as it might deem fit for their 
control. On the ground of constitutionality, therefore, we 
believe that no valid objection could be brought against 
Mr. Van Name's scheme of Government game reserves. 
Nor is there any question that such a system put into 
operation would be of tremendous advantage to the game 
supply, and would go far toward a solution of the ever 
present problem of conserving the parent stock. The pro- 
posal is to select such places as are most frequented by' the 
game on its northern and southern flights and in which 
under present conditions it is most exposed to destruction. 
Such locations will readily suggest themselves to all wild- 
fowl shooters, both on the Atlantic coast and in the West, 
Observation and experience teach us that if these particu- 
lar localities were perfectly protected throughout the sea- 
son the supply of birds would be conserved beyond com- 
putation. 
We invite careful reading and consideration of the sub- 
ject as set forth in our game columns. Is the plan a prac- 
ticable one? 
TEE LAND OF MEMORY. 
One who has reached or passed the middle milestone of 
his journey, and still loves the fields for the best they have 
to give, sees nothing about him or beyond him so beauti- 
ful as the enchanted land of youth, which lies far beyond 
him, half veiled in the golden haze of memory. 
Long ago he beheld in the mirage of youth and hope 
scenes as fair as these, ever before him, but ever receding 
as he advanced. They were never nearer than to-morrow, 
then faded, then vanished. Now he knows that he shall 
never find in all the world a land so perfect as that which 
hes so far behind him. He remembers it not as a land of 
the fancy, but of blissful realities. 
Its steadfast cold was exhilarating, its golden sunshine 
never too hot, its winters never too long; its genial springs, 
its balmy summers, its mellow autumns, never too short, 
for the months of each season were longer than years are 
now. What greenness of fields, what profusion of flowers 
and fruits, what gorgeousness of woods, what immaculate 
whiteness of snow, each season held! 
What delectable hills its woodlands climbed to glorified 
heights, from depths of sylvan shade where illusive voices 
called and echoed, not the piping of thrushes nor murmur 
of pines nor liquid monotone of streams, but strange and 
mysterious voices, perhaps of woodland sprites. There 
were never sweeter songs of birds nor dreamier lullaby of 
wind-swept pines, nor more musical babble of brooks 
spilled from moss-rimmed pools whose liquid amber was 
streaked with silver gleams of trout eager to catch the 
simplest lure. 
Where the brook crept through the sprawling alders 
unnumbered woodcock bored the fat mold; where it 
joined the broader stream, hordes of ducks thronged the 
marshes and wrinkled the broad, slow current with their 
braided wakes. Beneath, in watery aisles, pillared with 
lily stems and roofed with purple pads, pickerel, great 
pike and bass swam in stately procession. There the 
muskrat built his domed lodge' and' kept the marshes pop- 
ulous in the depths of winter with his busy, unseen, silent 
tribe, and all the year the stealthy mink, richest prize of 
the young trapper, prowled along the shores, preying on 
fish, flesh and fowl. 
When April sun and shower steeped the woods in the 
balm of spring, they boomed far and near with the grouse's 
drum-beat; in autumn, with the frequent thunder of his 
flight. Then pigeons thronged to feasts of beech mast; 
squirrels barked and chattered in every nut tree; un- 
broken bevies of quail piped in the stubble fields. 
Cornfields were not valued according to their yield of 
grain, but according to the raccoons that were attracted to 
them, and the wild, jolly night hunts they afforded. Every 
upland and lowland cover harbored a fox, and there was 
not a day of the hunting season that the tuneful cry of 
hounds might not be heard swelling and dying on hill 
crest and in hollow. There was even a possibility of shots 
at deer and bear that kept one always hopeful of such 
happy chances, and there was a legendary panther, whose 
gruesome presence one felt in the silent glens where twi- 
light and darkness alternately brooded. 
All the happy land and the pleasant waters were an in- 
exhaustible preserve guarded by no keeper, placarded with 
no trespass signs, but as free to all comers as to the birds 
of passage. 
Just as it was then, it lies behind you now, traversed by 
shadowy forms of comrades, but you may not enter it — 
only may you look backward upon it through the mist of 
years and of eyes grown dim with age. Yet blest is he 
who so beholds it, and in such possession holds it. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
This has been a great year for the Plank, as the anti- 
sale of game laws which we are printing from week to 
week at the head of this page so well show. To-day, as 
the fifth of the series, is given the provision of the Penn- 
sylvania law which was approved by Governor Hastings 
last week. The section is ironclad, and rivets are supplied 
in another provision which forbids any export of game 
from the State. By this new law Pennsylvania reclaims 
for the use and enjoyment of her citizens at large the 
game resources which have been monopolized by the mar* 
kets. There is no question that if the law shall have any* 
thing like fair and adequate enforcement a great change is 
in store for the sportsmen of the Keystone State, who will 
no longer be compelled to return empty-handed from 
game covers depleted by the snarers. The bill was intro- 
duced and championed by Hon. Frank G. Harris, Chair- 
man of the House Fish and Game Committee. Mr. Harris 
has been for many years a constant reader of the Forest 
AND Stream; and of course he was sound and firm on this 
question. 
Conditions similar to those which have made abandoned 
farms in New England wild game covers prevail in India 
with abandoned tea plantations. Large areas upon which 
attempts were made to cultivate tea have been given over 
to wilderness again, and are now the haunts of jungle 
fowl and pheasants. And in India as in America the 
gradual and steady decrease of shooting resources is such 
as to make very acceptable to the sportsman every such 
reprisal, by which a bit of wilderness is restored and a 
feathered game refuge established. 
The most notable game restocking enterprise of the day 
is that which has been so successful in reestablishing the 
wild deer in Vermont. Next October the law will be off, 
and for the first time within the experience of most Green 
Mountain Boys of our generation they may then hunt the 
deer on their native heath. In these restorations of game 
resources we of to-day are only putting into execution the 
projects of a half century ago. In the story sent by Antler, 
and printed to-day, of an elk herding experiment in the 
fifties, reference is made to a scheme proposed at that time 
by Professor Baird and others, that the Government should 
restock with elk in New York, Pennsylvania and else- 
where lands not suited to agricultural purposes. Presuma* 
bly nothing ever came of the project; at all events, there 
are no elk now in these States outside of preserves. Mean* 
while there remain vast areas of wilderness wherein, if our 
fathers had had the sense and foresight to provide pro- 
tection, the indigenous stock of elk might yet be repre* 
sented. 
We spoke the other day of the persistency and tenacity 
with which the unworthier classes of animal life, which 
we call vermin, maintain themselves. An interesting 
illustration of this is afforded in the experience of a trap- 
per which a Boston correspondent sends us. Plying hia 
vocation in eastern Massachusetts, this one man took dur- 
ing the last fall and winter one otter, seven raccoons, three 
foxes, thirty two mink, two hundred skunks, and seven 
hundred and three muskrats, making a total of nine hun- 
dred and forty-six fur-bearing animals. He has operated 
on the Nashua, Sudbury and Charles rivers, and Rosemary 
Brook. During the second week in March he caught in 
five consecutive days muskrats to the numbers as follows: 
forty -three, thirty-seven, thirty-two, thirty-five and twenty- 
five. Thi smust be considered a remarkable record, hav- 
ing been made so close to the haunts of civilization. 
The dealers in millinery supplies in this city bestirred 
themselves to prevent the Governor's signature of a bill 
passed by the Albany Legislature forbidding the traflac in 
the plumage of wild birds, and they were so successful in 
their arguments with the Governor that he permitted the 
bill to perish on Monday last by withholding from it his 
signature. The millinery interest was too strong to Com'- 
bat successfully. 
