Forest and Stream. 
rr . ■ . 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
\ ■ NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1897. 
{ 
VOL. XLIX.— No. 26. 
No. 346 Broadway, New York, 
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** Many a man past the middle of life remem- 
bers with a qttite peculiar and especial tenderness 
that one dog which was the dear companion of 
his boyhood. No other canine friend can ever 
be to us exactly what that one was; and here let 
me venture to observe that the comparative short- 
ness of the lives of dogs is the only imperfection in 
the relation between them and us. If they had 
lived to three score years and ten, man and dog 
might have traveled through life together; but as 
it is we must either have a succession of affections, 
or else, when t e fitst is buried in its early grave, 
live in a chill condition of doglessness.^^ 
Philip Gilbert Hamerton. 
TEE PROSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES 
FISH COMMISSION. 
It is reported that yielding to political pressure brought 
to bear by Senator Elkins, the President has selected 
George F. Bowers to be United States Commissioner of 
Fish and Fisheries. This is a political appointment pure 
and simple, and a most scandalous one. The appointee 
is a West Virginia politician who has been of service to 
Senator Elkins; the Senator desires to reward him with 
an office where the Government will pay him a salary, 
and has picked out the fish commissionership as one of 
which the rewards are commensurate with the obligations 
involved. 
Jtlr. Bowers has no fitness whatever for the place. He 
is devoid of attainments in the science and art of fish cul- 
ture; has no knowledge of fish and fisheries, but in fact is 
totally ignorant as to them, and so is without the special 
information and experience which are absolutely essential 
equipments for the discharge of the duties of the head of 
the Commission. He would never have been thought of 
in connection with the offi^ce if his personal qalifications 
for it had been given the slightest consideration. The ap- 
pointment is a prostitution of the Fish Commission to 
political ends, and by this act President McKinley has 
grossly betrayed a public trust. 
Moreover, the appointment is also in plain violation of 
law. The act of Jan. 20, 1888, providing for a Fish Commis- 
sioner, expressly and implicitly prescribes that he shall be 
"a person of scientific and practical acquaintance with the 
fish and fisheries." The West Virginia man has no such 
acquaintance. He is by the law declared to be ineligible 
to the place. His installation in it would be a national 
disgrace. For the sake of the Commission and of the in- 
terests it represents, we sincerely trust that the nomina- 
tion of a Bowers for the place once held by a Baird, a 
Goode and a Macdonald may not be confirmed by the 
Senate, while there are men who, by their high attainments 
in fishculture, their praclical knowledge of fish and the 
fisheries, their familiarity with the work of the Commis- 
sion and their fitness to direct it, might restore the United 
States Fish Commission to its former place in the regard 
of the public, and to its highest usefulness and value. The 
commercial and economic interests involved demand that 
the place should not be surrendered as official spoils to an 
incompetent, 
TEE OLD BUFFALO EUNT AND TEE NEW. 
Turn your eyes backward, gray-haired friend, to a 
time twenty-five years ago, when you were more supple 
than you are to-day. You remember the buffalo chase. 
How you looked over a hill and saw the limitless plain 
dotted with the "brown cattle of deformed aspect;" how you 
dashed over the crest at the full speed of your horse and 
raced down almost to the outskirts of the herd before they 
broke and fled with a thunder of hoof-beats over the solid 
earth that trembled and under the dust that hid the sky. 
Perhaps there rode by your side the brown-skinned own- 
ers of these herds— naked, on naked horses, silent, with 
stern, set faces, and with eager eyes; with long, black hair 
blowing out straight behind them on the breeze, rising 
and falling with the forward shoot of each horse's body. 
Their left hands held crooked bows bound with the tense 
sinew strings and a bundle of fine, slim darts, whose newly 
whetted points shone like dull silver. 
You remember how the sand was flung against your 
face and the dust choked you; how the billowing brown 
backs before you, dimly seen through the thick cloud, rose 
and fell; how, little by little, your good horse carried you 
forward and the buffalo yielded you passage and fell away 
on either hand. Little by little the swift ponies drew up 
alongside the cows that were hardly less swift, the arrows 
sought the strings, the lithe bodies of the riders bent down 
toward their prey in eager readiness. Then soon the 
bows were bending and the arrows were flying, and per- 
haps your gun spoke once; and the prairie was dotted with 
fat cows that would never run again. Then the hides 
were stripped off", and the meat loaded on the hores, and 
you returned-to your camp. 
So you chased buffalo in the old days. 
Oneida Lake. The record of miles traveled by the special 
protector for -November of 1897 was 216; three fyke nets 
were captured, valued at $1,800; two gill nets, valued at 
11,200, and nineteen trap nets of a value of $435. The ex- 
cellent report of the Association's work for the last fiscal 
year, as submitted to the State Commission, is an exhibit 
of which the members may well be proud. The writers 
of the report have struck the keynote of success in the 
work of protection when they declared: " We have tried 
^n all that we have done to educate public thought land 
sentiment to a better understanding of the cause of fish 
protection and to lead the large majority that has opposed 
it to see that in permitting the destruction of cur food and 
game fish the people are losing forever one of the most 
bountiful sources of food supply, and one of the greatest 
blessings to mankind that an all-wise Providence Shas 
bestowed upon us." 
It is midnight in New Jersey in cold and stormy Nov- 
ember. The wind blows and the level rain dashes against 
the face of the unlucky traveler with stinging blows. 
