Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. | 
Six Months, $2. ) 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JUNE 18, 1898, 
I 
VOL. L.— No. 25 
Ko. 846 Broadway, New York. 
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Twbilee Ntimben 
The issue of next week, June 25, will complete the 
Fiftieth Volume of Forest and Stream; and the event 
will be fittingly marked by making that a Jubilee Num- 
ber, filled to overflowing with good things. It will be 
notable for store of good reading and wealth of illus- 
tration. 
ization enforces. This play has taken a hundred forms, 
and about each have grown up artificial ideals and 
fashions which constitute sport in the best acceptation 
of the term as we know it to-day. 
In the sports of the field the governing principle is con- 
sideration for others; not only for our fellow men, but 
for the creatures whose death we are trying to com- 
pass. To take no unfair advantage of any living thing 
is a good code for the sportsman of to-day. 
HUNTERS RED AND WHITE. 
The Indian was the first hunter of this land — the 
primitive American hunter of whom much has been writ- 
ten. But between that hunter and the sportsman of to- 
day there exists this wide difiference — that the pursuit 
of the one was the business of his life, that of the 
other his pleasure. The one devoted to it all his time, all 
his thought, all his strength; the other — except where his 
opportunities have been exceptional or his experiences 
long — gives to its practice a few days in the year, and 
though he may spend on it much thought, yet this 
thought is not a study of practical methods combined 
with actual work in the field. Instead, it is reminiscent 
or anticipatory. In other words, instead of practical 
study it is day dreaming. 
As an inevitable consequence of his surroundings, the 
Indian became a most skilful hunter. His powers of 
observation were most highly trained, he had infinite 
patience; time was of no importance to him, so long 
as he gained his object. His continual observation of 
the creatures that he pursued and his continued practice 
enabled him to live and to live well wherever game 
existed. 
When the Indian slew he cared for the meat that he 
secured, not for the methods by which it was obtained. 
He felt a keen excitement in the chase, but this was 
caused by the doubt whether he and his family should 
eat or should starve, not merely whether he should suc- 
ceed in making the careful stalk and in aiming true his 
shaft. He cared for the result, no matter how obtained. 
The means were nothing to him. 
The nrimitive Indian hunter was the prototype of some 
white gunners of to-day. He was a true market hunter, 
and like the market hunter he made a business of the 
chase. Like the Indian, the market hunter cares chiefly 
for results, and like him, by continued practice, he at- 
tains a high degree of skill. It is here that, his training 
and his traditions being widely different from the In- 
dian's, he has a special feeling of exultation when he has 
done a good piece of .work. Yet afler all the size of his 
bag measures his success, and while he enjoys his shoot- 
ing, he also thinks, when he counts up his birds at 
night, of the dollars and cents that they will bring to his 
pocket. 
There are many men who sell their birds, and yet who 
feel nothing of this lust for gain which is gratified by 
the market gunner's successful day afield. Such men may 
be in circumstances where funds with which to buy am- 
munition are so scarce that without the money brought in 
by the sale of their birds they could not shoot at all. 
We conceive that among such men there may be as 
true sportsmen as ever fired a gun or handled a rod. We 
have known many such men, whom to know was a pleas- 
ure, and with whom to shoot was a liberal education. 
Sport, as we tiefine it to-day, is purely artificial, a prod- 
uct of the civilization which makes most men money 
getters for eleven months out of the twelve, and which 
makes them eager for the twelfth to escape confinement 
and to revert to natural conditions. The pursuing of wild 
creatures, which was the natural man's livelihood- — his 
work, just as ours is hoeing corn or keeping books, or 
working up law cases or making sales — has become the 
play of the artificial man, who lives in stone or brick 
dwellings, and carries on the continual grind which civil- 
l^HE ILLINOIS ASSOCIATION. 
The special work assumed by the Illinois State Sports- 
men's Association, the methods employed and their re- 
sults furnish an interesting chapter in current history 
making by sportsmen's organizations. 
The Association has undertaken to secure such modifi- 
cation of the laws that these may embody the sentiment 
of the members; and to provide for the laws' enforcement 
by a more adequate warden system than the one now in 
operation. To achieve these results the oromoters set 
about the task in a methodical and systematic way, which 
was manifestly wisely conceived and put in operation. 
Prior to the winter meeting in February circulars had 
been submitted to the constituent clubs for their views 
on proposed amendments; and at that meeting the sense 
of the Association thus ascertained was expressed in a 
platform substantially as follows: 
1. Dates for the open season. Ducks, geese, snipe 
and waterfowl, Sept. i to April 15; grouse and prairie 
chickens, Sept. i to Nov. i; quail, Oct. 15 to Dec. 15; 
woodcock, Sept. i to Dec. 15; squirrels. Sept, i to Dec. 
15; deer, wild turkeys and Mongolian pheasants, pro- 
tected till 1910; doves, Sept. i to Dec. 15. 
2. State game wardens should be paid a stated salary. 
3. It would be well to have a State fund for the 
payment of wardens and propagation and preservation of 
game. 
4. A fund for the payment of wardens for the protec- 
tion of game, should be derived from a shooting license 
of $1 for residents, and $5 for non-residents. 
5. A limit should be placed on the number of birds 
one person may kill in a day, i. e. thirty-five head of any 
one kind of game in any one day. 
6. The law should prohibit entirely the sale of game, 
excepting during the period between the fifth day after 
the opening of the open season and the fifth day before 
the closing season. 
