AND 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
TERMk $4 A YkIr. 10 Cts. a Copif. 
Six Months, $2. 
\ NEW YORk, SATURDAY, NGVEMBER 27, 1897 
.VOL. iLIX.-No. 22. ,, 
No. 846 Bkoadway, New Yore. 
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Rehders d/re mviied to send m tlie names of fHeMs who 
might he interested in a current copy of the Forest dnd Stream. 
We shall be glad to forxoa/rd a specimen nmiibeT to any 
person whose address may be furnished us for that purpose. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
"Whatever may be the advantages to Pennsylvania of 
the new game law, in force for the first time this season, 
which forbids absolutely the export of game, it certainly 
has caused decided dissatisfaction among sportsmen who 
visit that State for shooting. The grouse covers of Pike 
and adjoining counties have decided attractions for New 
Yorkers; the district is within comparatively convenient 
access from New York cityj and the border counties have 
been resorted to by sportsmen from Elmira and other 
points, who have been accustomed in the past to bring 
their game home with them. The purpose of the non- 
export law is of course the most commendable one of put- 
ting an end to the shipment of game to market. In this 
all sportsmen are interested, those of Pennsylvania and 
those who resort to the shooting grounds of the State; and 
no valid objection could be made to the rigorous terms of 
the statute if the rigor were absolutely necessary to accom- 
plish the purpose. 
In some other States which have non-export laws, de- 
signed to cut off shipment for sale, visiting sportsmen are 
accorded the privilege of taking home with them a small 
number of birds or a small amount of venison. These laws 
work well in practice, wherever there are wardens whose 
business it is to see that the restrictions actually amount 
to something. If Pennsylvania had a force of game pro- 
tectors to watch the trains as trains are watched in Maine, 
the amateur shooter might safely be permitted to bring 
out his two dozen birds "tagged and exposed to view," wMle 
the wholesale trafiic in game would be prevented. As it is, 
we have heard of no attempts to enforce the non-export 
law. What is everybody's business is nobody's business. 
Iowa has a double-barreled anti-traffic law, which first for- 
bids any person killing quail or grouse or other game for 
traffic and then makes it unlawful for any person, com- 
pany or corporation to ship, take or carry any of these 
birds out of the State. What that amounts to is hinted in 
a recent market review in the New York Evening Post, in 
which "the largest game dealer in the city" is quoted as 
saying to the reporter, "I got in three hundred and fifty 
dozen grouse last week and four hundred dozen quail, from 
Iowa." It was President Gilman, of the Game Dealers' 
Association, who, when defending the New York law 
which makes the metropolitan market a dumping ground 
for the illicitly shipped quail and grouse of Iowa, told a 
legislative committee last winter that the city dealers 
handled only game lawfully sent to them. And the com. 
mittee was either simple enough to believe Mr. Gilman, or 
polite enough to conceal their appreciation that he was 
lying to them. 
Whatever may be the derivation of the name, we might 
all agree to accept Von W.'s saisible suggestion to spell it 
with a W. Years ago the original French form Ouisconsin 
was abandoned for the English of it, Wisconsin. Usage 
has altered other place names in like manner. There is no 
good reason for not applying the same principle and sub- 
stituting a sensible English spelling for the outlandish 
ouananiche. 
A cable report the other day chronicled a recent feat of 
the German Emperor, who had killed two thousand and 
odd pheasants in two thousand odd minutes, or some 
such incredibly short space of time; and esteemed contem- 
poraries have been busying themselves in figuring out 
the impossibility of the performance. The shooting was 
battue shooting, a mode in which the semi-domestic birds 
are driven by hundreds and thousands to the guns. In 
this country, where sport is followed under less artificial 
conditions, and where we are accustomed to hunt up our 
birds instead of standing in a "lot corner" and having 
them driven to us by servants, we are given to denounc- 
ing such wholesale killing as spoi-t-lacking slaughter. 
