Forest and Stream, 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1898, 
Terms, $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. 
Six Months, $2. 
J VOL. LI. -No. 14. 
j No. 346 Broadway, New York. 
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 
The Forest and Stream's announcement of prizes 
for amateur photograph}' will be found on another 
page " 
AN ANCIENT GREEK EPITAPH. 
Ariston had a bird-hitting instrument, fitted for 
humble poverty, with which he shot geese on the 
wing, when creeping craftily he was able to de- 
ceive them while feeding with watchful eyes. But 
now he is in the realms of the dead, his weapon is 
devoid of sound and a hand, and the game flies 
over his tomb. 
NOT ACCIDENTS BUT CRIMES. 
The shooting season of 1898 gives promise of equaling 
any gone before in its record of gun and rifle casualties. 
The papers almost every day report maimings and 
deaths caused by criminally careless or blamelessly un- 
fortunate handlers of firearms, who shoot themselves or 
their fellows. To repeat the oft spoken warning in the 
truism and platitude, that a gun is a dangerous weapon 
and must be handled with caution, is never inopportune; 
nor unfortunately is it encouragingly effective; the peo- 
ple who might profit by the caution have already slain 
their victims or will surely slay them. "Though thou 
shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with 
a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." 
The developments of this season in the woods and 
out of them give new point to the proposition which has 
been urged more than once in these columns, that the 
atrocious maimings and killing by the fatuous misuse 
of deadly weapons should have a place in the criminal 
code. Take the case of the veteran Adirondack guide 
who was a victim of his own astonishing injunction to 
his son to shoot at the first moving thing he saw in the 
woods. It was criminal advice, the obedience to it was 
criminal, the infliction of death which followed was 
criminal, each one truly so in effect, if not by the letter 
of the statute. Consider again the case of that fourteen- 
year-old boy who was shot for a deer and killed by an 
Adirondack hunter on Friday of last week. The un- 
fortunate youth was in the company of deer hunters, 
when, as told in the newspaper reports, this is what hap- 
pened: 
"The party discovered deer tracks late in the after- 
noon. Accompanied by guides, they started in pursuit. 
Young Currier, who was an athlete, ran ahead. Sud- 
denly the baying of the hounds announced that the 
game was near. As they neared the spot the rustling 
of the leaves attracted their attention. The hunters fired 
into the underbrush and then ran forward, expecting 
to find that they had killed the deer. They found young 
Currier lying on the ground with the blood flowing 
from a rifle shot through his brain. The boy died soon 
after in his fathers arms." 
That is a story which carries its own com- 
mentary. The boy's father says that the death of his 
son was an accident, for which no one was to blame. 
Sympathy of friend and stranger alike will readily in- 
terpret this declaration as the expression of a view 
commonly adopted by those who are thus bereaved, be- 
cause they find in the accident and blamelessness theory 
a balm to assuage their" overwhelming grief. The father 
bereft of a sen, or the wife of a husband, shrinks from 
the bitterness of any other thought. Even were the 
harsher' reflection to obtrude itself, or did the careless- 
ness of the perpetrator stand forth in its actual crimin- 
ality, this would but intensify a sorrow for which no 
infliction of a penalty, however well merited, could give 
solace. If then we shall delay for the relatives or friends 
who are most nearly affected by such shooting casual- 
ties to take any steps toward securing the proper 
classification of these accidents as crimes, we shall wait 
in vain. The matter indeed is one which has long since 
passed beyond a stage where it may properly be left to 
individual initiative. Shooting casualties among hunt- 
ers because of their frequenc3 r and serious character 
have become a public scandal and a public concern. 
The community is called upon to take cognizance of 
them, to give them classification as manslaughter, and 
to punish them as such. "When one person shoots an- 
other for a woodchuck or a deer, or blows out the brains 
of a companion with a gun that wasn't loaded, let hirn 
answer for it as for other acts of manslaughter. 
Such responsibility for the unintentional infliction of 
wounds or death would not constitute any innovation in 
established legal principles. Accidents have their well 
recognized place in the criminal code. The law holds 
men responsible for criminal carelessness. Railroad en- 
gineers and conductors, motormen of street cars, fore- 
men of mines or rock blasting gangs or street trench 
diggers, drivers of horses and motor vehicles, in short 
all persons engaged in any activity which is liable to 
cause accident or death are held strictly accountable, and 
are required to exercise forethought, caution and eternal 
vigilance to guard against the infliction of injury. On 
Monday of this week a New York cabman driving 
through one of the city streets collided with a wheel- 
man, who was struck by the. shaft of the cab, and was 
taken in an unconscious state to a hospital. The cab- 
man was arrested, was charged with reckless driving in 
running down and injuring the wheelman, and is now 
held in $500 bail to await the result of his victim's in- 
juries. This is the customary procedure when a person 
is engaged in his ordinary occupation; but' if this cab- 
man had taken a day off and armed himself with a long 
range rifle and killed his man unseen in the woods, it 
would have been reported as another accident, and no 
one would have thought of holding him for the deed. 
Yet in the reckless shooting is involved the higher de- 
gree of criminality. The collision in a city street be- 
longs to that class of accidents which are inseparable 
from the complications of congested traffic, in spite of 
the unremitting exercise of care and caution, and skill. 
The discharge of a firearm at an unidentified target is 
on the contrary a wanton and premeditated act of folly. 
Tens of thousands of the workers of the world are at 
this very moment performing their duty under the recog- 
nized obligations of responsibility, and if a casualty 
should come the law would intervene to hold them 
strictly to that responsibility; but the greenhorn with a 
gun may blaze away at the first rustling he. hears in the 
brush, and kill his human victim, and it will be ac- 
counted an accident, and a legal penalty will be the last 
thing anyone will dream of. 