7. The law should prohibit entirely the cold storage 
of game for commercial purposes in any store house of 
temperature less than 32 degrees. 
8. The prohibiting of the cold storage of game and 
the sale of any game, from any State, at any period other 
than the time mentioned would make it unprofitable for 
dealers and market hunters alike to handle game, and 
thus take away the incentive to violate the game law. 
9. There should be one State warden with a deputy for 
each county. 
10. No hook and line fishing within 400ft. of any 
dam from April i to July i. 
These provisions having been adopted as the legisla- 
tion desired by the Association, the Law Committee was 
entrusted with the duty of drafting a bill embodying 
the recommendations for action by the Legislature; and 
the Finance Committee undertook to provide the sinews 
of war. That the bill might be "pushed in all lawful and 
necessary ways," each individual sportsman in the State 
of Illinois was called upon to contribute his dollar. The 
secretary of each local club was appointed chairman of 
a sub-committee on finance, and was asked to collect a 
dollar from each member of his club. "We set the 
amount," the committee reports, "which should be asked 
of each sportsman at one dollar, no more, no less, believ- 
ing that if a man cares anything at all for any game 
law he ought to care for it one dollar's worth." Some- 
thing over 3,000 letters and subscription slips, covering 
the individual membership of clubs and deputy game 
wardens, have been sent out; and the returns, as report- 
ed to the date of the meeting at Peoria last week, have 
been by no means encouraging. The expenses of the 
canvas to that date were $68.50, and the* receipts $144, 
leaving a net fund of $75.44. Some surprise was ex- 
pressed by the Peoria convention delegates at the meager 
character of the returns, and several theories were 
broached to account for it; by some that the proposed 
measures were not acceptable to all of those who had 
been asked to contribute to the promoting of them; and 
by others that, as one delegate put it: "There has been a 
general feeling that it was not going to amount to any- 
thing. They were throwing away a dollar where it 
would dor rm good. But if a little evidence could be giv- 
en that this money would be expended in a way that 
would at least indicate that some benefits would be re- 
ceived, a very large contribution could be gotten from 
the members of the Association." 
The Finance Committee, on the contrary, declare that 
in spite of the reluctance of contributions "so fiirm is our 
belief still in tlie character of our sportsmen that we are 
not yet ready to consider our work done, but only com- 
menced"; and by vote of the convention the committee 
was continued until the next annual meeting. 
The financial factor in voluntary game protective enter- 
prises is likely to prove the weak point. It is a most im- 
portant and essential factor too. Funds to carry out the 
will of the Illinois Association must be forthcoming if 
the expression of that will is to amount to anything more 
than words. This has been the experience of kindred 
organizations elsewhere. Conventions have been held, 
game legislation has been agreed upon, and there the ef- 
fort has ceased, because to carry it on has meant financial 
expenditure, for which the association had made no 
provision, and which the individual committeemen have 
not been willing to contribute to the cause In addition to 
their time. Human nature has so developed in the 
course of the thousands of years during which mankind 
has been pursuing the beasts of the field and the fowls of 
the air and the fishes of the deep, that men will talk en- 
thusiastically and with earnest conviction who will not 
put their hands down into their pockets for a contribu- 
tion to the cause. The history of game protective asso- 
ciations in this country is too largely a record of talk 
with nothing to show for it. In Illinois just at this junc- 
ture there appears to be an excellent opportunity for actu- 
ally accomplishing something. If the Peoria platform 
truly embodies the conviction of the sportsmen of the 
State, the opportunity should not be lost by reason of 
lack of funds. That the proposed measures do represent 
the views oi the men who have been asked to support 
them may reasonably be assumed from the systematic 
and comprehensive character of the discussion- which led 
to their adoption. The Illinois State Sportsmen's Asso- 
ciation probably represents the sportsmen of the State as 
truly as it is possible for any such organization to be 
representative. If then the Association fails of any 
effective accomplishment it is the failure of the sports- 
men of the State. 
An abundant but neglected food supply is found 
f in the edible mushrooms. The mushroom may be a 
distinctly acceptable addition to camp food if one knows 
the edible varieties well, and certainly enough to make 
use of them. Campers who are fond of mushrooms as 
procured in the market at home often spend weeks in 
the woods in blissful obliviousness of the fact that right 
to hand is a natural supply to be had day after day for 
the gathering. Many people again who would avail them- 
selves of such a desirable addition to the woods menu fear 
to hazard eating mushrooms because they cannot certain- 
ly distinguish between the edible and the poisonous. 
For the benefit of the camp cook we give to-day the use- 
ful report on the edible mushrooms prepared by the 
Agricultural Experiment Station of Cornell University, 
and kindly supplied to the Forest and Stream by 
the courtesy of Prof. Roberts. 
The admirable illustrations make easy and certain the 
identification of the mushrooms good for food, and if 
these mushroom notes shall be included in one's camp 
kit they will add materially to the gastronomic enrich- 
ment of the summer outing. 
The prevailing tone of the field writing of the day is 
not optimistic; We are accustomed to read more of the 
lessening store of game and fish than of the increase; but 
surely the glad spirit of spring, which makes the poets 
sing, was upon this writer when he wrote: "Things are 
looking fine down at the lake, and I think we enjoy it 
more, and the fish run larger and bite sharper, than ever 
before; the trailing arbutus grew larger and was more 
abundant this spring; the partridges are more numerous 
and drum more loudly; we have the best trout fishing in 
the county we have had in a long time; and all the 
sportsmen are hapoy." _ 
