Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
ebms, $4- a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. I 
Six Months, $2. f 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, JULY 30, 1898. 
I VOL. LI. -No. 5. 
i No. 346 Uroadwav, New York, 
i& The Forest and Stream is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
The editors invite communications on the subjects to which its 
pages are devoted. Anonymous communications will not be re- 
garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
Subscriptions may begin at any time. Terms: For single 
copies, $4 per year, $2 for six months. For club rates and full 
particulars respecting subscriptions, see prospectus on page iv„ 
PRIZES FOR AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHS, 
The Forest and Stream offers prizes for meritorious 
work with the camera, under conditions which follow: 
The prizes will be divided into three series: (1) for 
live wild game; (2) for game in parks; (3) for other sub- 
jects relating to shooting and fishing. 
(1) For live game photographs three prizes are of- 
fered, the first of $50, the second of $25, and the third of 
$TO. 
(2) For live game in parks, for the best picture, a 
prize of $10. 
(3) For the best pictures relating to Forest and 
Stream's field — shooting and fishing, the camp, camp- 
ers and camp life, sportsman travel by land and water, 
incidents of field and stream — a first prize of $20, a sec- 
ond of $15, a third of $10, and for fourth place two prizes 
of $5 each. 
There is no restriction as to the time nor as to where 
the pictures have been made or may be made. 
Pictures will be received up to Dec. 31 this year. 
All work must be original; that is to say, it must not 
have been submitted to any other competition or have 
been published. 
There are no restrictions as to the make or style of 
camera, nor as to size of plate. 
A competitor need not be a subscriber to the Forest 
and Stream. 
All work must be that of amateurs. 
The photographs will be submitted to a committee, 
who, in making their award, will be instructed to take 
into consideration the technical merits of the work as 
a photograph, its artistic qualities, and other things be- 
ing equal, the unique and difficult nature of the subject. 
Photographs should be marked for identification with 
initials or a pseudonym only, and with each photograph 
should be given, answering to the initials, the name of 
sender, title of view, locality, date and names of camera, 
and plate or film. 
ZOOS AND THE PUBLIC. 
When a representative of the New York Zoological 
Society appeared before the Board of Estimate to ask 
for the appropriation of funds for constructing the build- 
ings, the Mayor protested: "The law allowing us to ap- 
propriate money for this garden was made before we 
came into office," said the Mayor, "and we always obey 
the law. ' Nevertheless, the system which has grown up 
during the past few years of allowing private corpora- 
tions to control public affairs is wrong. The city is rich 
enough and old enough to own its own public library, as 
well as its own zoological garden." Which is very true; 
but if we were to wait for the city of New York to pro- 
vide its own zoo on any adequate scale and under any 
other than pull and spoils management, we should wait 
until most of the wild animals of all the continents were 
extinct. 
Moreover, the scheme of management by an incorpor- 
ated zoological society is one of which the wisdom has 
been abundantly demonstrated by European experience 
with such institutions. Of the fourteen largest public 
zoological gardens in Europe, including those of Lon- 
don, Paris, Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, Han- 
over, Frankfort, Breslau, Amsterdam, Antwerp, The 
Hague, Vienna and St. Petersburg, all but those of Paris 
are maintained by zoological societies; and the attitude 
of the municipalities toward them as institutions afford- 
ing public entertainment and instruction is shown by the 
fact that eight of the gardens are located on lands which 
have been set apart for them in public parks without 
the exaction of any concessions whatever as to free 
privileges for the public. With the exception of the 
Jardin des Plantes, of Paris, none of the gardens of 
Europe are ever opened to the free admission of the 
public, while the New York Society proposes to admit 
the public to the park absolutely free for six days in the 
week, including Sunday. 
The enterprise of the Zoological Society is in the high- 
est sense public spirited. In extent and scope, value of the 
collections, thoroughness and intelligence of equipment 
and management, the park will be developed upon a 
scale rendered practicable only by the generous gifts and 
endowments of individuals, and it will be subject neither 
to restrictions placed upon it by a board of estimate gov 
erned by considerations of the tax levy, nor to the in- 
competence or dishonesty of political jobbers. As the 
undertaking of a responsible incorporated society, the 
enterprise will be conducted in a way impossible of at- 
tainment under political control, and its collections will 
be enriched by presentations from contributors who 
would never dream of entrusting their gifts to the ignor- 
ant, blundering, brutal and outrageous mismanagement 
which has marked the control of the Central Park 
menagerie. 
THE ABIDING CHARM. 
We observe that the bicycle dealers are given to specu- 
lating and debating very seriously whether wheeling is 
a fad or a recreation of abiding popularity. Every sport 
has in it somewhat of the nature of both of these quali- 
ties, for every sport has followers who take it up as a 
fad or craze and pursue it so enthusiistically and de- 
votedly that they are perceived by their sober-minded 
fellows to be daft on it. This is a common manifesta- 
tion of the human nature that is in man, and of the pro- 
clivities and passions which sway him. There is a politi- 
cal parallel in the recurring campaigns, when most of the 
people of the country permit themselves to become 
worked up over life-and-death issues, which they discuss 
and quarrel over, and deliver orations about from early 
dawn to dewy eve, until election, and then forget all 
about. Again a reading fad or craze seizes the com- 
munity, and thousands take to reading "Trilby" or "Quo 
Vadis," or some like worthless trash, for no better rea- 
son at all than that everybody else is doing the same 
thing. Human nature is as prone to fads and crazes as a 
herd of cattle to stampedes in the night. In these later 
days we have had archery and lawn tennis and wheeling- 
manias just as in old time they had dancing manias or 
went on crusades to the Holy Land. 
