Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
erms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. ( 
Six Months, $2. j 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 6, 1898. 
j VOL. LI— No. 6. 
j No. 846 Broadway, New York. 
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 W. 
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 
•$10. 
(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. 
NA TURE'S COMPASS SIGNS. 
Our issue of Nov. 20, 1897, contained a paper by Mr. 
Geo. S. Dearborn on the woods signs, which to the 
practiced eye indicate the cardinal points of the compass. 
Briefly outlined, Mr. Dearborn's notes stated that: 
1. The bark of coniferous trees is lighter in color, 
harder and dryer on the south side of the tree, while 
it is darker, damper and often covered with mould and 
moss on the north side. The gum from knots and 
wounds is hard and amber colored on the south side of 
the tree, sticky and dirty on the north. 
2. On rough barked trees, the" nests and webs of 
spiders and other insects are found in the crevices on 
the south side. 
3. A preponderance of the large branches will be 
found on the south side; while the needles are longer, 
more slender and darker green on the north. Cedars 
and hemlocks "always bend their slender tops of new 
growth toward a southern sky." 
4. In hardwood trees fungus and moss are on the 
north side; the longest branches are on the south side; 
the leaves are larger, damper, more tender, and of a 
darker green on the north side; nests of insects are on 
the south side; in the Southern States the air plants 
are on the north side. 
5. The heart of a tree is nearer the north side; stumps 
and stubs decay and waste away first on the north 
side." 
6. Ledges of rocks and boulders are comparatively 
bare on the south side, or have a harsh, dry moss; while 
the north sides are damp and mouldy, and have soft, 
damp mosses and ferns. 
7. The forest floor on the southern slopes of hills, 
ridges and clumps of trees is noisier under foot than on 
the northern. 
8. In' open country wild flowers, especially long stem- 
med ones, incline toward the south; the ground near 
clumps of bushes, rocks, mounds and hummocks is 
greener and moister on the north side; and on this side 
grow the mosses and ferns. 
These are some of the chief points noted by Mr. Dear- 
born; and the conditions as stated are dependent upon 
the influences of the sunlight; which is to say that the 
southern exposure to the warmth of the sun is a de- 
termining factor; and the rules laid down are, of 
course, subject to a multiplicity of exceptions caused by 
local conditions. It is only where the .sunlight and the 
shadow can mark tree and rock and earth that Mr. Dear- 
born's rules are applicable. 
Just how much reliability there may be in these natural 
compass signs every woodsman, experienced or ama- 
teur, may determine for himself by actual personal ob- 
servation and study. To take note of branch and bark 
and gum, and lichen, moss and fern, pine needles and the 
sun seeking wild flower will prove a fascinating and end- 
less study for the days in forest and camp. Test the 
facts and the theory, and send Forest and Stream a 
record of your findings. We print in another column 
some notes on the subject. 
GAME CONDITIONS IN THE WEST. 
The account of the game conditions in the Yellow- 
stone Park, given in our Chicago correspondent's game 
letter this week, is of much interest, and implies great 
energy on the part of Capt. Erwin, the superintendent, 
and of Lieut. Linsley, who for some years has had un- 
der his special charge the protection of the Park game. 
The slight increase reported for the buffalo herd is 
encouraging, but the fact that no calves were seen is 
difficult of explanation. If the buffalo were seen in 
July, calves should have been with them, if any were 
born this spring. It seems hardly probable that the 
buffalo calves have been destroyed by panthers or lynxes, 
since elk calves are so much more numerous, and would 
be so much more easily obtained than buffalo calves. 
The excellent elk calf supply is encouraging. It is the 
overflow from the Park elk herd that is to supply the 
game country adjacent to the Park, and so long as the 
reservation is preserved as a secure breeding ground for 
this species the numbers of elk killed without the Park 
will not appreciably affect the stock. The trifling loss 
reported among the antelope indicates that good work 
was done last year in killing off the coyotes. They 
should be destroyed whenever it is possible. They do 
much harm and no good. 
The most interesting point in Mr. Hough's letter is 
that in his annual report to the Governor of the State 
the game warden of Colorado purposes to recommend 
the Maine idea of licensed guides, these to be com- 
missioned as special game wardens. This is certainly an 
indication that the world moves, and that at last some 
portions of the Western public are awakening to the 
fact that in its game and fish a State has proprietary 
rights which are salable for a valuable consideration. 
