Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, AUGUST 2 7, 18 9 8. 
erms, $4 A Year. 10 Cts. a Copy 
Six Months, $2. 
( VOL. LI. -No. 9. 
} No. 346 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 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: (i) 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 oicture, 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 w'ater, 
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. 
FORES TS THREATENED. 
Not very long after the final establishment of the for- 
est reservations and the passage of the deficiency ap- 
propriations to pay the expense of forest inspectors and 
forestry and other emergency help, comes an example 
of the benefit to the Western country of this agitation. 
Raids on the Western forests have been so much a 
matter of course in the past that it is not to be expected 
that they will cease at onct. Yet it is altogether prob- 
able that hereafter, where such raids are brought to the 
notice of the public, or of the authorities, those who 
contemplate making them may — in view of the present 
interest in the subject — pause before carrying out their 
intended ravages on the public domain. 
Some little time ago it was learned that the Rock 
Springs Lumber Company, of Wyoming, was preparing 
to cut an immense quantity of saw logs, railway ties 
and mining timber on the head of Green River, in 
Wyoming, and this without any permit from the Gov- 
ernment. The Rock Springs Lumber Company had 
already cut timber in the same general region, and 
their course then indicated that they would bear careful 
watching. They did not keep the refuse of their cuttings 
cleared up as the law requires, and serious forest fires 
would be certain to follow their choppings, as we 
are told they have followed them before. Until recently 
there were camped on the head of Green River and 
in that neighborhood about one hundred Mormons, men, 
women and children, who expected to work at getting 
this timber out. They had in their company three pro- 
fessional hunters, engaged to kill game for the camp. 
They were to have four permanent camps there, and 
the choppers had been told that it would be an all win- 
ter's job. All preparations seem to have been made 
for a vigorous campaign against these forests. 
The country intended to be cut over included Town- 
ships 38 and 39, N. Range 110 W., and the same town- 
ships in Range 111 W. It lies on both sides of Green 
River, in Fremont and Uinta counties, and about sixty 
or seventy miles south of the National Park. Large 
timber is not very abundant there, it being estimated 
that the amount of saw timber on the head of Green 
River does not exceed 3,000,000ft., as most of the trees 
are lodgepole pines. As reported, the plans of the 
lumber company were to cut out all the saw logs and 
such of the smaller timber as was fit for railroad ties 
and mining props. 
If this country were to be cut over in the way indi- 
cated, nothing could prevent fire from starting there, and 
once started it would very likely sweep the entire west 
side of the range, and might even go as far as the Yel- 
lowstone National Park. The Rock Springs Lum- 
ber Company had a public timber permit which ex- 
pired March 21, 1897, and which had not been renewed 
up to the early part of the present year. Employees of 
the company stated recently that their permit had not 
been renewed, but nevertheless they seemed to be pre- 
paring to go ahead and cut without a permit. 
Very recently, however, the Rock Springs Lumber 
Company seem to have seen a great light. The news 
of their intentions got abroad and the authorities at 
Washington were notified of what was likely to happen. 
Up to about three weeks ago the force of choppers were 
encamped on the head of Green River, waiting, as for 
several weeks they had waited, for the employees of the 
lumber company to come and set them to work. These 
employees never came, and at last the choppers, thor- 
oughly discouraged, went away, cursing the company 
and all connected with it. 
The project appears 'to have been one of the whole- 
sale timber raids that have long been common in the 
West, and which will continue just so long as the authori- 
ties permit. It is a cause for satisfaction that this one 
has not taken place. That the United States is to be 
deprived of a few millions of feet of timber is perhaps 
not in itself a matter of great importance, but that a 
wide tract of mountain country is first to be deprived of 
all its large trees, and then to be burned off, is of high 
importance. This timber is needed to conserve the water 
supply of an important section of the arid West, and it 
should be protected. 
