286 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[April 9, 1898. 
be perfected. A prince of the realm, to put it more 
boldly, would feel himself honored as a guest at one of 
these elegant feasts. To see social life as it daily exists 
in this, famous club is to view and admire a picture of 
pure delight. Here you observe, as you pass its portals 
of unmeasured pleasure, some of our most prominent 
citizens engaged in solving many of the perplexing prob- 
lems of chess, others absorbed in the deep subtleties 
of fascinating whist, while still others are infinitely di- 
verting themselves in games less taxing to the intellect. 
A casual glance at the "Turn-over Corner" reveals a 
toterie of accomplished sportsmen in that mirthful pre- 
cinct, many of whom have locks as white as the driven 
snow. They are ever busy reeling off, with fervent en- 
thusiasm, the exciting events of the angle and the hunt, 
and as occasionally happens their overwrought imagina- 
tions carr}' them into the land of startling romance. 
The club museum, Avhich is the work of a generation 
and is a striking example of the taxidermist's art; is 
one of the attractive features of the organization. Free 
to the public, it will well repay a visit from any one 
who takes an interest in natural history. The large 
attendance from the scholars of our city schools shows 
they have appreciated its advantages as a place for study 
from nature. Our members, and business men generally, 
cannot find a more interesting and instructive place to 
which to bring visiting strangers than the museum of the 
Cuvier Club, nor any which will be more thoroughly en- 
joyed. Nowhere outside of the Smithsonian Institution 
at Washington can a larger collection of the chai^acter 
be found, and in its preparation and mounting of the 
specimens iii the exhibit it is not conceded that it is 
second to any. 
The library is a very rare collection of standard works 
on natural history and field sports, and contains many 
valuable books that are not elsewhere to be found in 
the city. There are among them a few musty tomes 
over 200 years old, but the majority of the volumes are 
more modern, embracing many in narrative and all that 
is of interest in ornithology and ichthyology. The sports- 
man and the lover of nature will here find much to de- 
light and interest them. 
The grand and stately building which we occupy 
is owned by us withovit a dollar of incumbrance. Its 
total cost,' including the lot. was over $40,000, and it is 
an exceedingly ornate and magnificent piece of architec- 
ture. Unmistakable research shows that it is the only 
building in the United States— and the only building of 
which we know ever erected in any place — which was 
built only for the purposes of and exclusively by advocates 
of game and fish protection. It stands to-day alone in 
the world as the product of that sentiment. It is dedi- 
cated to that principle. It is the palpable embodiment of 
that philanthropy. May the example ever spread and its 
. influence ever expand. 
Our ambition does not stop at its present consumma- 
tion, for it has ever been the dream of the Cuvier to 
see in the next decade such a rapid and radical increase 
in membership as will necessitate an edifice double or 
treble its present size, and a museum overflowing with 
the rarest collection of birds, fishes and animals. He 
also looks to see it become a necessary annex to our 
public schools, with a corps of learned professors exem- 
plifying to many hundreds of their youthful pupils the 
beauties of ornithology and ichthyology, and that it 
my become the great Western or Central Mecca of 
natural history in many respects, and so important to 
city and State, with its accomplished educators, that it 
will become as much an authority on that subject as 
the Smithsonian Institution. 
J. B. SCHEIDEMANTLE, SecV- 
Alex, ^tarbuck, President. 
Tennessee Game* 
"Brownsville, Tenn., March 24. — Editor Forest and 
Stream: In return for the information received from 
other members of our widely scattered family, I hereby 
report from this immediate section. 
"Our open season on birds, Nov. 15 to Feb. 15, was 
duly observed by the shooting fraternity, and from the 
first I must say that Bob Whites were scarcer than 
I ever saw before. We attribute this state of affairs first 
to the awful drought which prevailed in our section from 
June to October, which destroyed most of the young, 
and to disease, something like chicken cholera, which 
destroyed many of the old birds, which were found 
dead in the fields. Such as survived sought the cane- 
brakes and woods near water, and there lived out the 
period of famine, remaining there until the high water 
drove them to the hills, when to our joy we found there 
were many more than at first supposed. During the 
months of November and December we thought them 
well-nigh exterminated, and had put up our guns, or 
directed attention to the rabbits, which suffered in a like 
manner, but during January and February there were 
sufHcient Bob Whites in evidence for very mild sport. 