This is dn uncharitable view. If there is little sport in 
battue shooting, so ntuch the moi-e battue shooting must 
one do to get decent returns of sport for his labor. It is 
like crushing poor-pay ore; the poorer it is the more niust 
one crush to get anything out of it. And as one single 
nugget irlay be worth many tons of quartz, so one wild, 
wary, full-plumaged grouse oh an American hillside is 
worth a thousand pheasahts in an European preserve. 
Mr. Chas. Hallock, who has a taste for antiquities, tells 
us that our present Thanksgiving is simply an echo or 
iteration of the Proclamation of Thanks ordered or or- 
dained for Nov. 29, 1588, to celebrate the victory over the 
Spanish Armada and the establishment of free trade and 
free religion throughout the world, by command of Her 
Majesty Queen Elizabeth. The date of the introduction 
of the turkey into Europe is mooted, but if Mr, Hallock 
will continue his investigations into the history and de- 
velopment of Thanksgiving, he will probably discover that 
the turkey feature of the observance is distinctly of Amer- 
can origin. And we may perhaps claim also the old- 
fashioned Thanksgiving turkey shoot, New England style, 
as pictured by the inimitable pen of Rowland E. Robinson 
in "Uncle Lisha's Shop." We hear complaints that 
Thanksgiving is losing its serious aspects; and it must be 
conceded that the point is well taken; one New England 
club, for example, has added to its turkey shoot the vain 
and frivolous chasing of greased pigs and climbing of 
greased poles. 
The outlook is for a goodly gathering at the convention 
Of the New York State Association for the Protection of 
Fish and Game in Syracuse, Dec. 9. President Gavitt and 
the other officers have been untiring in their endeavor to 
insure an adequate representation of every section of the 
State. All citizens who desire to promote the interests of 
game and fish protection should give warm support to the 
Association. It is the agency through which all " should 
work to gain the common end. In union there is strength 
Every club of shooters or anglers in New York should 
have voice and vote in the Syracuse convention. All are 
most cordially invited to attend the meeting and take 
part in it. -The Association should have both the moral 
support and the financial strength that come of large mem- 
bership. The dues for each club are trivial, but the ag- 
gregate should be such as to provide the funds which are 
essential if the work is to be carried on beyond the con^ 
vention stage. The secretary is Ernest E. Gould, of Se- 
neca Falls. 
President Gavitt, of the New York State Association, 
would do well to invite Police Justice Thompson, of Syra- 
cuse, to attend the Association meeting there in December. 
Justice Thompson has given out that in his opinion "Those 
fish and game laws are all rot." Acting on this conviction 
the other day, the justice held a snap court, and without 
waiting to hear the evidence discharged three prisoners 
of whose guilt the game protector had indisputable proof 
Members of the Anglers' Association justly regard Justice 
Thompson's action as an outrage. His conduct should have 
official investigation. The bench is no place for a whim- 
sical oracle who flouts the statutes as "all rot." 
Our reports of the field trials in Canada and North 
Carolina furnish complete records of the work done and 
careful estimates of its merits and value. The reports 
have added interest inasmuch as the Forest and Stkeam 
was the only journal which had staff representatives at 
Newton. 
year ho birds have been shipped froni that point. Our 
correspondent takes a hopeless view of the situation; with- 
out stories of food for the winter, and without means to 
acquire anything, many of the Minnesota Indians; he 
thinks, must starve. 
A correspondent who has been among the Chippe#a 
Indians of Minnesota sends us a sad story of the destitu- 
tion to which those unhappy people have been reduced by 
a combination of native crop failures and new game law re- 
strictions. The wild rice and the berries were destroyed 
this year by high water; and the faUing of the rice resulted 
in driving the ducks further West. Ruffed grouse also 
were drowned out, and only small covies hatched. To 
this dearth of supply must be added the effect of the game 
law which forbids the shipment of game, so that if the In- 
dians kill they cannot seU. Last year 72,000 grouse were 
shipped from Tower, most of them killed by Indians; this 
tf the whole or the, half of what our Everett, Wasli., 
correspondent writes df the Indian situation in Alaska be 
true, his letter is a tremendous indictndent of the tJnited 
States for its treatment of this simple and defenseless 
people. It is a story of heartless rapacity, and of cruelty 
hardly exceeded by that of the gold-hunting Spaniar(is 
who e±terminated the hativesof the West Indies and Cen- 
tral America. Cayuga's letter supplements an article pub- 
lished in the Overland Monthly from the pen of Dr. Lincoln 
Cothran, who spent some time in Alaska as physician and 
surgeon to a large salmon packing company. He has the 
same tale to tell of imposition, robbery and the communi- 
cation of loathsome disease. "The life blood of the Es- 
kimos," writes Dr. Cothran, "with their independence and 
manhood has been swallowed up by three great corpora* 
tions whose heads are in San Francisco. 