The sports of shooting and fishing also have their 
imitative followers, who take up the rod or the gun be- 
cause it is the thing to do so, or because, by adopting the 
outward forms of the sport, they think to experience the 
gratifications and rewards which they see enjoyed by 
other people. Whether or not one shall remain a wheel- 
man or shooter or angler depends altogether upon what 
he finds in it, what its rewards are to him individually, 
and whether he actually proves for himself the genuine 
and lasting pleasures each affords. 
The hold that shooting and fishing have on the sports- 
man is due in a measure to this, that in their very nature 
these pursuits draw one away from his every-day 
familiar scenes, and conventional routine and surround- 
ings, and give him something fresh and new to see, to 
breathe, to smell. For when one goes into the woods 
everything contributes to the novelty and freshness and 
gratefulness of the surroundings — landscape and foliage, 
the sunlight and the shadow, the glint and shimmer of 
the light on the water, the fragrance of the forest, the 
woodsy odors of bark and moss and shrub and mold. 
No man can be an angler who does not actually in some 
degree enjoy the practice of angling. There are, of 
course, tens of thousands of unfortunate individuals who 
care nothing about taking a fish, and never could bring 
themselves to care for it. An angler must be born, as 
Walton said; he must have within himself the latent pos- 
sibility of an angler's enjoyment in the art, though for 
years it may lie latent and unsuspected. Without this, 
though he follow the sport as a fad and according to 
rules and regulations, providing himself with every equip- 
ment, of the sport, and acquiring skill in its practice, yet 
the essence being wanting his participation will cease 
with the passing of the whim. It is the same with 
shooting; the imitative sportsman is known to all of us; 
the man who shoots because it is the correct thing to 
shoot, who seeks to kill game that he may kill time. 
He who follows field sports in this fashion rarely has 
an eye for the things in nature which delight and lure on 
the genuine sportsman; the satisfaction of unraveling the 
intricacies of a baffling trail is wanting in his experience; 
he never finds the exultation of success in a difficult 
cast or shot; in short, those very elements are denied 
him which give lasting interest and charm and fascina- 
tion to field pursuits. 
Every sport then may be reckoned as at some time 
or other in its development a popular fad, whose recruits 
will stay in it to become veterans or will shortly aban- 
don it for some new fancy. Whether or not they shall 
continue the pursuit will depend altogether upon whether 
they shall find in it that gratification which comes of 
something besides going through the forms. Monkeys 
have been trained to imitate the ceremonial ways of man, 
but no monkey ever got beyond the imitating from a 
purely monkey point of view. 
As shooting and fishing, of all outdoor sports, have in 
them the richest rewards for their followers, so are they 
the most enduring of popular recreations. Count up the 
fad sports; the list is long or short, as you may be old or 
young; the older one may be the more crazes can he 
recall; but no man's memory runs back to a time when 
shooting and fishing had not their followers; nor will 
that time come, to put it in the old, old formula — while 
the sun shines and the rivers run to the sea. 
NO PERSONS. 
The Legislatures of most of the States will convene 
next winter> and game law amendments will be the order 
of the day. It would be an excellent plan in nine of every 
ten States to undertake the task of converting the existing 
statutes into harmonious, consistent and intelligible 
laws, without attempting to change the actual intent of 
any of the provisions. To bring order out of chaos 
would be an achievement in itself. Game and fish legis- 
lation is often slovenly, stupid and ridiculous as English 
composition. 
Here, for example, is a specimen piece of blundering in 
the New York woodcock and grouse clause, relative to the 
lawful number which may be killed in a season. It was 
manifestly the intention to prescribe that no person shall 
kill more than thirty-six birds in one season — though 
whether it was intended that the limit should be thirty- 
six woodcock and grouse, or thirty-six woodcock and 
thirty-six grouse, there is no way of finding out. But 
the law reads: "No person or persons shall kill, catch 
or take alive more than thirty-six of the above-named 
birds, under the above provisions, in any one year." That 
means that only thirty-six birds may be killed in a year; 
this is the legal limit for the State of New York. After 
the first thirty-six woodcock and grouse, or woodcock or 
grouse, shall have been killed, it will be unlawful for any 
one to kill another bird. This is the English of the law, 
and is what it says, but is not what the Legislature in- 
tended it to say. In effect, the "persons" provision will 
be a dead letter; and each "person" will be permitted to 
take his limit. 
In fact, there will be no way to prevent a shooter from 
exceeding his limit. The law is one which cannot be en- 
forced under existing conditions. The only method by 
which such a limitation could be made practically bind- 
ing upon those whose conscience might not provide the 
required restriction would be in a system of individual 
espionage of every man with a gun. Without a game 
protector to accompany him in his outing, the shooter 
himself alone— and no one else — knows how many birds 
fall to his gun in a season. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
If the American- fisherman can get away from busi- 
ness to improve the angling opportunities afforded by 
this continent, he may enjoy a wonderful variety of 
grand fishing. Mr. F. H. Burton, whose tarpon prize 
in Biscayne Bay, Florida, was recently illustrated in our 
columns, has now returned from the Grand Discharge, 
where he has been taking ouananiche on a 6oz. fly-rod. 
Shooting mishaps may be classified under the general 
divisions: (1) The man target, shot at by the hunter 
who thought that it was game. (2) Didn't-know-it-was- 
loaded. (3) Bunglers. (4) Fence, boat and wagon, 
usually the gun pulled muzzle foremost toward the 
victim, (s) Unaccountable, unforeseen, purely accidental 
and not to be provided against. 