"In the season of 1896-97 my best single day was twen- 
ty-eight coveys, thirty-two birds — total for the season 
485. One of my gunning companions is Mr. Bumpass, of 
the Pythian Hotel, whose best day was, I reckon, about 
twenty-six coveys, forty-two birds, and 515 for the same 
season. Now compare the record for 1897-98. My best 
day then was thirteen coveys, fourteen birds; total for 
the season eighty-six. Mr. Bumpass' best day, twelve 
coveys, sixteen birds; total for the season about eighty. 
Singular as it may seem, since the close season, Feb. 15, 
we have seen better filled coveys than in the open, and 
hope for them in old-time plenty the coming fall, and 
that your Western representative my be with us as in 
time past. 4 
"Of ducks, a few stragglers, poor and outcast appar- 
ently, have been seen, and thirty or forty killed during the 
winter by my friends, where once we feasted fully on 
their juicy frames. Ring down the curtain. 
"Turkeys have been more plentiful than in fifteen 
years, and now at the beginning of the close season I 
know of a fiock which numbers thirty-eight individuals, 
as well as several smaller in number. This calls to mind 
the fact that Mr. Bumpass killed on Tttesday last a four- 
year-old gobbler, which dressed 2olbs. To-day his sport- 
ing friends dined with him, and a feast it was indeed. 
"Of deer we have a very few, our wolves are in good 
flghting trim, and prospering, and foxes on the increase. 
"I noted on my last hunt scattered over a space of forty 
acres some thirty or forty bluebirds, cheerful and full of 
music as ever, and since then, whenever afield never 
fail to notice some during the day. All our other song- 
sters are doing well, including his lyric majesty the 
mockingbird. 
"Mr. Cuthbert has domiciled on his plantation a colony 
of English ring-neck pheasants, which last season bred 
and seemed perfectly at home in his fields. A pair wan- 
dered some five miles from home, and I regret to say the 
cock was killed by one of my sporting friends, who did 
not know what it was. When told, he said he had rather 
lost a bale of cotton, and though not a rich man, he 
meant every word of it. 
"I am in possession of the skin of a white squirrel, 
which was killed in our county a few days since, an 
albino undoubtedly, and of the gray family. This is the 
first white squirrel skin I ever saw, though negroes have 
always told me there was such a thing, and with them 
have frequently hunted them. Last year I saw the skin 
of a white raccoon, also one of five negroes who were 
in the chase. When the tree was felled and a white coon 
came out and tackled the dogs, four of the sports, headed 
bv the deacon of the Baptist Church, of that neighbor- 
hood, cried: 'Oh, Lawd!' Tole you so.' *De Iamb!' 
'Less go!' They started home, and hunt no more in 
those woods. And now, sir, wishing good luck and long 
life to all our family, I remain Benj. C. Miles." 
P. S.- — Apropos of "buck ague," your Western repre- 
sentative sometimes shoots Bob Whites in this Section 
with Dr. W. D, Taylor, a gentleman not calculated to 
lose his head even at the explosion of a covey of twenty 
birds concealed in a foot-square tuft of brown sedge — 
a circumstance calculated to make most men "shaky" 
all over. Well, one Sunday some two months since, the 
Doctor and I were driving through a thousand-acre 
tract of woods, some six miles north of town, and I was 
relating to him the particulars of a battle I once had 
with a rattlesnake at that point, when a turkey gobbler 
crossed the road 20yds. in front of the buggy and joined 
six others of his peers in a fallen tree top not 20ft. from 
the road. The Doctor slowed the horses down to nearly 
a halt, and there for a full minute we eyed each other 
in mutual surprise — seven big, wild gobblers — the wariest 
thing that treads the earth, and two mature men, fulL- 
blooded sportsmen, too. The Doctor's eyes stood out, 
his right thumb ran up and down the lines in search of 
"safety" and trigger. Oblivious of all things apparently, 
he panted: "They are so pretty! Look at the big one! 
There are three in line; could get them at one shot; there 
is aristocracy certain!" And I am of opinion that that 
cool-headed, self-possessed, well-mannered gentleman 
had plebeian buck ague! B. C. M. 