An important food and industrial supply, the whale, has been 
dynamited out of Alaskan waters by the steam schooners of the 
Pacific VP'hallng Company The seals and other fur-bearing animals 
have been practically annihilated on both land and sea br the Alaska 
Fur and Uoramercial Company. This company has wrought its pur- 
poses in Alaska by fixing a bondage on the natives more galling and 
detestable than outright slavery, because it disclaims responsibility 
J or care for its wretched serfs. 
Under the guise of preserving the game [from quick destruction, 
and to prevent uprisings of the natives against the company's 
traders at the various posts (they line the mainland and peninsula 
from Sitka to Bering straits, and extend up the many large rivers), a 
law was caused to be enacted at Washington prohibiting the sale of 
repeating arms to the natives of Alaska. This was a ruse to keep 
outside parties away, and to enabie the traders themselves to supply 
arms at unheard-of and almost fabulous prices. The native was not 
slow in appreciating the superiority of firearms over bows and ar- 
rows in hunting bears and seals. The method of exchange was as 
follows: The rifle was set upright on the ground, stock down, and the 
natives piled skins upon one another flatwise until the stack reached 
to the muzzle. Thus, often more than eight or nme hundred dollars 
worth of fine furs were obtained for a, ten dollar gun. 
Independence and plenty have been exchanged for serfdom and 
squalor by the destruction of the animals of this land. In the sum- 
mer the country is covered with high grass and flowers. Unless you 
go far away in the interior, you will tire yourself wandering over the 
tundras and through the forests and never see a vestige of life, except 
very rarely, a frightened ptarmigan. And yet innumerable millions 
of dollars' worth of furs have been taken here. Not long ago the 
sea, the river banks, the lakes, tundras and mountains, swarmed 
with seals, otters, foxes, minx, bears, lynx, martens, beavers, wolv- 
erines and wild reindeer. 
It is only a matter of a few years until the last food source of the 
Eskimos will become ruined by the numerous salmon canneries, 
which are now under the control of another big corporation called 
the Alaska Packers' Association. 
To publish to the world such a condition of things should 
mean that the remedy for them would quickly be found. 
But past experience aftbrds slight ground for expectation 
that the recital will accomplish anything more than a 
momentary shiver. The average man cares more about 
the quail supply in his own fields, that he may have the 
sport of shooting them, than about the game supply of 
Alaska and its relation to the existence of a savage race. 
If he ever thinks of the Alaska Indians at all it is 
perhaps to denounce them for fancied interference 
with his duck shooting. Was ever anything in the 
whole history of game protection on this continent 
more gruesome than this, that while the natives of Alaska 
were being reduced to destitution and starvation by the 
destruction of their game resources at the hands of Ameri- 
can citizens, other Americans in so-called national con- 
vention were raising the fool cry that these same Indians 
of Alaska were destroying eggs from which should have 
been hatched ducks for these sportsmen to shoot for fun? 
The Post Office Department reports that its efforts to 
reform the careless practice existing in a large number of 
offices, by which so many postmarks on mail matter are 
illegible, have so far succeeded that the ratio of 30 per 
cent, illegibles has been cut down to 10 per cent. This 
means that newspaper publishers are more often now than 
formerly able to determine from the postmark the address 
of the man who sends money for a subscription but omits 
to give the name of the town he lives in. \ 
The autumn has brought with its reports of an unwonted 
game supply in rpany sections stories of disappointment 
in districts where the grouse tick has played havoc with 
the birds. 
