Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
•} NEW YORK, SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 6, 18 9 8. \* 0 .^^^y 
The Forest and Stream' is the recognized medium of entertain- 
ment, instruction and information between American sportsmen. 
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garded. While it is intended to give wide latitude in discussion 
of current topics, the editors 'are not responsible for the views of 
correspondents. 
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Cfte forest and Stream Platform PlanK. 
"The sale of game should be forbidden at all seasons." 
— Forest and Stream, Feb. 3, 1894, 
THE TUNNY-FISHERS. 
In rude log-cabin by the lone sea-shore 
Two aged fishers slept the sleep of toil. 
Rough was their life, and scant their household- 
store, 
Scarce aught but hooks and nets and seamen's coil* 
To one of these came visions of strange spoil ; 
He caught a fish — such fish as none before 
Caught ever, bright with sheen and glittering foil, 
A golden fish ; and made high vows no more 
To sail the seas, but spend the troven gold ; 
Then woke and wept to starve or be forsworn* 
To whom his fellow: " Surely, being old, 
Thou drivellest. Vow and vision both are born 
Of air. Catch living fish or die/' And cold 
Through eastern windows crept, the ashy dawn. 
THEOCRITUS (B. C. 270), Lefroy's Translation. 
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 
The Forest and Stream's announcement of prizes 
for amateur photographs is given elsewhere. 
THE DISTRIBUTION OF FISH AND OF 
RAILROAD TICKETS. 
We observe with interest ,the pother some well-mean- 
ing folks are making over United States Fish Commis- 
sioner Bowers and sundry railroad tickets. Commis- 
sioner Bowers is charged with having distributed one 
hundred and fifty railroad tickets to as many Gov- 
ernment employees in Washington, that they might go 
home to West Virginia to vote in the late election. Now 
Sec. 14 of the Civil Service Act provides: 
That no officer, clerk, or other person in the service of the 
United States shall, directly or indirectly, give or hand over to any 
other officer, clerk, or person in the service of the United States, 
or to any Senator or member of the House of Representatives, or 
Territorial delegate, any money or other valuable thing on ac- 
count of or to be applied to the promotion of any political 
object whatever. 
Further, Paragraph 2 of Rule II. provides that "No 
person in the executive civil service shall, use his official 
authority or official influence for the purpose of inter- 
fering with an election or controlling the result thereof." 
But the Commissioner is charged with "having sent 
a letter urging John B. Conaway, an employee at the 
Navy Yard, to go to his home and vote; and also with 
having sent to Conaway a railroad ticket." 
It is reported that Commissioner Bowers has ad- 
mitted the facts as stated; and the matter is now before 
the Civil- Service Commission. The penalty prescribed 
for such acts, the accused having been by due process 
of law proved guilty, is a fine or imprisonment, or both, 
and dismissal from office. 
But no one is so simple as to believe that, railroad 
tickets or no railroad tickets, it would ever actually come 
to this with Commissioner Bowers. Mr. Bowers was 
given his place in violation- of law by the President, and 
holds it only by continued and continuous violation of 
that law; and when the master sets such an example 
what may you expect of the servant? The law required 
that the President should appoint to the office of Fish 
Commissioner "a person of scientific and practical ac- 
quaintance with the fish and fisheries." Mr. Bowers was 
a West Virginia politician who was devoid of the legally 
required qualifications. He was given the place in ful- 
fillment of a bargain to that effect, made by Mr, Mc- 
Kinley when a candidate for the Presidency with Sena- 
tor Elkins of West Virginia. Nobody on earth knows 
better than Commissioner Bowers himself just what in- 
fluence put him where he is, and would keep him there 
despite unlawful use of railroad tickets. Knowing tins, he 
would be an ingrate should he refuse to distribute a few 
railroad tickets where they might do the most good, and 
no less a fool, if, having sped the voters on their way, he 
were to worry about what the Civil Service Commission- 
ers might determine would be the proper thing to do to 
him if they could. 
THE GAME FOR THE SPORTSMAN. 
That section of the New York game law which re- 
stricts the transportation of woodcock, ruffed grouse (or 
partridge) and quail forbids the shipment of these 
birds "from any one point to another point within or 
without the State from or through any of the counties 
thereof," except when accompanied by the owner; and 
even then one person may not carry more than twelve 
of each at any one time, or thirty-six of each in a season. 
(The meaning of the text is indefinite as to whether it 
means twelve of each or twelve of all; but the game pro- 
tectors construe it as meaning twelve of each separate 
species.) A similar provision restricts the transportation 
of deer to a single carcass, which must be accompanied 
by the owner. 
Such regulations are not original with New York. 
This State has copied them from the codes of others, 
where they have been in force for years. The Republi- 
can-Watchman, of Greenport, Long Island, asks for an 
explanation of the underlying motive which prompted 
the. enactment of such a law. The motive first underlying 
was to stop the shipment of game to market; the motive 
next underlying was to stop the killing of game for mar- 
ket; the next stratum of motive consisted of an intention 
to stop the cleaning out of the game covers, and to 
maintain a parent and self-replenishing supply of game; 
and the foundation bed-rock motive was to gjve the game 
to the sportsman — the sportsman of to-u>.]* and of to- 
morrow, not to the sportsman of the town.^lone, but to 
him of the country as well, to the Greenpor'er quite as 
much as to the New Yorker or Brooklynite. Despite 
the way the Watchnv" ,13 ""' J- ' ov -"'<? privileges of "local 
j r u -What do you think oi «... , ,,„., 
gunner and of city >i r .>i* '.-ame; 
each may kill a like number _ !>^ce wn ee" the c. >ome 
with him. Each is accorded so much usi.tlv- • ike 
the game of the State, and so much freedom to do >./\th 
it what he may please, as in the judgment of the Legisla- 
ture is consistent with a due conservation of public in- 
terest. 
