Forest and Stream 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, 84 a "Vbar. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Srs Months, $2. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 28, 1897, 
J VOL. XLVIX.— No. 9. 
■j No. 846 Bkoadwat, New 'Vore. 
But for the practical part, it is that that makes 
an angler; it is diligence, and observation, and 
practice, and an ambition to be the best in the art, 
that must do it. I will tell you, scholar, I once 
heard one say, " I envy not him that eats better 
meat than I do, nor him that is richer, or that 
wears better clothes than I do, I envy nobody but 
him, and him only, that catches more fish than I 
do/* And such a man is like to prove an angkr; 
and this noble emulation I wish to you and all 
young anglers. Izaak Walton. 
Haulers are invited to nend m the names of f riends wlio 
might be. interested in a current copy of Hie Forest and Stream. 
We shall he glad to forward a specimen number to any address 
which may he fnrnished us for that purpose. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
This la the time of the year when rudely civilized cities 
and towns rid themselves of surplus stray dogs by mayors' 
proclamations authorizing the promiscuous shooting by 
the public of unlicensed dogs running at large. In Jersej' 
City, for example, numerous squads of small boys have 
been holding dog lynching bees. The demoralizing, bru- 
talizitig and disgusting character of these methods should 
render recourse to them impossible in a self-respecting com- 
munity. The S. F, P, 0. A. of this city has shown how 
the dog, whether with or without an owner and guardian, 
can be taken care of without outraging decency. 
So much depends upon the point of view. While 
United States Senators, State Legislatures, Audubon socie- 
ties, sportsmen and others are seeking to discourage the 
destruction of song birds, the fashion makers and the 
fashion journals are doing all they can to promote the use 
of bird feathers for dress. The September number of a 
wide'y circulated fashion paper published in this city 
shows bird adornment of hats as the vogue, and treats its 
readers to a paper on "home taxidermy for women." 
"Numbers of our common American birds," the article 
tells us, "yield wings, tails and feathers, which will serve 
admirably for the decoration of hats"; and . there are 
named specifically for the various colors, the bluebird, the 
indigo tinch, purple grackle, yellow warbler, goldfinch, 
and breast of the meadow lark. "Dwellers near the sea 
or the Great Lakes will hardly require to be told that the 
smaller gulls and terns atford beautiful material for deco- 
rating hats." "Numerous browns and buffs are supplied 
by upland game birds and shore birds," which "may be 
purchased cheaply at almost any market." The directions 
which follow, telling how with a carving knife to "chop off 
the wings close to the body, and cut off the tail," are so 
explicit that every woman of economical bent may be her 
own song-bird skinner, and deck her hat with home- 
butchered products "in lieu of the costly articles handled 
by the milliner." It is instructive sometimes to get the 
point of view from which other people see things. 
We hfear much about the extraordinary perils of the 
Klondike trip; but that there are prosaic hazards for Klon- 
dikers far this side of Alaska was illustrated the other 
day by the tragic death of Robert Jarvis Gilbert, in the 
wilderness of the Algoma district of Canada. Gilbert was 
a well-known journalist and author, and was numbered 
among Foeest axd Stkeam's contributors. He was bound 
for the Klondike country, as a correspondent of the Lon- 
don Graphic, and was engaged in preparing sketches of 
western Canada on his w»y. On Friday, Aug. 13, when he 
was on a search for game, his revolver failed to work, and 
•while he was examining it, a cartridge in one of the cham- 
bers exploded with fatal efiect. 
