Forest and Stream. 
A Weekly Journal of the Rod and Gun. 
NEW YORK, SATURDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1898, 
r $4 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy. ) 
Six Months, $2. j - 
VOL. LI. -No. 2ft. 
No. 846 Broadway, New Yo-kk. 
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 bt 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. 
Ok forest and Stream Platform PlanK. 
"T/ie sale of game should be forbidden at all seasons." 
— Forest and Stream, Feb. 3, 1894. 
AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY. 
The Forest and Stream's announcement of prizes 
for amateur photographs is given elsewhere. 
The ancients esteemed hunting, not only as a 
manly and warlike exercise, but as highly con- 
ducive to health. The famous Galen recom- 
mends it above all others as not only exercising 
the body, but giving delight and entertainment 
to the mind. And he calls the inventors of this 
art wise men, and well-skilled in human nature. 
Somerville. 
SNAP SHOTS. 
We have given generous space in recent issues to the 
New Jersey game stocking enterprises, because this is a 
branch of work which, now in its infancy, is destined to 
receive constantly growing attention, and to be rewarded 
by substantial results. Thanks to the activity of the New 
Jersey Commission, the ring-necked pheasant may now 
fairly be counted as a game bird of that State; and to- 
day we quote characteristic reports from sportsmen in 
various counties where imported quail have been put out 
to restore the supply. The work has been done under the 
personal supervision of Mr. Charles A. Shriner, the State 
Fish and Game Warden and executive agent of the board ; 
and it is a pleasure to make recognition of the common 
sense methods he has employed and the businesslike man- 
ner in which the interests of the public have been adminis- 
tered. 
It is announced that the project of a deer park for Long 
Island, suggested in these columns some time ago, will 
be taken up by the Legislature this winter. As we have 
pointed out, there are wild lands on the island admirably 
adapted to the purpose, and such a State institution might 
be established without interfering with any private 
rights and privileges now enjoyed. The expense should 
be small; the deer are ready to hand; and the breeding 
station thus provided would stock the mountains of Sulli- 
van county and- the Catskills. 
The American Commissioners who were sent to investi- 
gate the Hawaiian Islands discovered a curious condi- 
tion governing the fisheries. Along the Hawaiian coast, 
about a mile from the shore, are coral reefs, and between 
these reefs and the shore are the fishing grounds. When 
the land of the islands was first parceled out by the 
crown, grants of lands along the coast carried with them 
the exclusive privilege of fishing for a mile from shore. 
The holders of such lands long ago formed a trust for 
the konihiki, or monopoly, 6f the fishing; fixed prices to 
suit themselves, and proceeded to get rich. The old 
grants have been tested in the courts, and are held to be 
vested rights. In acquiring the Hawaiian Islands the 
United States has thus annexed a full fledged fisheries 
trust. It is reported that the Commissioners will recom- 
mend the condemnation of the fishing grounds in the 
public interest. 
The New York League at Syracuse last week adopted 
a resolution endorsing the principle of Forest and 
Stream's Platform Plank, voting to petition the Legisla- 
ture to forbid at all times the sale of ruffed grouse and 
quail. Vermont has just adopted a prohibition of the sale 
of ruffed grouse. New Hampshire sportsmen have as- 
surance that the anti-sale plank will be considered at Con- 
cord this winter. A Minnesota senator writes to us for 
information that will assist him in an effort to secure a 
similar law there. The Legislature of Connecticut will 
have a measure forbidding the taking of game for sale. 
Even in Massachusetts, with the Boston market open the 
year around, the sportsmen's associations are coming out 
in favor of the Plank. The idea has been implanted. It 
is talked about. Discussion means gain in popularity, 
and ultimately it will mean adoption. 
The field trials of the Eastern and Continental Clubs 
this year were marked by a spirit of true sportsmanship 
throughout, which made the meetings the most satisfac- 
tory and thoroughly enjoyable of recent years. The com- 
mercialism which in former days was so largely a dom- 
inating force, giving rise to jealousies embittering the 
meets, has passed entirely away; there was this year not 
the remotest suggestion of it. The trials were conducted 
by sportsmen for the sake of the sport; generous emula- 
tion and perfect harmony and good feeling prevailed 
from the casting off the first brace to the final hand clasp 
at parting, when everyone declared that he had had a 
good time, and would come again. Such a restoration of 
field trials in America to a place of respect and dignity 
in the calendar of the year's events is reason for genuine 
congratulation of all who are interested in the dog as 
a field companion. We shall be much in error if the im- 
mediate future shall not witness a growth of field trial 
interest, and such popularity for the annual events of the 
clubs as has never before been enjoyed. 
This is putting field trials on the plane they al- 
ways should have held. It was the incr.oachment of purely 
commercial interests, with the usurpation on the part of 
owners and handlers who knew no other motive than a 
mercenary one, that eventually caused many of the early 
supporters to withdraw from active participation. The 
true interests of dog breeding and training and field 
shooting will be advanced by the elimination of what may 
be termed the professional element from field trials. 
Secretary Spencer, of the Alabama Field Trials Club, 
reports that birds are plentiful at Madison, where the 
meet will be held in February, and the outlook is for a 
large entry list and an increased number of visitors. The 
club's annual gathering is a most enjoyable occasion; and 
the club is developing a substantial influence upon the 
game interests of the State. For one thing such a meeting 
of representatives of different sections gives opportunity 
for discussion of the common cause; public opinion is 
created and fostered; and it is expected that as an out- 
growth of the work of the Alabama Club, the present in- 
efficient and inadequate game law will be superseded by 
one drafted on advanced lines and in keeping with the 
standards of the day. 