Game Warden Swan estimates that last year the sum 
of $15,000,000 was spent in Colorado by hunters and 
fishermen. We have no means of knowing on what figures 
this estimate is based; it appears absurd, but however 
that may be, we all know that the sums spent in these 
recreations are vast in the aggregate, and that it is worth 
while for any community or set of communities to pre- 
serve the conditions which induce the spending within 
their borders of such great sums. Maine was the first 
State to appreciate how really valuable a commodity her 
game and fish were. It will be interesting if Colorado, 
one of the most progressive as she is one of the oldest 
of the far Western States, shall now or soon come to 
comprehend what was learned years ago by the canny 
and intelligent down-East Yankee. 
To those who remember the West of old times, when 
there was a frontier and beyond that frontier a wilder- 
ness, occupied only by Wild beasts and wild men, the 
idea of licensed guides and a modern system of game 
protection is not a pleasant one. Yet we may as well 
adapt ourselves now to existing conditions and face the 
situation. There is no longer "wild country, country un- 
charted and untabulated" ; we kill our game now nearly 
as they do in the deer forests of Scotland or on the pre- 
served mountains of the Tyrol. The old ways of life 
are gone, gone as utterly as are the buffalo and the wild 
Indian, and they will never return. If there still re- 
main a few nooks in the mountains where the hunter or 
angler may yet live as he used to live, such places are 
growing fewer each year, and before long will all have 
disappeared. This is an utilitarian age; domestic cattle 
have taken the place of the buffalo; ranchers dwell by 
the streams where once the Indian village stood. The 
grass and the water are being turned into money through 
the medium of domestic animals and the olough, why 
should they not be turned into money by the wild 
creatures native to the soil and the rod and rifle? Soon- 
er or later this will surely come to pass, and those States 
which are the first to take steps to adopt a wise system of 
game protection will be the first to reap its profits in 
dollars and cents. 
THE AMERICAN LOG CABIN. 
Among the projected institutions of Washington is a 
series of national galleries of architectural design, to 
•represent, by means of reproductions of typical examples, 
the characteristic architecture of Egypt, Greece, Rome 
and other lands and periods from remote antiquity 
down to the present day. 
The National Museum has miniature reproductions of 
Zuni houses and other aboriginal types, and in the 
National Zoological Park is a full-size model of a Maine 
Indian birch-bark lodge, constructed, w T e believe, under 
the supervision of Joe Francis, of Oldtown. This is 
suggestive of a wide field for such work, which might 
well grace the slopes of that beautiful Park. A series of 
characteristic American Indian dwellings — lodges, 
tepees, wigwams; of earth, bark, skins and palmetto; 
representing Eastern, Western, Northern and Southern 
tribes — the people of the pine forests, the mountains, the 
plains and the everglades- — these would add immensely to 
the picturesqueness of the Park, would have a permanent 
interest and would popularize with the simple direct- 
ness of object lessons a knowledge of the peoples who 
occupied the land before us. 
The one architectural object which most of all is 
deserving of commemoration, not only in some fitting 
site at the nation's capital, but in our large public parks 
everywhere, is the American log cabin. Poetry and 
romance invest the log cabin. It is the rude structure 
which has everywhere marked the advance of civilization. 
About it have been waged the wars of races. It has been 
the frontier fortress, the outpost planted in the enemy's 
country, and held against desperate odds by the high 
daring, the tenacity and the grit of the expanding na- 
tion's best manhood. The story, too, of woman's cour- 
age and faith and fortitude is a story inseparable from 
that of the American log cabin, and one worthy to be 
written in those characters of gold which the ancients 
reserved for their sacred writings. The log cabin has 
sheltered the sterling homespun virtues of an honest, 
simple and unsophisticated people, those who in the days 
of the beginnings gave character and stamp to com- 
munities and States. It has cradled statesmen and poets 
and leaders of the people. It is the characteristic and 
historic dwellings of America, and as such it deserves 
to be perpetuated in popular memory and affection by 
typical forms set up in public places, 
In his interesting record of the occurrence of the 
European starling at Bay Ridge, which is within the 
boundaries of Greater New York, Mr. Townsend reported 
an unusual abundance of bird life, representing our na- 
tive songsters. This condition prevails over a very large 
range. The year is notable for the numbers of birds which 
have returned in their old-time hosts, as if there had 
never been such an industry as the bird plumage sup- 
ply of millinery. This new state of affairs appears to 
be due to natural causes, since there has been no change 
of the conditions of pursuit by man which has been 
held to be so destructive. Whatever the reason, the 
birds are back once more. 
The Pennsylvania public printer is suing to collect his 
bill of $57,662 for printing the State's "bird book." If 
there is any virtue in lavish expenditure of public funds 
and squandering money without stint, every man, woman 
and child in Pennsylvania should by this time be a bird 
sharp. 