Paragraph 549 of the taiiff law may originally have 
been intended to put birds' eggs on the free list; but as a 
matter of fact it absolutely forbids the importation of any 
birds' eggs, since it prohibits those of game birds and of 
birds not used for food. It is a curious jumble; the para- 
graph placing on the free list: "Eggs of birds, fish and in- 
sects: Provided, however, that this shall not be held to 
include the eggs of game birds or eggs of birds not used 
for food, the importation of which is prohibited except 
specimens for scientific collections, nor fish roe preserved 
for food purposes," 
This puts a quietus upon the enterprise of introducing 
pheasant eggs, capercailzie eggs, or the eggs of any other 
game species, for the purpose of adding to the stock of a 
game preserve. For this we are indebted to the well- 
meaning efforts of Senator Hoar, pronfpted by evident 
misinformation, as shown by his statement of the neces- 
sity for such a prohibition. "It is a well-known fact," he 
told the Senate, "that the destruction of the song birds of 
this continent by the sale of their eggs for mere fanciful 
purposes is going on at a wholesale rate, and it is so in 
Europe. It is said that even the nightingales are being 
totally destroyed in Italy. Of course these birds, fly across 
the Canada line and across the Mexican line." 
This is an explanation which does not explain. The de- 
struction of the song birds of this continent by "the sale of 
their eggs for mere fanciful purposes" is quite as fanciful 
as are the purposes. The entire proposition is fanciful,fanta8- 
tic and fallacious. If there were any such traffic in song 
bird eggs, the true way to protect American-laid eggs 
would be to admit foreign eggs free, and so lower the price 
and discourage the native industry. To shut out foreign 
eggs, on the contrary, would mean a lessened supply, with 
consequently higher prices and a stronger stimulus to nes^- 
robbing activities. 
A pleasant and cheerful form of sport, not indigenous to 
this country, but extensively practiced in cultured rural 
communities, is the hunting of snipe with a bag at night. 
The roughs and toughs, practical jokers and professors of 
horse play organize the hunt in honor of the new school 
teacher, a visiting drummer, or some other fresh and inno- 
cent subject. The victim is led to a dismally dark, and if prac- 
ticable, miry spot in the brush or on the marsh, and sta- 
tioned there to hold open a bag, into which the rest of the 
party, he is told, will drive the game. Then all the others 
go home or back to the hotel to await the coming of the 
bagman when panic, exhaustion, mosquitoes or the real- 
ization that he is a fool, shall have driven him from his 
post. The meeting of the returned simpleton and his in- 
structors is usually considered the most hilarious and ex- 
citing incident of the night. 
Among the variations of the snipe-hunt they have in 
Maryland a bee-hunt, participated in by the local 
humorists and the innocent from abroad. The Port De- 
posit correspondence of the Baltimore Sun one day last 
week reported the probably fatal ending of such an esca- 
pade. The bee-hunts, it is explained, are frequently 
planned, ostensibly for the purpose of cutting down a bee 
tree and securing the wild honey, while the true object is 
to frighten some stranger who has been invited to join the 
party. This is accomplished by feigning an attack from 
the owner of the property upon which they may be at the 
time, running and firing promiscuously, while the stranger 
who has been invited to assist in gathering the honey is 
usually glad to get away from the place as rapidly as pos- 
sible. In the Port Deposit hunt, when the alarm was 
sounded the party entered into the sport of the occasion 
with such gusto that one of them inadvertently fired a 
bullet into the head of the visitor for whose benefit the 
hunt had been organized. 
To allege that a person has been made a victim of the 
snipe- bagging trick is to say that he has been sold com- 
pletely and foolishly. No more faithful and effective pre- 
sentation was ever given of the merits of the Alaskan 
seal fishery dispute than that contained in a cartoon by 
Professor Henry W. Elliott, who once published a picture 
representing Uncle Sam holding the snipe bag while John 
Bull was making off with the last of the game. Several 
years have elapsed since then, but every subsequent de- 
velopment in the seal controversy and the regular pro- 
gressive diminution of the seal remnant by pelagic hunt- 
ing has demonstrated that Professor Elliott's character- 
ization of the situation was precisely true. Uncle Sam 
has been holding the bag out there in the dark quite long 
enough. When will he realize that he is being sold, and 
refuse longer to submit to the trickery? 