Were an observer to draw inferences from what he saw 
in some sections of the Adirondacks, accepting the dic- 
tum that "whatever is is right," he might conclude that 
deer hounding was a lawful mode of hunting. In Game 
Protector Beede's district, for instance, in Essex county, 
the woods have echoed day in and day out the bay of the 
dogs on trail. The experience told us by a still- 
hunter in that district is suggestive of the way things 
went there in the deer season; on two separate occasions 
after long stalking he had nearly come up with his game, 
only to have it each time startled and driven from him 
by hounds. As for Mr. Beede, the hounders doubtless 
said of him as Elijah at Mount Carmel to the prophets 
of Baal when he mocked them and said, "either he is 
talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or per- 
adventure, he sleepeth and must be awaked." 
Twelve hunters were mistaken for deer and killed by 
other hunters in Wisconsin in the past season. If this 
reckless shooting continues, no prudent man will venture 
into the woods, and whenever a father of a family de- 
clares his intention of deer hunting in Wisconsin it will 
be in order to appoint a commission de lunatico inquir- 
endo. 
To inveigh against this form of manslaughter may be 
futile; to mitigate the exceeding and unspeakable out- 
rages of these repeated killings is beyond human power; 
and all the talking and writing in the world will not stay 
the hand of the fatuous imbecile who is predestined to 
slay his brother man by mistake for a deer. But on the 
other hand it is certain that silence can avail nothing, and 
the talking and writing may do some good. Let every 
father then exhort his son, and every son his father, the 
brother the brother, and every man every other man, 
and in particular each one himself, never to shoot until he 
knows — not thinks he knows, but knows — what he is 
shooting at. 
The Maxim gun shoots with prodigious rapidity, dis- 
charging automatically by its own recoil a rain of six hun- 
dred bullets per minute. In a lecture before the Engineer- 
ing Society of Columbia University, last week, the in- 
ventor related that the Sultan of Turkey once ordered one 
of the guns, and when it was received, mindful of how it 
continued to shoot when once set going, he ordered that, 
not even being unpacked, it should be put away in a 
safe place in the royal museum of arms, where it might 
be powerless to wreck the empire. The Sultan is a pru- 
dent person ; he doubtless understands human nature well 
enough to surmise that the didn't-know-it-was-loaded idiot 
is not exclusively indigenous to the American continent ; 
and his Oriental imagination had pictured perhaps what 
would happen in Constantinople if the idiot and the 
Maxim gun should get together. 
Commissioner Titcomb calls our attention to the fact 
that in a recent note of the deer in Vermont we said 
that under the old law hounds were permitted. This was 
a mistake; dogging was against the law; but there was 
no provision by which an officer could legally kill a dog 
running at large and pursuing deer, if the dog wore a 
collar and was licensed ; and the dogs have chased deer in 
Vermont at all seasons of the year. Under the statute any 
dog chasing deer may be killed; and it is expected that, 
this will save many does heavy with young. Another 
good point is that owners are held responsible. The New 
Hampshire Commissioners suggest the expediency of a 
similar provision ; for, although the use of dogs for deer 
hunting is forbidden, the game is continually harried by 
hounds running loose, with effects particularly disastrous 
in the breeding season. 
We observe, by the way, that the letterhead employed 
by Mr. Titcomb, being that of the Department of Fish- 
eries and Game, has for its device the arms of the State, 
and the crest is a buck's head. This is significant, for it 
means that in the year 1821, when the coat of arms was 
adopted, the deer was a feature of Vermont worthy of a 
place in the State's heraldry. Certainly, at that period no 
one could havo foreseen that half a century later the 
species would become extinct in the Green Mountains, 
that it would be restored by importations from "York 
State" ; and that in course of time this heraldic buck's 
head would adorn the stationery of a deer protective de- 
partment 1 . 
The ultimate success of the Vermont deer restocking 
enterprise affords one of many illustrations of the truism 
that, the preservation of a game supply is simple if the 
game supply is preserved. You cannot have your cake 
and eat it too. What has been accomplished'in the Green 
Mountains with imported deer has been done with the 
New Hampshire moose by the expedient of a long-term 
close time. The report of the Commissioners, printed in 
another column, tells us that the outlook for the moose 
stock in the Connecticut Lakes country is very promising, 
owing to a strict observance of the law, which gives this 
species protection until the year 1901. "* 
One service the wheel does many a rider on country 
roads is to put him closer to game and other wild crea- 
tures than ever he could get afoot. For the man who 
would hunt without a gun the wheel has this peculiar ad- 
vantage. A correspondent who visited Maine in the fall 
tells us, "On two different occasions I wheeled within 
two rods of grouse in the road." The secret of it is that 
the movement of the bicycle is so noiseless and So swift 
that the wheelman is upon the game before it has time to 
realize his approach. 
The organization of the Blue Mountain Club for shoot- 
ing in the Blue Mountain Forest, the Corbin game park 
in New Hampshire, has not yet been perfected; but some 
hunting was done in the Forest this year, the game killed 
comprising six elk and twenty-three deer. 
The next issue of the Forest and Stream will be the 
Christmas Number; and in its pages will be provided a 
fund of good reading. 