CHICAGO AND THE WEST, 
Chicago, 111., April 2. — If there is one man before 
the public eye this week, even in these times when the 
eyes of the people are upon public men — if there is any 
public man whose name should be enshrined in grate- 
ful remembrance by the people, and more especially by 
the people of the West, that man is Commissioner Chas. 
H. Babcock, of Rochester, N. Y., who led the forces 
which wiped from the statute books of New York the 
infamous Section 249. The munbers 249 are, or should 
be, odious in the eyes of every Western sportsman and 
every Western man who has an interest in anything 
beyond a row of figures. Section 249 was the open in- 
vitation for unprincipled persons to violate the laws of 
every Western State, to steal the property of the people 
of every Western State. Section 249 was graven on 
the banners of the South Water street horde of Chicago, 
who have made the second battalion in this army of 
crime. Boston is the third battalion. It has always 
been the cry of the Chicago dealers that they should 
be put upon an equality with the markets of New York; 
in other words, that they also should be permitted to run 
a wide-open market the year round. We have suc- 
ceeded in limiting the commerce in game in this city 
in some minor degree, and under the administration of 
the present game warden there has been a gleam of hope 
that the game laws of this State might at some time be 
so fuUj^ enforced that the game would be absolutely pro- 
tected. But no one had any idea that the great and 
lawless market of New York would ever in this genera- 
tion be limited in the least degree. We have met and 
"resolved" against Section 249, but we did so with the 
full belief that the resolutions would come to naught, 
We have resolved in favor of better laws in the State of 
Illinois, but this we have done faint-heartedly, and feeling 
that we could accomplish very little. Mr. Babcock has 
done more than resolve. He has accomplished. Mr. 
Babcock and the men who acted with him, and the Gov- 
ernor who approved their action, are men who should 
be held dear in the eyes of every Western man who goes 
afield or looks out of a window. Never in the history 
of sport in this country has the sentiment of intelligent 
game protection taken such strides as within the past 
eighteen months, and it may without hesitation be said 
that no step has at any time been taken comparable in 
its significance with the repeal of black 249, late of the 
New York statutes. 
There is a lesson of hope and encouragement in this 
action of the New York Legislature. It reads that the 
men of Illinois need not despair. It reads that Chicago 
need not be behind New York. It means that the task 
here is easier than it has been thought to be. It means 
that good laws, practical laws, sensible and operative 
laws, are not only possibilities, but probabilities, in every 
Western State. 
The Goose and the Egg. 
The spring flight of ducks is now well scattered over 
the North, and the general opinion is that the flight was 
a heavy one, the shooting being best along the Illinois 
and Mississippi rivers. They have been having heavy 
shooting on the "deep-water ducks" in Wisconsin, on 
Lake Poygan, the Butte des Morts, Winneconne, and 
other famous ducking marshes of that wonderful State. 
Below here the flight is now pretty well over. At Lake 
Senachwine and Swan Lake the shooting has been ex- 
ceptionally heavy at times, though sometimes the flight 
would let up, and poor bags were the result. Parties 
from Savanna, Forest City and other points reported 
on the whole rather small bags, twenty, thirty or forty. 
Mr. F. S. Baird, of the law committee of the Illinois 
State Sportsmen's Association, was out last week with 
a friend, but they bagged only twenty-one ducks. 
At Monmouth, 111., duck shooting was formerly very 
good, more especially in the springtime. The following 
comment from a Monmouth local paper is interesting 
as showing the difference between the old days and those 
of the present: 
"A few hunters who make a business of it have brought 
in large numbers of ducks, but ducks have grown so 
wary that the shooting is poor for the average sports- 
man, and citizens here who would be glad to buy rarely 
have an opportunity. It doesn't take a long memory 
to go back to the day when a duck could hardly be given 
away here. Their feathers were of some value, but the 
birds were here by the thousand, and every one who 
wanted them could have more than he could use. They 
used to visit the fields and feed for a long time in marshy 
places, but now they are hunted with every sort of in- 
genious device, and fired on from the Gulf to their home 
in the northern lakes. Even there they are not safe, 
for we read their nests are robbed to secure material 
for artificial eggs. The duck is going fast, and it will not 
be many years until it is gone." 