Dr. David Starr Jordan and Messrs. Macoun and Thomp- 
son, of the fur seal investigating commission, have re- 
turned from the Pribilof Islands. Dr. Jordan brings back 
an encouraging report of the success of seal branding. As 
is well known, the primary cause of the diminution of the 
fur seals is to be found in pelagic hunting in Bering Sea, 
by which great numbers of females have been destroyed 
and their pups left to starve. Last year Dr. Jordan pro- 
posed that when the seals were hauled up on the breeding 
ground, the cows should be branded in such a way as to 
disfigure the fur and so render the skin unsalable, when of 
course there would no longer beany inducement to pelagic 
fishing. This was done with a number of cows last year, 
and their reappearance on the islands this year with the 
brand showing demonstrates that the disfigurement is 
permanent. The work has already been prosecuted suc- 
cessfully this season with the mature cows, and the brand- 
ing of the young females will be undertaken next month . 
An electric branding device is employed, which is painless 
and entails no injury upon the seal beyond rendering the 
skin worthless in market. Thus there is promise that 
branding will render pelagic sealing so profitless that the 
brand may yet accomplish what diplomacy has failed to 
secure. 
A change has come over that vale of many delights 
known in prosaic speech as "down by the creek." The 
day life, from early morn to dewy eve, is as full and rich 
and joyous as ever in all the seventy years the owner of 
the ancestral acres has dwelt here on the old farm. Still 
may one hear Bob White's whistle from the hillside, the 
liquid note of the thistle bird as it dips from one purple 
tuft to another and the merry rattle of the kingfisher. The 
August noon is drowsy with the drone of the locust, the 
soothing gurgle of the water softly flowing through the 
dismantled eel weir, and the distant cooing of the mourn- 
ing dove. All day long the creek is filled with the motions 
and sights and sounds of pulsing, joyous life, until with 
the fading light the swallows give way to the bat, him of 
the fiendish flight and uncanny click, and the full night 
chorus sets in of crickets, katydids, night-haw ks, whip- 
poor wills and owls. All is familiar and grateful to-day as 
it has been for the seventy years of the present holder of 
the domain, and as it was for the years uncounted before 
him. But one note is missing, one instrument is stilled. 
No more is heard the bellow of the bullfrog, that pro- 
digious basso profundo, which of all nocturnal sounds is 
most in keeping with the gloom of the night, and of all 
most mellow and melodious. The bullfrog is unheard, be- 
cause there is no bullfrog to hear. He has been cut off. 
Not untimely, perhaps, for his legs were large and meaty, 
and for the tid-bit of frogs' legs on toast he was in his 
prime. He, the monarch of the pool, and all the other 
monarchs of all other pools, for miles around, have been 
potted, dismembered, skinned and incontinently de voured. 
It was surely an evil day that brought to the vale of 
many delights the city-bred frog hunters whose god is 
their belly. May a kindlier fortune watch over this sea- 
son's polly wogs, that they may attain full stature and in 
the years to come keep up the traditions of the bullfrog 
race, whose immemorial boast has been that music runs in 
the family. Then, when of a midsummer night nature 
shall pull the diapason stop, not a note shall be missed, 
not a harmony wanting. 
The regulations which have just been promulgated for 
the government of the national forest preserves do not 
forbid hunting on them. An important rule is that camp 
fires must be extinguished thoroughly before camp is 
abandoned. That is a good rule to follow everywhere. 
We are not inclined to share the gloomy view as to game 
protective officials expressed by the correspondent to-day 
who comments on the story of the double-faced sportsman, 
as related in our issue of Aug. 14. The tale was of a game 
association member who talked vehemently for protection 
while at home, and then when free from observation 
joined the ranks of the "sooners," who kill birds before 
the law is off. The story was known to be true. But that 
it truthfully represents the average game association mem- 
ber we do not for a moment believe. Profession and prac- 
tice do not always go together in the field any more than 
in some other walks of life, but the fact that there are 
hypocrites here as elsewhere is not good ground for dis- 
couraged views of game protection. The story referred to 
had its occasion in the early 80s. That was nearly twenty 
years ago. Those of us who have been watching the de- 
velopment of right thinking and right acting in regard to 
sportsmen's practice during this period know that there 
has been a marked and highly encouraging development 
of public opinion and individual conviction and conduct 
on the game grounds. 