Two classes of people are nearly affected by this mat- 
ter: those interested in forest preservation, including 
the local farmers and stockmen, whose hay, gardens and 
other crops are threatened by drought; and those in- 
terested in game preservation. Besides protecting the 
water supply of Green River and many of its tributaries, 
from which the settlers derive the water for the irriga- 
tion of their crops, these forests also afford shelter to 
the large game of one of the best game countries in 
the United States. The burning over of this section 
would for a time seriously contract the range of the 
large game of Wyoming, and so tend to deprive that 
State of the very considerable revenue brought into it 
annually by hunters from a distance. The subject ought 
to impress itself strongly on all residents of that State 
and on their representatives in Congress. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
The energy and success of the Wellington Acclimatiza- 
tion Society might well be emulated by some protective 
associations in this country. This society was estab- 
lished in 1886 for the purpose of introducing, acclimating 
and domesticating useful or ornamental forms of life in 
New Zealand. Its membership is drawn from subscrib- 
ers, or from persons who take out licenses to shoot or 
fish, and is large. Its financial condition is good, its 
expenditures last year having amounted to about $8,000 
and its receipts to nearly $9,000. It has distributed in 
various parts of the island of New Zealand red deer, 
pheasants, hares, California quail, some species of 
European partridges and wild ducks, and many sorts of 
game fish, chiefly salmon and trout. It has established 
game farm reserves, where birds — chiefly pheasants — are 
bred, and these as they grow up are being distributed 
and turned out in various parts of the island. It has 
met with occasional discouragements, vermin and brush 
fires having from time to time destroyed large numbers 
of the birds that it was protecting. It has a number of 
fish hatcheries which are in successful operation, and 
it distributes and sells fish ova in large quantities. What 
the Wellington Society has done does not satisfy it, and 
it is continually doing more. It is strongly supported 
by the public opinion of the island, and if its popu- 
larity increases, as no doubt it will, there is good reason 
to believe that in the course of a few years this island, 
originally almost barren of game, will afford good sport 
to the lover of angling and shooting. The Government 
of New Zealand is heartily in sympathy with the work 
of the Wellington Society, and contributes through a 
variety of ways to its success. This Society is only one of 
a number in the island, and all of them are doing good 
work. 
The press announcement of the successful ascent of 
the Grand Teton, by a party of Wyoming climbers, will 
be of great interest to all persons who take pleasure in 
mountaineering in the West. The Grand Teton is the 
principal peak of the Teton range, which, running nearly 
north and south, separates two important branches of 
the Snake River, the waters of the Jackson Hole Valley 
in Wyoming from those of Pierre's Hole in Idaho. 
Many previous attempts have been made to reach the 
summit of this peak, but none have been successful. 
It has not been easy to find the real summit of the 
mountain, and this, when found, has hitherto proved 
impracticable of ascent. In 1863 Michaud attempted the 
Grand Teton, in 1872 Stevenson and party, in 1876 Wil- 
son and Yount, in 1877 Cooper; later Mr. Holmes, of 
the Geological Survey, tried it, and in 1891 Owen and 
Dawson, and again in 1897 Owen. None of these at- 
tempts were successful, though Stevenson claimed to 
have reached the summit. This summer Mr. W. O. 
Owen, State Auditor of Wyoming, with a persistence 
worthy of a true mountaineer, made another attack on 
the mountain. His companions were Frank Spalding, 
of Denver; St. John Shive and Frank Peterson, and at 
4 o'clock P. M. of Aug. 11 the party reached the sum- 
mit, where they built a monument and took some ob- 
servations. The ascent is said to have been made from 
the Saddle, thence up the west face north of the Icy 
Niche. The aneroid barometer indicated 13,800ft. at 
the summit. The ascent of this superb mountain is a 
real triumph for those who made it, and for the Rocky 
Mountain Club, under whose auspices it was made. The 
many readers of Forest and Stream who have hunted 
in the neighborhood of the Grand Teton, or who have 
viewed its mighty mass from commanding points in the 
Yellowstone Park, can appreciate better than most peo- 
ple how proud a feat Mr. Owen and his companions have 
accomplished. 
Many sermons have been preached as to carelessness 
with firearms, and many examples cited to point the 
moral of such sermons, but none of these, has been 
sadder than the last that comes to us. At White Lake, 
near Forestport, N. Y., on the Mohawk and Malone 
Railroad, a hunter mistook his sixteen-year-old son for 
a deer and shot him, so that he died in a short time. It 
is said that a few years ago another son of the same 
man was shot and killed, being taken for a bear. That 
occurrences such as this are possible in these &a.y$, seems 
at first incredible, yet that they happen so often ought 
to impress on every man who goes hunting or shooting 
the fact that firearms are of a truth deadly weapons, 
dangerous alike to him who carries them and to others 
who are within their range. Most of us wonder how it 
is possible for a man carrying a gun to shoot another, 
yet many a careful sportsman of long experience can 
recall one or more cases where, through carelessness 
or misconception, he either came near to shooting one 
of his companions or was himself nearly shot by some 
one else. The more experience one has with firearms 
the more he learns to fear them, and to be careful with 
them. Yet even so, unceasing watchfulness is demanded 
of the man who uses a gun. 
Over much of the country the last days of August 
mark the end of the close season for feathered game. 
The rail season opens now, and with the advance of 
autumn it becomes lawful to shoot other birds. In the 
East we hear little of illegal shooting, chiefly perhaps 
for the reason that birds are so few. The case is differ- 
ent in the Middle West, however, where the young 
grouse and the scarcely fledged ducks have for weeks 
been slaughtered by selfish people, whose eagerness to 
get ahead of their neighbors wholly perverts their sense 
of right and wrong. 