The new Iowa game law prohibits the shooting of 
ducks or other wild fowl from a blind. Attorney-Gen- 
eral Milton Remley has handed down an opinion that 
this law is good, and that it is the duty of the State 
authorities to prosecute offenses against this clause as 
much as violations of the close season. There is no 
doubt that this clause of the Iowa law, if enforced, would 
lessen the bags of Iowa ducks. It is, therefore, with 
some surprise that I note that it was sportsmen of Bur- 
lington, la., who were first in the field, declining to 
believe that this section of the law would be sustained. 
It was the "Burlington sportsmen," according to pub- 
lished accounts, who asked the Attorney- General for a 
ruling, which it seems has turned out not to their liking. 
Perhaps not all Burlington sportsmen are in favor of 
greater laxness instead of greater strictness in the meas- ' 
ures looking toward the protection of game. We have 
been accustomed to the doctrine that the sportsman was 
a man who believed in giving game every possible 
chance. Is it, perchance, possibly true that the sports- 
man may be built of the same clay as the rest of hu- 
manity? 
Speaking of limiting the means and methods by which 
ducks may be killed, I venture to predict that ulti- 
mately we will see the use both of blinds and decoys 
prohibited in wildfowl shooting, not only in this State," 
but in others. This will not be for a long time, not 
until the birds are still more scarce than they are now. 
Yet if we could see our way to such a measure now, 
and if we could put a law on our statute books which 
would stop all shooting and all sehing at Jan. i, our 
game would never again be scarce, but would increase 
from the first day that such a law was enacted and re- 
spected. All sportsmen are human, and to be human is 
of course to be selfish. When it comes to speaking of 
selfishness, what a tip could be given to the lawmakers 
of any Western State! Suppose Wisconsin or Minne- 
sota, for instance, should abolish spring shooting and 
practically abolish non-resident shooting. Either State 
would within one year be such a game preserve that its 
citizens might chuckle in glee. It would be worth 
while to emigrate to such a State as that. 
Some Bags. 
Among other bags made along the Illinois River with- 
in the past two weeks, the following are reported, mostly 
at Lake Senachwine: George Roll, 37; J, W- Niebert, 
32; J. G. Renter, 36; Frank Edwards, 21; L. J. Kohler, 
■^57; M. E. Wilson, 28; S. A. Goss, 27; A. B. Eaton, 
36; Gus Cousins, 47; E. H. Kane, 51; Henry J. Sher- 
man, 31; Dr. Vance Powle, 37; Judge Francis Adams, 
18; R. P. McCauley, 41J .George Brown, 27; T. B. 
Hanna, r8. 
Geese, 
It- is rarely that we hear of much goose shooting in 
Illinois or Wisconsin, as the flight of these birds does 
not cross these States in the old-time numbers. During 
the past week, however, a great many geese were using 
the praii'ie. ground below Janesville, Wis., and several 
A^ery good bags were made under the difficult conditions 
obtaining. These geese were the Canada honkers. A. 
J. Gaston, of Beloit, and Alva Russell, of Janesville, killed 
fifteen geese, six of which weighed 75lbs. 
Snipe. 
It is generally believed that the flight of jacksnipe is 
not yet up, but I have reason to think that this is a mis- 
take, although no good bags have yet been made. On 
the famous strip of marsh at Koutts, Ind., the birds 
have been heard every night for nearly a week, but they 
do not stop, as the water is still too high over their fa- 
vorite feeding ground. It is thought that within the 
next week the snipe will be in on the Maksawba marsh. 
I should think that at this date the marshes further up 
along the Kankakee, say near Warsaw, and among the 
lakes in upper Indiana, would be better than those lower 
-down in the State, where the water is higher. Such 
bags as have been made have usually been picked i:p 
on corn fields, and on the dry, hummocky marshes, where 
the ground is first to become warm. It is safe to say 
that while the bright weather may have brought in 
a flight this week it will be better to go about a week 
from to-day. The nights have been moonlit, and there 
is no doubt that the snipe have been traveling, and 
have passed over this country. As soon as they can 
find proper feeding grounds they will stop. 
A Long Trip. 
Some ten months ago Mr. H. P. Start, of Elgin, III., 
came into this office and made some inquiries in regard 
to Arkansas and other Southern States, saying that he 
intended to make a horseback trip through the South. 
To-day he again came into the Forest and Stream 
office, and stated that he had made the trip, which I 
take it was in some respects a remarkable one. Mr. 
Start was accompanied by Mr. E. A. Bell and Mr. H. 