The game of this continent, East and West, North and 
South, rightly belongs to that element of the com- 
munity which makes pursuit of it for sport and not for 
profit. This is the irrefutable principle, the bed-rock 
sure foundation "underlying motive" of all wise game 
protective legislation. One after another, State by State, 
those who inspire and frame game laws are coming to an 
intelligent comprehension of the principle, and giving 
expression to it in the restrictions of these laws. The 
Platform Plank- promulgated in these columns in 1894 
has just this aim. In that year it was advanced doctrine. 
To-day, as we are drawing near to the close of 1898, 
it is a familiar principle, in which the public recognizes 
in large measure the solution of the game protection 
problem. Who shall say that with the beginning of the 
new century the Plank shall not have place in the 
codes of a majority of the States? 
We sympathize with the Long Island gunners, if any 
find themselves cut off from what they undoubtedly in 
good faith believe to their just right to market game. 
But theirs is only the local and personal hardship inci- 
dent to every reform which affects the community at 
large, and to every changed condition which makes for an 
enforcement of the inexorable rule of the greatest good 
for the greatest number. The market-hunter, the killer 
of game for profit, belongs, as a factor to be given con- 
sideration in game legislation, to a past age. The only 
class whose interest may now reasonably be taken into 
account is that of the sportsman. The term sportsman's 
class may not have a very definite meaning to journal- 
ists who are given to denunciation of game laws. To un- 
derstand intelligently what the term sportsman means in 
this country, as applied to the gunner or angler, it must 
be remembered that the American sportsman spends on 
the average less than a fortnight all told per annum 
in the field or on the stream, For the rest of the twelve 
months of the year he is "chained to business," to as 
many busiuesses, vocations, trades, professions, occu- 
pations, industries, employments, as make up the activ- 
ities of organized society. When, then, the community 
resolves to protect the game for the sportsman, that is 
only another way of resolving to protect the game for 
itself; and when the community cuts off the shipment of 
game to market, that is only putting into effect its de- 
termination to have the game in the field, to-day and to- 
morrow and always, as lure for an outing, rather than 
on the market stalls for consumption to-day and done 
with it. In other words, the game is for the sports- 
man. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
Pursuit of game in Australia has so diminished the 
stock as to excite genuine concern among sportsmen, 
and ways and means are sought to check the destruc- 
tion. The prevailing interest in the subject is well in- 
dicated in a letter referred to us by Messrs. Hartley & 
Graham, of this city, written by the secretary of the 
Australasian Gun and Game Association, to elicit infor- 
mation respecting the means adopted in this country 
to preserve our game. The protective system which 
provides a force of paid wardens or protectors is the 
only one which has ever amounted to 'anything in the 
United States; and our cousins in Australia would do 
well to labor for the adoption of like methods. 
One weak point in the system with us is the influence 
of politics. In New York, for instance, we have a vicious 
breed of politicians, who by devious means win their 
way into the Legislature, and, take part in making fish 
and game laws, and then encourage their violation. In cer- 
tain localities and as to certain people the protectors do not 
pretend to enforce the laws^; they even refuse to en- 
force them when urged to do this by honest citizens. 
The reason is that the law violators have votes, the 
politicians want these, votes, and to make sure of them 
shield the law breakers and stand between them and 
the protector. So we^ sometimes hear it openly given 
out — and the declaration provokes no special remark — 
that such and such a fish and game protector will make 
no arrests which will antagonize votes. And there. are 
districts along the inland lakes where the netters go 
unmolested because Senator So-and-so needs: their votes, 
and in exchange secures them immunity to defy the laws. 
These politicians carry their heads high in public places, 
but honest men know them for what they are, and to 
know them is to have contempt for them. One might 
much sooner intrust the interests of the widow and tlie 
orphan to the roughly-clad illicit fish netter than to tha 
silk-hatted politician who mortgages his soul to get to 
Albany. 
This paragraph is devoted to the memory of Jacobus 
Barhydt, obiit 1844, a man wise beyond his day and 
generation. In the old days Barhydt owned the Saratoga 
Springs property now famous as Mr. Spencer Trask's 
Yaddo. The lake on the estate was then known as 
Barhydt's Lake, and on its shores Barhydt kept a public 
house, which between 1820 and 1835 was a favorite re- 
sort. The waters were well stocked with trout, and at- 
tracted anglers from near and far. In those days fisher- 
men were not accustomed to be hampered in their sport 
by restrictions of law or of thrifty proprietors; but to 
Jacobus was given the uncommon sense to impose on 
his guests rules and regulations intended to maintain the 
fishing resources of Barhydt Lake. Writing to the New 
York Commercial Advertiser in 1835, Wm. L. Stone, the 
author of a volume of "Reminiscences of Saratoga," said: 
"At Barhydt's the sportsman is obliged to throw all the 
trout he may take back into their native element again, 
and pay by the hour for the privileges besides. He may, 
however, retain enough for his own dinner, provided he al- 
lows it to be cooked there and pays pretty well for that into 
the bargain." According to N. P. Willis, however, the 
old man was not grasping. "He will give you a dram or 
cook you a dinner of trout," Willis writes, "and seems 
not only indifferent whether you like his fish or his 
liquor, but quite as indifferent whether or what you pay 
him." But the essential fact, and the point of this para- 
graph, is that here in the Saratoga' wilderness was an 
innkeeper who put in practice a scheme of fish preserva- 
tion which was hardly more novel then than it is to-day, 