Along a sandy road six toiling horses tug and strain as 
they slowly haul a heavily-laden dray. Houses here are 
few and far between, but a distant light shows where one 
stands, and the vehicle at last approaches it. The panting 
horses stop close to some outbuildings, where three men 
are waiting. By the light of a lantern the dray is backed 
up close to a tight board pen, and its burden — an enor- 
mous box— is unloaded. Gate and door are opened, and 
the occupant of the great box is driven into the pen. He 
stands there, a big buffalo bull, tame as a cow, from his 
long confinement stupid as an owl at midday. Bewil- 
dered and confused, he stares about. Two men carrying 
a lantern follow^ him into the pen. One bears a rifle, the 
other a six-shooter, and both have knives. There are two 
sharp reports. The bull plunges once or twice, and comes 
to his knees. The butchers hack and saw the head from 
the body and carry it away, leaving the carcass untouched 
upon the muddy ground. 
A buffalo chase of the year 1897 is ended. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
In the midst of all the wild rumors of starvation at 
Dawson and stampedes of panic-stricken multitudes, this 
extract from a letter received on Dec. 17 from Mr. J. B 
Burnham, of the Foeest and Stbkam, will be a welcome 
reassurance to such as have friends on the Yukon. The 
letter is dated "In camp below the White Horse Rapids 
Sunday, Oct. 24," and reads; ' 
"We have had fine weather so far, and no floating ice. Climate 
about like Adirondacks. Have passed all the tedious delays from 
portages, head winds, etc., except Lake La Barge, and if things go 
well will be in Dawson about Nov. 1. If ice appears in river shall 
probably stop and winter at the Hootalrnka Eiver, where there is a 
post ofiSce, a police station, and monthly mails for 3 cents per letter 
(Canadian postage). Have gotten along splendidly, and have a very 
complete outfit of supplies. 
"Two men have just come in from Dawson, ascending the river in a 
canoe. They left there Sept. 23, and say everything was then going 
well. This tallies with other recent reports we have from Dawson 
There is no truth in the sensational reports of shortness of supplies. 
"I am cook, and I tell you I can bake good bread (baking powder 
kind) in our "Sukon stove; it has a fine oven. White Horse Rapids 
and Cauon were pretty bad, but we are safely by them, and smooth 
sailing ahead. Men from Dawson say they think we can make it." 
The Anglers' Association of Oaondaga County, with 
headquarters at Syracuse, N. Y., is an organization of citi- 
zens for voluntary effort in supplementing the work of the 
game protectors. The Association maintains a special pro- 
tector, who works under its direction and control, giving 
particular attention to enforcing the anti-nettiug law in 
In the work of education they have had to combat not 
only the ignorance and improvidence and selfishness of 
poachers, but the devious and hidden but no less baffling 
connivance of politicians and politically controlled 
officials. If the Fish Commission of the State' did its 
whole duty, honestly, independently and fearlessly, ex- 
ecuting the laws equally against all men, giving its sub- 
ordinates untrammelled liberty to perform their oaths of 
office, holding up no cases "until after election," and 
granting immunity to no particular voters in [special 
assembly districts, does any one dream for a 
moment that the day of necessity of such voluntary asso- 
ciations as this one of the Onondaga anglers would be 
past? It is only because the State officials, who are 
paid to enforce the laws, and who are sworn to enforce the 
laws, do not enforce the laws, that private citizens must 
give of their time'and their means and their effort to re- 
strain lawlessness and check the ravages by the few wbo 
defy the rights of the many. 
In view of the excellence of dogs as draft animals in the 
Arctic regions, it seems strange that the supply ia foreign 
countries has not been liberally drawn upon. The first or- 
ganized effort of any importance, according to press reports, 
is that of Mr. G. R. Davies, an Englishman of cosmopolitan 
experience. While in Belgium he noted the common use of 
dogs for draft purposes, and also their efficiency. Being of 
an adventurous turn of mind, he conceived the plan of tak- 
ing a number of them to the Klondike region. He arrived 
in New York on the steamship British Bang on Dec. 14, 
with seventy dogs from Antwerp. It is stated that the cost 
of the dogs averaged $20 each and that about $30 more each 
will be added in reaching the Klondike region," so that the dogs 
will then have cost $50 apiece. A Belgian was brought over 
with the dogs, to manage them till such time as they became 
familiar with commands in English. The dogs were shipped 
to Montreal, thence they go to Ottawa, where Mr. Davies 
will meet Warburton Pike, who has had some experience in 
the far North. The route they will take will be governed 
much by Mr. Pike's advice. If the venture is a success, Mr. 
Davies will establish a pack train to Circle City. 
The story runs that the owner of a swift and rapid dog 
laid a wager that it could keep up with a railway train. 
The dog was tied behind the last car and the train sped 
on its way. After a while it was discovered that the dog 
had disappeared, and the stakes were claimed of the 
owner, but he triumphantly showed that instead of having 
fallen behind the dog was running along at his ease in the 
shade underneath the car. This dog story was constructed 
in the early years of the century, when dogs were faster 
and railway trains were slower than they are in these 
days. It has been determined by records kept in this 
office that the tale has a periodicity of five years. It is 
being told in 1897, and may be looked for next in 1902. 
Readers of the Forest and Stream's "Angling Notes" 
will be glad to have the excellent portrait of the man who 
writes them. The picture was taken in the Adirondacks 
last summer, while Mr. Cheney was collecting material for 
the forthcoming report of the State Fish Commission. It 
is an admirable portrait, as his many friends will recog- 
nize, and is all the more pleasing for the woodland setting. 
The New York Aquarium has now been open a year, 
and under the admirable direction of Dr. Tarleton H. 
Bean has steadily grown in the scope and interest of its 
collections and in popular appreciation. During the year 
it has been visited by 1,635,000 people, or an average pf 
6,289 per day. 