SPORTSMEN AND SOLDIERS. 
The "Chatterer" of the Boston Herald, who writes 
many entertaining paragraphs, not infrequently gives 
expression to views which might invite controversy, 
were it not that the "Chatterer" wields a feminine pen, 
and all the world knows that it is futile to attempt to 
argue with a woman. Women are creatures of im- 
pulse, fetuition and sentiment, but of logic they know 
little, and for reasoning care less. Here, for instance, is 
what the "Chatterer" has to say of the American sports- 
man and his relation to the war: 
"For years he has been rendering the American buffa- 
lo obsolete, and now his work is almost accomplished. 
He has tried to exterminate the deer, and the fox and 
the wild turkey, and to rob all the streams of fish by 
inseine — one might say insane — methods, just to make 
a record for killing everything for the sake of killing. 
This passion has had another outlet in the recent war, 
and it must be whispered, I think it was for a much bet- 
ter end than in taking the lives of creatures unable to 
defend themselves in kind." 
She thus identifies the taste for field- sports with that 
patriotism which responds to the country's call; and 
she declares that both consist of the same passion for 
"killing for the sake of killing," be it deer or be it 
Spaniard. Thus in a sentence she gives us one measure 
for the American sportsman and the American volun- 
teer; both, says this Boston woman, are butchers, who 
butcher for the sake of butchering. 
This is not the bright red rose of tr.uth, nor the lily 
pure of poetry; it is the sprouting of the potato eye in 
the cellar, an unwholesome sentiment bred in the dark. 
We surmise that the Boston sky-scrapers which have 
been built up about the Herald building on Washington 
street have shut out the sunlight from the "Chatterer's" 
desk. A week of outdoors in a Maine deer hunters' 
camp, or a day down on the Cape with the brant shoot- 
ers, when the winds are whistling and the clouds are 
scudding and the spray is flying, would set her right as 
to the sportsman. Knowing him, she would know the 
volunteer; for there is after all this element of truth in 
her paragraph, that the American sportsman and the 
American volunteer are identified in spirit and person- 
ality. A census of the troops would show the sports- 
men of the country to the fore. It would be easily 
demonstrable too, that because of their sportsmanship 
they were better soldiers — not, as "Chatterer" brut- 
ally declares, because of a "passion for killing," 
but for the well-known rule that indulgence in field 
sports prepares men physically and spiritually to as- 
sume the responsiblities, perform the duties, endure the 
hardships and win the victories of a campaign. The 
sports of rod and gun hold high place among the in- 
fluences and agencies which go to making the vigor and 
stamina and endurance which are the strength of a 
nation in time of peace, and in war its defense and 
preservation. It is to the abiding credit of the sports- 
manship of this country and this generation that it has 
been to the front in the Spanish war; nor is the credit 
likely to be depreciated by the fool chatter of mawkish 
sentimentality. 
SNAP SHOTS, 
Elmer Snowman, one of the best guides in the Range- 
ley region, has been arrested for guiding without a 
license. He took out a license the first year, but de- 
clined to make a return, as required by the law. He 
applied for a second license, but was refused by the 
commissioners, and the fee was returned. Since this 
he has gone on guiding without a license, though re- 
peatedly warned by Warden Huntoon. The other day 
he was arrested, had a hearing before the local justice, 
where he appeared without counsel, and was bound over 
to appear before the Supreme Court at Farmington the 
next term. Air. Snowman, we understand, expected to 
be arrested for guiding without a license, but refused to 
make out the required returns for the reason that he 
could not do it conscientiously and in justice to himself 
and the people for whom he had guided. He believes 
the law to be unconstitutional and unjust, and hopes his 
action will bring it before the people. His case is said to 
be exciting a good deal of attention and a good deal 
of sympathy. We have expressed the opinion that the 
Maine game law would stand the test of constitutionality. 
It is in line with many of those regulations and restric- 
tions of individual action which have for purpose and 
justification the protection of game. If the State may 
constitutionally go so far as to prohibit entirely the 
taking of game, it may constitutionally go so far as to 
prescribe that game may be taken only by licensed 
hunters, or by hunters accompanied by licensed guides. 
In his testimony before Gen. Breckenridge's board, ap- 
pointed to examine into one of the Camp Thomas hos- 
pitals, Col. Elias Chandler, of the 1st Arkansas, des- 
cribed among other cases that of Private Simms, ill with 
pneumonia. "It had been raining and the water ran 
through the tent, thoroughly wetting the ground and 
soaking the bedding in which the sick man lay. I asked' 
permission to put up a habitable tent for the sick man, 
and did so. Twenty-four hours later he was removed to 
it, and twelve hours after that died. The excuse given 
for not moving him sooner was because the ground 
was too wet. But this would have made no difference, 
because there was no floor in the tent, and the water from 
the hillsides drained through all the tents. No trenches 
had been dug around them, and the water flowed in a 
stream through the tents in which the sick men lay." 
The flooded tents constituted only minor horrors of 
the Chicamauga Park hospitals; but it is worth while 
pointing out that this particular atrocity was one which 
might very readily have been avoided altogether if only 
the individuals responsible for it had applied to the 
stern business of war one of the simplest rudiments of 
the "gentle art of woodcraft." The veriest tyro in 
camping out knows better than to pitch his tent where 
water from higher ground will run into it; or using 
such a site he will ditch roundabout it so that the water 
will be carried off. If the novice does fall into such a 
blunder at first, he makes a move quickly enough out 
of it when the floods come. What sort of sportsman 
would he be accounted who should keep a sick comrade 
in a camp bed soaked with water running down hill 
into the tent? We are accustomed to credit the practice 
of sportsmanship with preparing a nation for war. It 
is a tremendous pity then that there was not more of the 
woodcraft element of sportsmanship at Chickamaugua. 
